Black Canadians in New Brunswick

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, documented by historian William O. Raymond in his 1905 publishing of Glimpses of the past: history of the River St. John, AD 1604–1784,[6][7] 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.

"[9] 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.

[10] 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.

[19] In 1935, Eldridge "Gus" Eatman, a black sprinter and World War I soldier from Saint John tried to raise an Ethiopian Foreign Legion to fight for Ethiopia, which was threatened with an invasion by Italy.

[22] The term Africadia was coined by George Elliott Clarke in the 1990s to refer to the combined group identity of African Canadian communities from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

[24] One of the founding members was Frederick Hodges, who held the distinction of being the New Brunswick Federation of Labor's first black officer and the Saint John City Council's first visible minority.

Commerce and industry was also difficult in Willow Grove due to the remoteness of the area from major cities at a time where most lacked access to vehicles or public transit.