Interactive timeline · 10,200 BCE to 2026
From a 12,000-year-old campfire to the Loyalist capital on the Wolastoq: 27 moments.
27 moments6 eras37 sourcesAbout ↓
10,200 BCE – 1690
People camped by a glacial lake here about 12,000 years ago; the Wolastoqiyik fished, farmed and hunted along the river.
Archaeologists working beside Route 8 in Fredericton uncovered an intact hearth and about 600 artifacts at a campsite that provincial archaeologist Brent Suttie dated to between 11,600 and 12,200 years ago, on the former shore of a glacial lake. Maliseet (Wolastoqey) technicians on the dig described it as the work of their ancestors.
Before Europeans arrived, the Wolastoqiyik were the main inhabitants of the Fredericton area. In summer they lived in riverside villages, fishing for bass, sturgeon and salmon and growing corn; in winter they travelled through New Brunswick, Maine and the Gaspé to hunt moose and bear. Until the 18th century their largest village was Meductic, about 75 km west of Fredericton.
1691 – 1782
A brief Acadian capital and settlement, ended by British raids in 1758.
Governor Joseph Robinau de Villebon chose the mouth of the Nashwaak River in 1691 as the capital of Acadia, because it offered deep anchorage and was easier to defend from the English and New Englanders than a site near the Bay of Fundy. Too isolated to thrive in peacetime, Fort Nashwaak was abandoned by 1698.
After the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht gave Britain control of Nova Scotia, many Acadians moved to the St. Anne's Point area on the Saint John River, beyond British authority.
Sometime in the early to mid-1700s the Wolastoqiyik left Meductic and set up a new village at Ekwpahak, at present-day Island View, about 14 km west of Fredericton. The Crown signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the Wolastoqiyik between 1725 and 1779 that protected their hunting, fishing and trading rights and did not surrender land.
In the fall of 1758, as part of the deportation campaign, Colonel Robert Monckton led British forces up the Saint John River, destroying the Acadian settlements in their path, including St. Anne's.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedA Royal Proclamation of December 10, 2003, acknowledged the Crown's decision to deport the Acadians and the suffering and deaths that resulted, and designated July 28 a Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval, without recognizing legal or financial responsibility.
1783 – 1866
Loyalists built a planned capital with a college, a cathedral and a garrison, as Wolastoqiyik lands were sold off.
As the American Revolution ended in 1783, Loyalists settled at St. Anne's Point and renamed it Fredericstown, after Prince Frederick, second son of King George III. It became the capital of the new province of New Brunswick and the shire town of York County in 1785. The town plan set aside land for government, the military, a university and an Anglican church.
The institution that became the University of New Brunswick was founded in 1785 as the Provincial Academy of Arts and Sciences, modelled on the Anglican King's College in New York. UNB is considered Canada's oldest English-speaking university.
In 1794 Loyalist judge Isaac Allen bought Ekwpahak from the Wolastoqiyik for £2,000. The Wolastoqiyik received only £750 in money; £500 went to a priest to move them elsewhere and the rest was paid in goods. They moved to Kingsclear, southwest of Fredericton, as settlement, farming and lumbering drove away game and epidemics struck the community.
The academy received a royal charter as King's College in 1828, and Sir Howard Douglas Hall was built that year. The stone building, now known as the Old Arts Building, is a national historic site.
Christ Church Cathedral was built from 1845 to 1853 to neo-Gothic plans by Frank Wills and William Butterfield, working with John Medley, the first Anglican bishop of Fredericton. Its construction helped Fredericton become a city in 1848. It was the first Canadian building to follow closely the ideals of the Ecclesiological Society.
Under pressure from Methodists and other nonconformists across the province, the Anglican King's College was reorganized in 1859 as the non-denominational University of New Brunswick.
In 1862 Alexander "Boss" Gibson opened a lumber mill on the Nashwaak and went on to build one of the largest cotton mills in Canada, with brick row houses, a company store, a church and a railway for his workers. Pressured by a central Canadian cotton consortium, Gibson sold out in 1908.
1867 – 1952
Marysville's cotton mill and government kept a slow-growing city going.
With the Wolastoqiyik pushed from much of their land, two more reserves were set up near Fredericton: St. Mary's in 1867 and Oromocto (Welamukotuk) in 1895, in addition to Kingsclear (now Bilijk First Nation).
The British garrison left in 1869, shortly after Confederation. By then Irish immigrants, Presbyterians and Catholics had changed the city's demographic and religious make-up. The Soldiers' Barracks and Officers' Quarters survive downtown.
Fredericton had 7,117 people in 1901 and only 10,062 in 1941. UNB expanded after the First World War, adding Memorial Hall, a library and a forestry and geology building by 1931.
Wolastoqiyik and Mi'kmaw children from New Brunswick were among those sent to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, the only residential school in the Maritimes, which operated from 1930 to 1967 under federal funding and Roman Catholic management.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedParks Canada records hard labour, harsh punishment, malnutrition, nutritional experimentation, suppression of languages and physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the school. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for residential schools in 2008; the school became a national historic site on September 1, 2020.
1953 – 1999
A military base, a gallery, amalgamation and revelations of abuse at a provincial reform school.
To meet NATO commitments, the federal government built a training base large enough for an entire division between Fredericton and Saint John in the early 1950s. About 900 families were expropriated and moved from their communities between Oromocto and Browns Flat, many around Labour Day weekend in 1953. CFB Gagetown now covers 111,000 hectares.
Funded by Lord Beaverbrook, the gallery opened in 1959 across from the Legislative Assembly. Its collection includes Salvador Dalí's large painting Santiago El Grande and works by Cornelius Krieghoff and James Wilson Morrice.
Fredericton doubled in size through amalgamation in 1973. The same year, the Marysville cotton mill, which had limped on after Gibson's sale, closed; the building, now Marysville Place, is the centrepiece of a national historic district.
Elder Veronica Atwin of Kingsclear (now Bilijk First Nation), a master black ash basket weaver and author of a Wolastoqey–English dictionary, won first prize at the 1973 Atlantic National Exhibition and led her community's craft co-operative. Her work was shown in Montreal during the 1976 Olympics. She died in Fredericton in 1989.
In the 1990s it was revealed that hundreds of boys held at the provincial reform school at Kingsclear, near Fredericton, had been sexually abused over decades by people in authority, in particular guard Karl Toft. The institution became the subject of intense media coverage and a public inquiry.
⚖️ Established fact
Established factKarl Toft was convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison for sexually assaulting boys in his care. A public inquiry and a multimillion-dollar review of how the New Brunswick RCMP had investigated the abuse followed.
Arriving from Toronto before Christmas, Air Canada Flight 646 skidded off the runway at Fredericton airport, ploughed through snow and trees and stopped in a wooded area. None of the passengers or crew was killed.
2000 – today
New archaeology, tragedy and Wolastoqey title claims.
Facing a premature end for the Mactaquac Generating Station upriver from Fredericton around 2030 because of problems with its concrete, NB Power announced a plan to maintain the dam and replace its six turbines so it could operate to 2068, at an estimated cost of $2.9 billion to $3.6 billion.
By the 2016 census Fredericton had 58,220 residents, and visible minorities, mostly of Chinese, Black, South Asian and Arab origin, made up 10.2 per cent of the population. Government, UNB and St. Thomas University remain central to the city.
On a Friday morning in August 2018, a gunman killed four people on Brookside Drive in Fredericton, among them two Fredericton Police Force officers and a local musician.
Six Wolastoqey communities, including those near Fredericton, filed a title claim in October 2020 to lands along the Saint John River covering about half of New Brunswick, arguing their ancestors never surrendered them under the Peace and Friendship Treaties. In June 2021 they formally asked for the river to be renamed Wolastoq.
About this timeline
Fredericton sits at the head of tide on the Wolastoq (Saint John River), in Wolastoqey territory where archaeologists have found a campsite about 12,000 years old. The French briefly made nearby Fort Nashwaak the capital of Acadia in the 1690s, and British forces destroyed the Acadian settlement at St. Anne's Point in 1758. Loyalists renamed it Fredericstown in 1783, and it became the capital of New Brunswick, home of one of Canada's oldest universities, and a city in 1848.
3 moments on this page carry a government record note.
FAQ
Loyalists settled St. Anne's Point in 1783 and renamed it Fredericstown; it became New Brunswick's capital in 1785 and a city in 1848. The French had built Fort Nashwaak across the river in 1691.
It was named Fredericstown after Prince Frederick, second son of King George III.
The Acadian settlement was known as St. Anne's Point (Pointe-Sainte-Anne).
A campsite found beside Route 8 was dated to between 11,600 and 12,200 years ago.
Written from the sources linked on each moment: the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Parks Canada, Library and Archives Canada, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, provincial and city archives, and others. Where governments acted wrongly, we say so and note whether it has been officially acknowledged, is established by the record, or is disputed. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it.
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