New Brunswick, Canada

New Brunswick is a Maritime province on the east coast of Canada.

It is bordered on the west by the province of Quebec and on the east by Nova Scotia. The state of Maine lies to its south. To the north, the Northumberland Strait separates New Brunswick from Prince Edward Island, linked via the Confederation Bridge.

Demographics

Statistics Canada estimates the provincial population in 2007 to be 750,851. New Brunswick is Canada's only officially bilingual province. The majority are English-speaking, with a large Francophone minority (35%), chiefly of Acadian origin.

Cities

The provincial capital is Fredericton. Its largest city is Saint John (not to be confused with St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador). Moncton has the largest French-speaking population of any of the province's major centres.

Name

The province's name comes from the archaic English translation for Braunschweig, a city in northern Germany that was the ancestral home of King George III.