Black Canadians in New Brunswick

Black Canadians in New Brunswick (known as Black New Brunswickers) refers to Black Canadians from the province of New Brunswick, notably of those whose ancestors, much like those of Black Nova Scotians, originated from the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen and arrived in New Brunswick during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Canadian census, 12,155 Black people live in New Brunswick, making them the largest visible minority group in the province. The first recorded Black person in present-day New Brunswick was a Black man from New England who was forcibly taken during a French raid in the late 17th century.

History

The first recorded Black person in present-day New Brunswick, documented by historian William O. Raymond in his 1905 publishing of Glimpses of the past: history of the River St. John, AD 1604–1784, was in the late 17th century when a Black man from Marblehead (in present-day Massachusetts) was forcibly taken up the Saint John River after a raid upon the New England Colonies. In 1696, the man was taken back by Benjamin Church during the Siege of Fort Nashwaak and brought to Boston. Raymond described the man as having been "probably the first of his race to set foot within the borders of New Brunswick."

In the mid-1780s, around 3,300 black loyalists arrived in Saint John following the American Revolutionary War under the promise of land grants from the British for serving in the army. Black individuals who settled in Saint John were unwelcomed and intentionally granted non-arable land, resulting in some having to survive by working as indentured servants. As a result, 1,196 Black settlers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia left for Sierra Leone, following planning from Thomas Peters. An additional wave of 371 African-American refugees arrived in 1815, following the War of 1812.