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Articles

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2015)

“Our Isolation Is Almost Unbearable”: A Case Study in New Brunswick Out-Migration, 1901–1914

  • Curtis Mainville
Submitted
October 30, 2015
Published
2015-06-26

Abstract

In the decade leading up to the First World War, New Brunswick was in the grip of a massive out-migration of its population. Queens County, a predominantly rural community of 11,120 people located midway between Fredericton and Saint John, was neither immune from nor ignorant of its effects. A cross-sectional analysis reveals that between 1901 and 1911, the county lost upwards of a quarter of its inhabitants. Economic motives, particularly the decline of the region’s shipbuilding industry and increasing specialization in agriculture, may have played a role in the migration of previous generations of residents; but, by the turn of the twentieth century, economic conditions were steadily improving. So why was out-migration so persistent? Anecdotal evidence suggests that rural communities such as Queens County felt isolated from the rest of the province—that modernity was seemingly passing them by.