Backyard History

Camp B-70, near Fredericton,  held captured German Nazis and Fascist Italians during the Second World War. The prisoners and guards played an elaborate game of cat and mouse, with constant attempts at escape. Remarkably, one escape was actually stopped by an actual real live cat, who had been performing in the camp as part of a traveling circus..

When a bank robber gets stuck in a chimney on April Fools Day, nobody believes a 12 year old boy trying to save him..   On the cold and moonless night in the winter of 1848, the only ever attempted robbery of the Bank of New Brunswick in Saint John took place.   It was not the least bit successful, and turned into quite the bizarre -but true- night long incident. https://backyardhistory.ca/f/bungl...

“While I am writing to you the shells are screaming and the bullets are hitting but why should I care? I have just had a good meal!” wrote Emile Goguen, an Acadian lumberjack from New Brunswick who had volunteered to go fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War, and who would be interrogated about his activities while there.   More than 1500 Canadians volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil...

Prince Edward Island was the first place in Canada to have a car ... and the only province to ban them!   https://backyardhistory.ca/f/when-pei-banned-cars

A beloved Canadian radio host and author had a radical past.   In the 1960s a Maritimer achieved Canada wide fame for his talent in gardening. Known as Mr Green Thumbs, this kindly old man put out no fewer than four massive bestselling books on gardening, and ran a popular regular radio show on how to grow plants. Mr Green Thumbs’ many dedicated fans likely didn’t know that behind the friendly voi...

Elizabeth Beard fought in the American Revolution ... against the Americans.   One New Brunswick woman became something of a worldwide sensation for her remarkable feats fighting in the American Revolution. She was fighting not for the Americans though, but against them.   Her heroics were completely overlooked and forgotten during that chaotic time, but late her life, the public learned about wha...

Saint John's genteel Rockwood Park was once turned into a modern electric circus. For several years Saint John’s iconic Rockwood Park –the largest urban park in Canada at the time– was turned into a summer fair grounds based on Coney Island. In the early 1900s it featured rides that had never been seen before like a ferris wheel and merry go around, nightly fireworks, bars and restaurants, and acr...

Like the Alamo, but in Fredericton.   Fredericton’s first European settlement was a French fort, which was attacked and besieged by a fleet from New England. The story of the battle is kind of like the American myth of the Alamo. A small and beleaguered band of defenders is facing down a vastly larger and better equipped army of invaders. Except in this case they are coming up from what is now the...

In 1815 Nova Scotia was overrun by mice.   Dr. George Patterson later interviewed people who lived through what was called Year of the Mice. The horrors of that year left a mark on those who had experienced it so deep that he found that elderly people that had personally experienced the mouse invasion still used it as a measurement of time. ‘Sixty-two Years After The Mice,’ Dr. Patterson wrote tha...

A fleet of Fascist Italian airplanes stop in a little seaside resort town in the Maritimes … with a dark political agenda.   On July 13th 1933 a reporter for the Moncton Daily Times was rushing towards the newly built wharfs of the tiny seaside village of Shediac. He is trying to make it in time to catch a glimpse of an incredible sight: 24 massive airplanes flying in a giant V formation that were...

*Top Episode of 2023! In the 1920s two hermit brothers on Grand Manan became internationally famous as the mysterious “Dark Harbour Hermits.” Hundreds of tourists from the United States and even faraway Europe came to visit them in their homemade shacks on the beaches of the strange and isolated place known as Dark Harbour, where the hermits would entertain the tourists with their art, their poems...

The Maritimes were briefly the Dutch colony of Nova Hollandia..   We’re always taught in school that ever since European colonists arrived in what is now Canada, that it was always a colony of either England or France. However, it’s a little-known fact that for a brief time the Maritimes were conquered by the Dutch, and were a short lived colony with a remarkably bizarre history, named Nova Hollan...

An unlikely trio is celebrated by a US President for their heroic rescue of sailors stranded for days on a rock in a storm.   https://backyardhistory.ca/f/wreck-and-rescue-of-the-velma

“They will not allow me to go home,” begins the haunting diary that Mary Huestis Pengilly wrote while locked up in the Saint John Lunatic Asylum, Canada’s first ever mental health institution. She wrote vividly in a secret diary about her experiences as a patient in the Asylum in the 1880s, which she later published into a book. After her release, she became a high profile and outspoken advocate f...

The Maritimes were home to the only German bombing in North America in World War One. Fortunately the Agent wasn't very good, and was more than willing to tell everything to an intrepid reporter...   https://backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/german-agents-bombed-a-new-brunswick-bridge

Nothing was quite what it seemed...   In the Summer of 1906 The Maritimes were captivated by a strange mystery when two young children disappeared in broad daylight from right in front of their house. One reporter, who signed her articles simply as The Special Correspondent, went to the tiny village of Cape Tormentine to investigate the disappearances. The more she learned about the case, the stra...

A baseball star becomes one of the few Black Canadians to fight in the First World War.   https://backyardhistory.ca/f/fighting-for-the-right-to-fight

A simple question leads to a lost colony in Cape Breton..   What does “Fundy” mean? Where does the unusual name for the large bay between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia boasting the highest tides in the world come from? The short answer is that it’s Portuguese, but figuring out what “Fundy” means involves a lost colony, confused explorers, and a perplexing mix up..   There is some surviving evidenc...

Is it a ghost haunting the woods or something else?   A car load of four young people -two guys and two girls- were driving home from a dance on a dark and stormy Halloween night in 1930. They were on a dark road going through the woods between the small towns of Richibucto and Rexton on New Brunswick’s East Coast, when they had a bizarre close encounter with a ghost…   https://backyardhistory.ca/...

One province defeats a pandemic and in the process influences all of North America, leading to improvements in healthcare all over Canada and the United States as they copy the latest developments in ... New Brunswick.   https://backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/pandemic-1918-how-one-doctor-saved-new-brunswick

Canada decides which side to drive on.   For much of its history half of Canada drove on the opposite side of the road from the other half. Ontario and Quebec drove on the right, while British Columbia and The Maritimes drove on the left. When New Brunswick changed sides of the road the year became wryly known as “The Year of Free Beef.” https://backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/switching-from-driving...

"Oh my god we're saved by a girl," the sailor gasped before passing out.   In 1882 a teenager was celebrated for risking her life heroically rescuing shipwrecked sailors in a cold Autumn storm. https://backyardhistory.ca/popular/f/oh-my-god-were-saved-by-a-girl-teenager-saves-sailors-at-sea

After a life of piracy, a man retreats to the woods to escape justice and hide his treasure. About an hour southwest of Fredericton is Charlie Lake, named after a mysterious hermit who lived there long ago, alone with his little dog. It was said the hermit was a pirate, hiding from the law, who had buried a great treasure by the lake which still bears his name.. https://backyardhistory.ca/articles...

The host enters an abandoned spaceport in the Arctic.   An intricate maze of metal corridors connect the massive buildings far up in Canada's Arctic. It was once the centre of one of the world's leading space research facility. Later it became the center of an international race between Canada and the United States to build the world's first commercial spaceport. The winner would dominate the laun...

One woman's battle against lawmakers led to wins women's rights.   One largely forgotten New Brunswick woman led --and won-- not one but two important battles for women's rights in two separate provinces -one on each side of the country; first in New Brunswick and later in British Columbia. https://backyardhistory.ca/articles/f/new-brunswick-woman-wins-fights-for-rights-in-nb-and-bc