Podcasts about New Brunswick, Canada

Peter Fisher, in a book published in 1825, works through the cold of 1816 in one clip here: snow on June 7, six thousand pounds in aid, and farms relying on Indian corn. His remedy is "a correct register of the weather", so that farmers would know when to sow oats, barley and peas instead. The past takes up much of the listening here. The present comes through talk from Sackville, from Moncton and from the Atlantic labour movement.

What New Brunswick is

New Brunswick is one of Canada's Maritime provinces. It borders Quebec, Maine and Nova Scotia, and the Confederation Bridge joins it to Prince Edward Island. The Saint John River runs through it, and its southern coast is on the Bay of Fundy. It is Canada's only officially bilingual province. Its main cities are Moncton, Saint John and the capital, Fredericton.

Two ways into the past

History of New Brunswick by Peter Fisher (1782 - 1848) is Fisher's Sketches of New Brunswick, read in numbered sections such as "04 - Climate and Produce". Its clips stick to the ground he surveyed. At Grand Falls the River St. John drops 45 feet through rocks before a 100-rod portage. In 1824 St. John shipped 114,116 tons of squared timber while its shipbuilding and harbour expanded.

The New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast goes further back. Archaeologists Gabe Hrynick of the University of New Brunswick and Ken Holyoke of the University of Lethbridge cover 13,000 years of the province's past. In "Flipping the Archaic", Dave and Josh are asked what is still unknown about the coast in that period and what scallop drags have brought up. In the same episode Gabe invents a private-security pitch involving $15,000, passports, Marlboro cigarettes and a Desert Eagle. Another clip leaves the province entirely: mapping Menominee plant collections produced foraging areas nine times larger than the ones archaeologists typically use.

Sackville, Moncton and the union hall

YMC: The Midgic Air Traffic Control Association turns a CHMA radio slot into an airport break room. Its hosts go by Air Traffic Controller Thomas and Air Traffic Controller Luke, and they move from Sackville weather and station business to baseball. In its clips, slide guitars become "sad machines" that make almost any song sadder. Elsewhere the hosts describe Giannis Antetokounmpo walking through three Canadian defenders, and a host who is afraid of heights and bridges crosses the Confederation Bridge.

Pickle Planet Moncton Podcast is filed under Kids & Family. Its episode titles stay in Greater Moncton, from KidsFest and the Frye Festival to March Break. Its clips go beyond family topics. Eric turns disappointing red wine and Coca-Cola into a Basque cocktail called Calimocho. MixTape Social Club offers adults a dance party that still gets them home by 10:00. Isaac Edison had never made a logo when he was given two days to design one, and he went on to make logos for two real events.

C.U.P.E Talk In The Atlantic, from Nicholas London and Chris Watson, covers all of the Atlantic provinces. It sounds like a union bulletin that never quite stops being a conversation: one host raises a problem and the other sharpens it. Chris explains why members should act fast when convention calls go out: book the hotel, get the time off, register. Emily Cormier calls CUPE New Brunswick's young workers conference overdue and says it grew out of a national resolution. Maria Lansing explains why health and safety inspectors are on workers' side and are not there to write tickets.

Where to start

• For the province in the 1820s: History of New Brunswick by Peter Fisher (1782 - 1848), "05 - Principal Rivers and Towns - part 1".
• For archaeology that goes well beyond the province: The New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast, "Flipping the Archaic".
• For local talk today: YMC: The Midgic Air Traffic Control Association for Sackville, or Pickle Planet Moncton Podcast for Greater Moncton.
• For union organizing across the region: C.U.P.E Talk In The Atlantic.

The New Brunswick feed on this page plays clips from these shows.