Charlotte County, New Brunswick

Charlotte County (2021 population 26,015) is the most southwestern county of New Brunswick, Canada.

It was formed in 1784 when New Brunswick was partitioned from Nova Scotia and named for Queen Charlotte. Once a layer of local government, the county government was abolished with the New Brunswick Equal Opportunity program in 1966. Counties continue to be used as census subdivisions by Statistics Canada.

Located in the southwestern corner of the province, bordering the U.S. state of Maine, Charlotte County is at the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains, which gives it a rugged terrain that includes Mount Pleasant. The St. Croix, Magaguadavic, and Digdegaush rivers drain into the Bay of Fundy. The county includes the large, populated islands of Grand Manan, White Head, Deer Island, and Campobello.

Eighteen per cent of the workforce is employed in aquaculture. Connors Bros., the largest sardine canning facility in North America, is located in Blacks Harbour. Cooke Aquaculture is an Atlantic salmon farming company, founded and headquartered in St. George. A paper mill, operated by J.D. Irving, Limited, is in Utopia, and Flakeboard Co. Ltd. operates outside St. Stephen. Ganong Bros., Canada's oldest chocolate company, maintains its factory in St. Stephen.

Governance is provided by New Brunswick municipalities for the towns of Saint Andrews, and St. Stephen, the village of Grand Manan, and the rural communities of Eastern Charlotte and Campobello Island. The remaining parts of the county are administered as part of Southwest Rural District, except Clarendon, which is part of Capital Region Rural District.

History Once the international border was delineated in Charlotte County and its islands, the area quickly became one of the foremost smuggling locales in the North Atlantic, compared to St. Marys, Georgia and the German Heligoland archipelago. Petty Justice: Low Law and the Sessions System in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, 1785–1867 by Paul Craven In 1998, RCMP busted a smuggling operation by Seamus Skinner valued at forty million dollars.

During the War of 1812, the United States and British North America agreed to a ceasefire on the border between St. Stephen and Calais, as "a collision between those whose dwellings are within gunshot of each other would have produced the most unhappy consequences...and the authorities effectually restrained the violence that sometimes springs from rash and intemperate men."

Journalist John Edward Belliveau wrote that the county's residents "are distinctly oriented toward the American yankees who have always been their neighbours…detached from the rest of the province, they are independent and because they do not come in contact with the French-speaking areas they have not been concerned with French/English issues.".Belliveau, John Edward. “Litttle Louis and the Giant K.C. 1980

Demographics

As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Charlotte County had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Population by census subdivision Official name Designation Area: km2 (sq mi) 2016 population St. Stephen Town4,415 Grand Manan Village2,360 Saint Andrews Town1,786 St. George Town1,517Saint GeorgeParish2,141PennfieldParish2,170Saint StephenParish1,839Saint DavidParish1,529Saint JamesParish1,186Fundy BayLSD60.241,167Dennis-WestonLSD43.941,023 Blacks Harbour Village894 Campobello Island Rural community872West IslesParish797LepreauParish707Saint PatrickParish689Saint CroixParish657DufferinParish573Saint AndrewsParish553Western Charlotte part BLSD28.97534Western Charlotte part ALSD162.3435DumbartonParish335Beaver HarbourLSD2.25277Grand MananParish145ClarendonParish63

Language Canada Census Mother Tongue - Charlotte County, New Brunswick Census Total Year Responses Count Trend Pop % Count Trend Pop % Count Trend Pop % Count Trend Pop % 23,850 4.9% 94.96% 580 5.2% 2.31% 50 10.0% 0.21% 570 12.9% 2.27% 25,015 2.4% 95.53% 610 7.0% 2.33% 55 120.0% 0.21% 505 26.3% 1.93% 25,625 1.8% 96.26% 570 15.6% 2.14% 25 28.6% 0.10% 400 90.5% 1.50% 26,100 0.2% 96.59% 675 23.9% 2.50% 35 22.2% 0.13% 210 16.0% 0.78% 26,150 n/a 96.89% 545 n/a 2.02% 45 n/a 0.17% 250 n/a 0.93%

Infrastructure Power generation Hydroelectric dams operate in St. George and St. Stephen at Milltown, though the latter is currently being decommissioned.

Major highways

Charlotte County, New Brunswick

Bron en licentie