10du Colisée Street |
New Brunswick Tourism Region : Acadian Coast
Description From Owner:
- The place was settled about 1760 by shipwrecked French sailors.
- The precise origin of the name is not known, but may be the French version of a Micmac place name Ka-le-gue, meaning 'the junction of two rivers.'
- Bishop Joseph-Octave-Plessis (1763-1825) described the community in 1811: 'the settlement of Caraquet does not date further back than the conquest of Canada.
- The first colonists were Acadians . . the advantage of the fishery makes up for the scarcity of meat, as the scarcity of bread is made up for by potatoes which grow in abundance.
- The codfish, salmon, herring, macquerel, perch, eel, trout, flatfish, sturgeon, lobster, are abundant in the entire bay.' In 1952 the name of Upper and Lower Caraquet were changed to Haut-Caraquet and Bas-Caraquet.
- New Brunswick's worst rail wreck happened on Dec. 17, 1887 at McIntosh Cove on the Caraquet Railway Company line between Caraquet and Bathurst.
- Eight men were killed and five seriously injured when a trestle damaged by a winter storm and exceptionally high tides dumped the snow plow, engine and tender into the Caraquet R.
- A passenger car had fortunately been detached from the engine and tender before it and the plow charged across the bridge to breach a huge snowdrift on the other side of the river.
- Caraquet hosts a number of folk festivals June through September and is home of the Village Historique Acadien, a museum village at 14311 Route 11 that showcases the lives of Acadians between 1770 and 1939.
- More than 40 complexes are staffed by bilingual interpreters in period costumes who bring ancestral customs and traditional trades back to life.
- Musée Acadien de Caraquet at 15 St-Pierre Blvd. W. shows the cultural history of the Acadian Peninsula from the arrival of the first settlers to the present day.
- The Sainte-Anne-du-Bocage Shrine at 579 St-Pierre Blvd. W. is a monument dedicated to the first Acadians to return to the area following their expulsion.
- With permission from 'New Brunswick Place Names' David E. Scott 2009
Address of this page: http://nb.ruralroutes.com/Caraquet