New Brunswick Traveler

The province of New Brunswick has some great 4-lane highways and good by-roads, but this was not always the case.  The preoccupation with railway construction took much of the government’s focus in the early part of the 20th century.  It was only with a strong push from the Boards of Trade of Saint John and Fredericton that road construction finally began sufficiently in 1917 and beyond.  By the e...

St. Andrews by the Sea was one of the places that the Loyalists arrived at in 1783.  Lesser known and talked about than Saint John, it was still an important port on the Bay of Fundy.  And then later in the 1830s it was one of four arrival ports for the Irish emigrants.  This podcast takes a brief look at the Loyalists that arrived there and the Irish that followed.  The NB Traveler shares this no...

I noticed that there's a lot in tourism literature today about a term called glamping, G L A M P I N G, which seems to be something about geodesic domes.  My interest in doing this podcast is simply to find out more about that. Concept itself, how you got interested in it and just what you're doing out there in the forest. Well, glamping is like a nice medium between camping and luxury hotels. We...

Talking with Jenna Fitch from Kings Landing. They are having an event there called Maple, the First Taste of Spring.  Jenna will share about this event and some background of Kings Landing. Jenna:  Our Maple Event has been going on for about 40 years. Visitors can come and get a glimpse into what life in the sugarbush was like in the 1900s. The history of maple dates back many years. introduced by...

The authority on the waterfalls of New Brunswick is Nicholas Guitard, who is an avid nature photographer, canoeist, hiker and waterfalls hound. The second tallest waterfall in the province is Fall Brook Falls, which is 108 feet high. This waterfall should not be confused with Falls Brook Falls, which is located near Edmonston. The tallest waterfall in New Brunswick is 115 feet, but in the summerti...

An episode with Michael Sadavoy, the Director of Growth and Committee Services at the Greater Saint John Chamber of Commerce, gives a picture of some of the important things that will be happening in the city in 2024 and looking at some of the challenges that the city faces. To find out more about The Chamber and how to benefit from there services, check out their website

Ice fishing is a very popular sport in New Brunswick.  In this episode Jason Willcox will be telling about some of the locations to fish in the Fredericton/Saint John area and the type of fish that one might expect to catch.  You can contact Jason at the Minnow Tackle Shop in Fredericton. Mark J Brewer, Host

Today NB Traveler is featuring the Marigolds and Murals Project – a program that has been going on for over 20 years in Saint John – and I am interviewing Barry Ogden, the man that brought the program into existence.  Barry states: “Well, we started out with it was one garden and one school, and we're now up to about 46 schools all over Greater Saint John. And I think we've gone over 5 mil...

Fundy Winterfest 2024 is featured in this episode. The six communities of Rothesay, Quispamsis, Hampton, Saint John, Grand Bay-Westfield and Fundy St. Martins join together for a 6-week long event starting February 1, where people celebrate and embrace winter as an opportunity to connect across generations, communities, classes and cultures. I am talking with Keri Flood, the Rothesay Recreation &a...

The Imperial Theatre hosts the TIFF Film Circuit and I am here today with Lindsay Jacquard, the Sponsorship and Patron Services Coordinator, to talk about the series and other great things that are happening at the theatre.  An edited part of the interview is below: (Mark) So Lindsay, tell my listeners about the theatre’s community spirit and its outreach to connect and engage people. (Lindsay) We...

Did you know that men from New Brunswick fought in the American Civil War? I certainly didn’t!  That is until I saw that the New Brunswick Historical Society is raising money to purchase a sword that a medical officer from St. Andrews had used when he served with the Union army.  I did an interview with the president of the historical society to get the rest of the story.  (Mark)  I'm here tod...

The cable ferry was invented in New Brunswick.  We have eight of them on the St. John river system. They all operate as part of the highway system at no cost to drivers. Just north of Saint John is the Kennebecasis Peninsula, an area settled very early after the Loyalists arrived in 1783.  As early as 1825 there was a type of ferry service crossing the Kennebecasis River from Reeds Point to Gondol...

Where was the telephone invented and who invented it? Actually there is strong evidence that the telephone may have been invented in New Brunswick.  While Alexander Graham Bell may have been successful in obtaining the patent, he was not the first to send and receive messages over the wires.  William McLeod, an inventor of note who lived in the Sussex New Brunswick area had made and used a telepho...

So I want to talk a little bit today about new beginnings, but in some ways, that new beginning goes back ten years to when my wife and I moved here to New Brunswick. I first heard about the Bay of Fundy in the late 1990s when I was living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. And a friend told me how wonderful it was with all those tides and everything, not dreaming that some years later, I...

The launch of New Brunswick Traveler was on Tuesday morning, December 5, 2023. Hope to share a cup of coffee with you on Tuesday mornings, and have the water on for tea if that is what you prefer!

I moved to Canada 21 years ago, and my wife and her family always celebrated their Christmas on Boxing Day, December 26. That would be when the gifts would be exchanged and when the family would get together. I always found it very intriguing that there was a Boxing Day celebration here in Canada, because it wasn't something that I had ever experienced in the United States.  According to infor...

This episode is a conversation with David Goss, a well-known author and storyteller from Saint John.  He gives some information about some of the developing traditions of Christmas in New Brunswick.  Following are some of the things that David said: I think a lot of Christmas celebrations in New Brunswick are homogenized. They are pretty much the same for everybody in every area of the province. ...

Here in New Brunswick, we had about 400 covered bridges at one point in time. Today, there are 58 remaining.  These bridges represent more than a simple aid to transportation. They symbolize the growth and prosperity of the province in the 20th century. Covered bridges were covered for a very practical reason. The roofs protect the floorboards and their supporting beams from the wetting and drying...

Some travelers come to New Brunswick with the hope of seeing a moose. This episode focuses on some background about the health of the moose herd, locations where they can be found, safety tips for avoiding a collision with one of them and details on the hunting season for those individuals that want to not only see one, but to shoot one. The following businesses/organizations were mentioned in the...