Demographics of New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and the only officially bilingual province (French and English) in the country. The provincial Department of Finance estimates that the province's population in 2006 was 729,997 of which the majority is English-speaking but with a substantial French-speaking minority of mostly Acadian origin.

First Nations in New Brunswick include the Mi'kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet). The first European settlers, the Acadians are descendants of French settlers and also some of the Indigenous peoples of Acadia, a French colony in what is today Nova Scotia. The Acadians were expelled by the British (1755) for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to King George II which drove several thousand Acadian residents into exile in North America, the UK and France during the French and Indian War. (Those American Acadians who wound up in Louisiana, and other parts of the American South, are often referred to as Cajuns, although some Cajuns are not of Acadian origin.) In time, some Acadians returned to the Maritime provinces of Canada, mainly to New Brunswick, due to the British prohibiting them from resettling their lands and villages in what became Nova Scotia.

Many of the English-Canadian population of New Brunswick are descended from Loyalists who fled the American Revolution. This is commemorated in the province's motto, Spem reduxit ("hope was restored"). There is also a significant population with Irish ancestry, especially in Saint John and the Miramichi Valley. People of Scottish descent are scattered throughout the province, with higher concentrations in the Miramichi and in Campbellton. A small population of Danish origin may be found in New Denmark in the northwest of the province.