I am a regular visitor to Canada. I love the vast expanse of it. The people, the calm, the lakes and forests, the cities with the quickly expanding and inspiring culinary scene. Excellent cocktails, terrific Canadian wines, a booming craft booze scene and lovely restaurants and bars to sample them. Canada is an excellent place for a road trip, especially a culinary one.
A Culinary Road Trip of New Brunswick Starting in Saint John
New Brunswick was the scene of my most recent Culinary Road Trip, packed with snow crab and lobster, lush produce from the farmlands and foraged seaweeds and sea greens from the seashore. It is one of four of Canada’s Atlantic provinces on the east coast. 83% of New Brunswick is under forest, and the cities are small by international standards. It is a perfect relaxed spot for a break and to unwind. I flew into Saint John via Halifax, Nova Scotia. A short flight in a small plane with excellent views of the landscape below brought me to Canada’s oldest incorporated city. I started my culinary road trip here.
New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada with English and French being commonly spoken. The indigenous population has been established there since 7000BC (at the time of European contact these included the Mi’kmaq, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy). Populations arrived from Europe from the 1600s included French, British and Irish. The city of Miramichi claims to be the Irish capital of Canada and was one of the points of arrival for many of Ireland’s coffin ships during the famine. It is home to a large Irish Festival now every year. New Brunswick was almost called New Ireland at one point until it was vetoed by King George III. Which, of course it was.