Living on the Edge

Posted by Lisa Hrabluk on May 2, 2012 in Blog, Urban Culture | 7 comments

On April 30th, I was the opening speaker at Tech SouthEast‘s Innovative NB conference at the Hotel Beausejour in Moncton. I was asked to share some of the stories I wrote about in Saint John’s Smart 7 application, the third New Brunswick city to earn the designation. Fredericton and Moncton were named to the Top 7 in 2009. Below is the story I told.

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There’s an old tourism slogan that states “Saint John: Where it All Begins”. It’s a perfect description of Saint John’s place in New Brunswick’s modern history.  As everyone knows Saint John is Canada’s first incorporated city. I like to call it Canada’s Original City because that is what it is – the first community to be granted local government, in 1785. It remained the only locally-governed city in British North America for 50 years.

Its early civic leaders, made up of American exiles, brought with them ideas of local self-rule and industrious trade that had been the signatures of life in Colonial America. This ex-pat community quickly set about re-establishing trade and social ties with people in Boston and New York, a cross-border tie that gave Saint John merchants a broader world-view. This was further expanded with the arrival of European immigrants through the 1800s, an influx that created an equal mix of business opportunities and social problems. The city developed innovative new programs and services in response, creating a surprising number of Canadian firsts, including: