By Michael Boudreau[1] New Brunswick has a gruesome history of executions in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  But much of this rich legal and social history has received scant attention from Canadian historians and legal scholars.  This blog, and the larger project of which it is a small part, is an attempt to highlight the lives of the men who were executed, along with the crimes that they committed, their victims, their trials, the efforts to have their death sentences commuted, and the response of the local communities to these cases and to the executions.  Betwe ..read more

By Del Muise The intersection of social media and local heritage has not been explored very much in Canada, or elsewhere for that matter, apart from programs in genealogy and family history. When Canadians were surveyed about their interest and the importance of various pasts almost twenty years ago, family and local community histories were paramount in their consciousness.[1] That survey preceded Facebook and most other social media platforms that have subsequently become so important in connecting people with each other and their pasts. This brief blog post uses a singular set of circumstan ..read more

The following is an excerpt from Elizabeth Jewett’s review of The Summer Trade: A History of Tourism on Prince Edward Island that was published in the latest issue of Acadiensis. To read the full article please click here and subscribe. ON 24 SEPTEMBER 2022, THE POST-TROPICAL STORM FIONA ravaged Prince Edward Island’s (PEI’s) tourist landscape. Questions arose concerning whether this type of extreme but increasingly common climate change-based weather event would become part of the Island’s future “summer trade” and what consequences might be in store for all those linked to this industry as p ..read more

The following is an excerpt from Mathias Iroro Orhero’s review of Where Beauty Survived that was published in the latest issue of Acadiensis. To read the full article please click here and subscribe. GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE IS AN ACCOMPLISHED WRITER AND SCHOLAR. Through  a four-decade career as a poet and writer, Clarke has contributed immensely to Black Atlantic writing and culture.[1] In his poetry and fictional narratives, he has succeeded in representing the hard facts of what it is to be “Africadian,” a term that he coined to describe the Black people in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick w ..read more

The following is an excerpt from Mark McLaughlan’s review of Against the Tides: Reshaping Landscape and Community in Canada’s Maritime Marshlands that was published in the latest issue of Acadiensis. To read the full article please click here and subscribe. IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 2023, the Isthmus of Chignecto, the land link between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, became a hotly debated political topic. The Canadian federal government urged New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to apply for disaster mitigation and adaptation funds by a deadline of 19 July to help pay for protecting transportation ..read more

This is the sixth of a six-part auto-biographical series about the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) by Gerald Wright, who was from 1989 to 1992 a senior policy advisor to the federal minister responsible for DEVCO. Tragedy struck at 5:18 a.m. on Saturday, May 9, 1992, when a methane-ignited coal dust explosion shook the Westray Mine. I was immediately sent on a fact-finding mission to DEVCO’s head office so that if questions were asked in the Commons about the safety of workers in the government-owned mines the minister would be ready with answers. Executives met me with a list of r ..read more

This tribute originally appeared in the Journal of New Brunswick Studies. Reprinted with permission. Mark J. McLaughlin It is a daunting task to attempt to assess the impact of someone’s body of research, amassed over the entirety of an academic career. It is especially so when the scholar in question was your PhD supervisor, colleague, collaborator, and (most importantly) friend. Bill Parenteau passed away in mid-October 2023.[1] Others, including Bill’s sister Kerry Pascetta and his friend Daniel Samson, have expounded upon what made Bill an incredible person.[2] I will be limiting my commen ..read more

This is the fifth of a six-part auto-biographical series about the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) by Gerald Wright, who was from 1989 to 1992 a senior policy advisor to the federal minister responsible for DEVCO. The Cape Breton community possessed many heart-warming, uplifting and beguiling attributes but hard experience had indelibly marked its psyche. The official unemployment rate was reported to be 17.8%[1], but a presentation of the Cape Breton Industrial Board of Trade to a Senate Committee placed it at closer to 42%.[2] The region had already been abandoned by the offshore ..read more

The following is an excerpt from Michael Boudreau’s article that was published in the latest issue of Acadiensis. To read the full article please click here and subscribe. ON 22 JULY 1904 GEORGE GEE WAS EXECUTED in Woodstock, New Brunswick, for the murder of his cousin Millie Gee.  The question of Gee’s guilt was not necessarily in question since he had confessed to the crime. Nineteen-year-old George Gee and eighteen-year-old Millie Gee had been “keeping company” and George had become “much attached” to Millie, so much so that he believed that they were husband and wife.  But when M ..read more

This is the fourth of a six-part auto-biographical series about the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) by Gerald Wright, who was from 1989 to 1992 a senior policy advisor to the federal minister responsible for DEVCO. We knew from the start that the unions were the major roadblock in our way.[1]Their members earned modest wages (annual pay packets in the vicinity of $30,000 – $35,000 were common) and laboured in harsh and dangerous conditions, a recipe for continual labour strife. The illegal strike in 1990[2] was the thirteenth stoppage since 1976, including one twelve-week strike in ..read more