New Brunswick Travel: Fill & Download for Free

Life in the Maritime Provinces of Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island) is more about quality of life than standard of living. I will explain that a little.If you find work in New Brunswick, a secure job will give you a very good quality of life once you adjust to the local environment. What do I mean by good quality of life? Short commute to work, local access to arts, music, sport fishing, cinema, swimming pools, ice arenas, ski hills, golfing, local sports teams, internet, cable TV, church (perhaps no mosque **See update), healthy local food in summer, restaurants, local entertainment, a local donut and coffee shop. Also, access to schools, medical care, accountant, post office, grocery stores. You will have good friends and neighbours. In most places in New Brunswick if you leave your door unlocked by accident, probably no one will rob your house. You can have a very high quality of life.If you live in one of the cities of Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton your commute time to work will probably be 10–15 minutes. It is certainly possible to live further from work, but almost anywhere in NB you can live that close to your job. Short commute time is a big factor in quality of life.New Brunswick is a bilingual province, with all government services available in both English and French. Moncton is fully bilingual, with (very rough description) people living north and north east of Moncton being predominantly Francophone. People living west and south of Moncton are predominantly Anglophone. The cities of Saint John and Fredericton are predominantly Anglo. Miramichi and north are mixed or French. If you speak French, you certainly have an advantage in applying for government jobs. Federal, provincial and municipal government add up to approximately 25% of the economy in NB. You probably won’t get a government job unless you have French as a mother tongue or otherwise extremely fluent.Health care is good in New Brunswick, with major hospital facilities in the three major cities, and smaller regional hospitals in Sackville, Sussex, Miramichi and Bathurst (maybe incomplete list). Medicare coverage is comprehensive and for prescription drugs and extra coverage many employers offer very inexpensive insurance - in the order of $100 or less per month. Downside? If you live in a remote village you may never find a family doctor. A family doctor is the gatekeeper to the health care system. In that case, you will spend time in an emergency room to access care.Anywhere in NB, education for the first twelve years is good (maybe via school bus) in either English or French. In recent years, on standardized tests, NB students have not done as well as other provinces. That may be because of the busing of children from remote areas, or a lack of funding because of duplication of services in both English and French. University or community college is available at reasonable cost. If you have adolescent children, I suggest living in Fredericton where they could attend the University of New Brunswick. It is a well recognized school for practical professional or academic training. If living in Moncton, your children will have the option of the University de Moncton. It is a unilingual French university. Alternatively, Sackville is about a 40 minute drive from Moncton and has Mount Allison University, which is an outstanding liberal arts school. Saint John has an extension of the UNB campus, and some degree programs can be completed there. Grade school is free in NB. New Brunswick Community College offers trades and technology studies at a cost of around us$2,700 per year. University education at UNB costs around us$6,300 per year. Neither of those numbers include living expenses, but that is very accessible tuition in North American terms. Students must be resident in New Brunswick for a year before qualifying for those tuition rates. Graduating from these colleges and schools will qualify you for career anywhere in the world and as a result there is a significant presence of foreign students in college and university in New Brunswick. It also accounts for a “brain drain” of Canadian graduates, who seek career opportunities elsewhere in Canada and the world.Work and career opportunities? It depends on your qualifications. There may be not so much opportunity in the north, but in Fredericton, Moncton, Saint John most professions and trades can find work. New graduates go west for easier opportunities and recruiters seek out graduates from the Maritimes. New Brunswick can be difficult career wise, but not impossible.One good thing about living in New Brunswick is that the cost of housing is significantly lower than in the rest of Canada. Food and other consumer goods are slightly more expensive. Air travel is more expensive.The physical environment? New Brunswick can be breath takingly beautiful in the summer and autumn. We have a lot of green trees and scenery. Air and water are clean compared to Europe and Asia. Weather in spring is mostly about relief from the bitterness of winter. In the winter the weather will be cold. Snow and ice, frostbite, life threateningly cold. If you are from a tropical or subtropical region, you may be justly intimidated by the winter. During that season you may be isolated and homebound, unless you learn to dress for the cold and learn to drive when roads may have snow cover or ice. There are fun outdoor activities in the winter - skiing, skating, walking in the woods or parks. You may need some acclimation and a local friend to take advantage of these activities. See Wikipedia for a detailed description of the climate.One thing people forget about climate is length of daylight during the winter and summer. It is not uncommon to leave for work in the dark, miss the day, arrive home from work in the dark during December. Likewise, it is not unusual to have daylight or twilight until nearly 10:00pm in June. New Brunswick is south of London, England, but does not have the benefit of being on the west coast of a continent.Socially, in most of the province, you will not be able to “hide in the crowd”, and will be recognizable as a new immigrant or foreigner - by dress, or speech, or color, or manner. The positive side of that is, you will have a personal relationship with neighbours and working colleagues. They will know you. It depends on your personality and attitudes, but you will find that most people are welcoming and friendly. In New Brunswick, you are somewhat isolated if you need to travel by air. There are airports, but connections are expensive and difficult. Probably Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton have daily flights to Montreal and Toronto. In the winter, you might find weekly charter flights to Florida or the Caribbean.If you are Christian there are lots of churches in New Brunswick. If you are Muslim, you may find a mosque in the cities. You will certainly find some people in every city who share your faith. Overall the society is mainly secular. The population is predominantly Christian of both protestant and Roman Catholic denominations, with smaller Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities. By way of caution - if the women in your family wear a headscarf, people know what it means and will treat them with courtesy and respect. If they wear burqa or niqab they probably will have difficulties. Not from disrespect, but from unfamiliarity. New Brunswick is a very strange combination of liberal values, and conservative behaviour.That Canadian lifestyle? That lifestyle is not automatic. It is enabled by your job, or business, or profession, or your wealth. I suggest that if you don’t need the services of a large city and you can find work in New Brunswick, it is a good destination. You will earn less than in larger centers in Canada, and career advancement will not be as easy. Your income tax will be at a slightly higher rate, and your consumption taxes will be 15%. That is about the standard of living. It is lower in NB than in Ontario or Quebec, Alberta or British Columbia. In the larger cities, you may earn more but your housing costs are double or triple. You may drive for an hour or more to get to your job, and access to recreational facilities is much more difficult. You may not know your neighbours. People in New Brunswick would think that is a poor quality of life. In New Brunswick, quality of life is very good. Standard of living is not as high.Wherever you live in New Brunswick, you will need a car to get too and from work, school, other activities. Many families need more than one car if people work in different places. You may want to find a job before you find a home. Commute time is a big factor in quality of life, and finding work is probably more difficult than finding a house or apartment.In NB there many houses for sale around us$100,000 and under. Slightly higher in Fredericton. For the most part, the price of houses is more related to cost of building than the location - with obvious some increase near universities or industries.So, those are some easy pros and cons. New Brunswick is not for big city people, they find it small and provincial. New Brunswickers prefer a more relaxed pace and enjoy easy access to goods and services, easy enjoyment of the environment and home._______________**Update - It was brought to my attention that Fredericton has a mosque, and I have verified that Saint John and Moncton also have Muslim associations and mosques. In other areas of NB support may be somewhat limited.

I rented a minivan for a 16 day road trip. It came with unlimited mileage. We left Charlotte, NC and traveled North to Montreal, Quebec. From Montreal we headed East to Quebec City. Then we traveled to Prince Edward Island where we stayed a week exploring the island and racking up even more miles.From PEI we headed over to Nova Scotia sight seeing. Drove the entire length of the Cabot trail enjoying the scenery. Made the drive from Sydney to Halifax before heading back south. The drive through New Brunswick is exceptionally scenic as well but long.We crossed the border back into the US in Maine. Spent a few days touring Acadia National Park before heading back to NC.I returned the van having put 9456 miles on the odometer. The guy commented that I drove it through two oil changes while I had it. The total rental time was 16 days. I think I paid 950 dollars total through Enterprise.Nothing was ever said about the mileage I had racked up other than the comment about the oil change. I don’t think the employees have a vested interest in the mileage a customer racks up.I expected him to at least ask me where I had been to put that many miles on a vehicle. He never did.My dog in the driver’s seat of the high mileage van on PEI.

Question: Why do French Canadians have flags from France on their lawns and vehicles if they were born in Canada but the English Canadians just use the Canadian flag?I have to call into question the very premise of this question. Which French Canadians are flying the French flag?I have to admit, I have not traveled extensively through Quebec, with most of my travels being between Ottawa and Montreal, but I cannot think of any case where I have seen a French flag flying. I am from New Brunswick, where 30% or so the population is French speaking, and I never see the French flag flying on someone’s lawn.You do see the flag of Acadia, but that is not the French flag.