Moncton

Moncton

Moncton is one of three major urban centres in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, along with Saint John and Fredericton. The city proper has a population of 71,889 and a land area of 142 km2. Greater Moncton has aPopulation of 144,810, making it the largest city and census metropolitan area in New Brunswick. It is also the second-largest city and CMA in the Maritime Provinces.

About Moncton in brief

Summary MonctonMoncton is one of three major urban centres in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, along with Saint John and the capital city of Fredericton. The city proper has a population of 71,889 and a land area of 142 km2. Greater Moncton has aPopulation of 144,810, making it the largest city and census metropolitan area in New Brunswick. It is also the second-largest city and CMA in the Maritime Provinces. It was named for Lt. Col. Robert Monckton, the British officer who had captured nearby Fort Beauséjour a century earlier. It has earned the nickname \”Hub City\” because of its central inland location in the region and its history as a railway and land transportation hub for the Maritimes. The economy is stable and diversified, primarily based on its traditional transportation, distribution, retailing, and commercial heritage, and supplemented by strength in the educational, health care, financial, information technology, and insurance sectors. The strength of MonctON’s economy has received national recognition and the local unemployment rate is consistently less than the national average. The Bend-based shipyard was the turning point for the community when Joseph Salter took over a shipyard at the Bend in 1847. Even in their 80s and 90s, there were only 20 households in the Bend, but the community grew to employ about 400 workers by the late 1800s. It became an important transfer and rest station along the route, then shipbuilding and lumbering would become important industries in the area in the next decade.

The first reference to the \”Petcoucoyer River\” was on the De Meulles map of 1686. Settlement of the Petitcodiac and Memramcook river valleys began about 1700, gradually extending inland and reaching the site of present-day MonCTon in 1733. In 1766, Pennsylvania German settlers arrived to re-establish the pre-existing farming community at Le Coude. Later that year, Governor Charles Lawrence issued a decree ordering the expulsion of the Acadian population from Nova Scotia. This action came to be known as the \”Great Upheaval\”. The reaches of the upper Petit codiac River valley then came under the control of the Philadelphia Land Company. In 1871, the Intercolonial Railway of Canada had chosen Mon CTon as its headquarters, and Monctons remained a railway town for well over a century until the closure of the Canadian National Railway locomotive shops in the late 1980s. The town lost its civic charter in 1862, but regained its charter in 1875 after the community’s economy rebounded, mainly due to a growing railway industry. In the early 1900s, the city was chosen as the headquarters for the Canadian Army Corps of Engineers, which was based in the nearby town of Saint John. In 1910, the town was chosen to become the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Air Force, which had been based in Halifax since the mid-19th century.