Featuring: The New Brunswick Irish Portal

The epic tale of the Irish arrival and settlement in the Province of New Brunswick has, until very recently, been an unknown and an untold story—their history, in all its complexity, pain and triumph, has been largely a hidden one. Just as the Irish writer and nationalist, Daniel Corkery, once spoke and wrote of a hidden Ireland, so Canadians can read and talk of a hidden New Brunswick. And what was largely hidden for almost a century belonged in custom, memory, religion, ceremony, and ethnicity, to Ireland. There are many reasons for the existence of this forgotten record of one of the provinces founding peoples and we shall explore some of these as this journey into the Irish past of New Brunswick unfolds through this portal.

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Historic First Nations Artifacts Return to N.B.

By Shannon MacLeod

Times & Transcript 30 Mar 2012

Two Aboriginal pieces have made it home to New Brunswick after about 200 years.

The two fans were created in Fredericton and the handles are European. The fans themselves are very unique, with a birch bark frame with moose hair tufting and in the centre are painted pictures.

One is of Kingsclear First Nation and the other is of Tobique First Nation, said Jane Fullerton, CEO of the New Brunswick Museum

“They show landscapes and individuals and housing from the period,” she said. “They are incredibly early representations of the First Nations people and landscape. They are created in a way that combines the First Nations artwork and culture with the English culture that was in Fredericton at that time as well.”

The fans would have been used by women to cover their faces to shield the heat from a bonfire, Fullerton said.