New Brunswick - The Drafting Table

NB Budget 2022: Staying Healthy

New Brunswick would appear to be in a very reasonable neighbourhood when it comes to several healthcare metrics (per capita): spending, acute care beds, hospitals, and physicians. So why does the system feel so strained?

Canada

Confederation's Widening Gyre

This is a short post to check in on an issue I wrote about a year and a half ago. In my review of the New Brunswick provincial budget in 2020, I discussed Equalization payments and linked to a manifesto against them that some Albertans had made: ... "These changes

New Brunswick

NB Budget 2021: Damage Report

When I wrote last year's version of this post, the Coronavirus pandemic was just becoming apparent in North America. Since then, most of us have obviously had our expectations for 2020 disrupted, and public finances were no exception. In this post, I want to compare what was planned for the

New Brunswick

NB Budget 2020: Is Demographics Destiny?

At the time of writing, this budget may or may not pass, due to it being a minority government. Budget approvals are always considered confidence votes, so if it is not approved, expect an election. In any case, I decided to write my annual summary anyway. As per usual, I'll

New Brunswick

Sam Orr's Pond

This past weekend, I went on my first camping trip of 2019. I started off the weekend in the town of St. Andrew's, walking around and looking in a few shops. Just outside the town is the Caughey-Taylor nature preserve. I've previously mentioned wanting to go for a hike there,

New Brunswick

NB Budget 2019 - We've got the power?

I've written an analysis of the New Brunswick provincial budget for the past four years now. As always, my goal is to focus on the facts more than on political commentary. Following the regular look at the budget, this year's post features a deeper dive into the crown corporation of

New Brunswick

Frostival

Frostival is an annual winter festival in Fredericton. I've gone to some events in it the past several years, but I don't think I've written about it before. One of the events that I was looking forward to (and even got a ticket for) but ended up missing due to

Outdoor Adventures

A Day Off of Deer Island

The weekend that just passed was the New Brunswick Day long weekend here. As in previous years I wanted to get out and enjoy some of the natural beauty in the province. Deer Island is one of the inhabited islands in the Bay of Fundy. I went there for a

Art

A New Twist On Familiar Vistas

Last weekend I visited the Beaverbrook Art Gallery to check out a couple of exhibits. It had just re-opened after being closed due to flooding. First of all, here is what the art gallery looked like at the end of April 2018. The flood waters were up to the building,

New Brunswick

NB Budget 2018 - Getting Educated

As in previous years, I've written the post below to provide a summary of New Brunswick's latest provincial budget, which was released today. I've also chosen to take a closer look at the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development this time. Where Things Stand To start with, here are

Outdoor Adventures

National and Local Parks, 2017

We're approaching the end of another year so it is time to start looking back at 2017. One of my goals for this year (since it is Canada's sesquicentennial anniversary) was to visit a few National Parks. I also had the privilege of spending time in a bunch of great

New Brunswick

Fresh Canvas

This weekend I went to a couple of art exhibits and I decided to share a bit about them below. On Saturday, I went to Saint John for the day. I got lunch at the City Market, wandered around Uptown for a while, visited the New Brunswick Museum, and went

Outdoor Adventures

Mushrooms and Messier Objects

This weekend I went camping in Kouchibouguac National Park with a friend from the West Coast. This was my 2nd time tenting this summer (well, it was technically the beginning of fall). It was a really fantastic weekend—the warm, clear weather certainly didn't hurt! As a bonus, admission to

New Brunswick

Top Ten Things to do in Fredericton

This weekend I had a good time taking in some of the Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival so it seemed like a good time to celebrate my hometown with this Top Ten list. Take a day trip: Putting this first is not to diminish anything there is to do in

Outdoor Adventures

Chignecto

My apologies for not having any posts for a couple of weeks. Summer is winding down here and I've been trying to make the most of it. This weekend and last weekend, I was at a couple of different spots along the Bay of Fundy coast. Below, I share some

New Brunswick

Cost of Housing in New Brunswick

In recent times, it has been hard to escape noticing the very expensive cost of housing in Toronto and Vancouver (though it seems to be stabilizing for now). I decided to do a little investigation on the cost of housing in New Brunswick for comparison. Method I searched on Kijiji

New Brunswick

Looking for Whales in Charlotte County

I was on vacation for a few days last week and went on a couple of fun day trips with my girlfriend. The (free!) Irving Nature Park in Saint John offers some interesting short hikes through diverse ecosystems. I've mentioned it before, but haven't been hiking there in many years.

History

Wabanaki

On Saturday, I visited a new exhibit that had opened up at a local museum. I also had to travel to Truro, NS for my job and visited a museum there on Sunday. Note that I have a busy couple of weeks coming up, so I'm not planning to write

Outdoor Adventures

Mactaquac to Morell

On the weekend, I took a kayaking trip down a 20-km stretch of the Saint John River, from near the Mactaquac Fish Hatchery to Morell Park in Fredericton. I stopped at a few islands along the way. This post is mainly photos of the trip. My first stop was on

Personal

Henry Ketchum

A week ago, I was privileged to attend a formal dinner; it seemed like a fitting topic to write a post about. When I graduated from UNB, in 2008, I won the Ketchum medal (awarded to the top graduating student in Civil Engineering). Every five years, there is a reunion

Art

Watermark Sculpture

This post is about flooding, along with some thoughts on public art installations. I made a timelapse .gif of a sculpture along the Saint John River in Fredericton that was designed to show the water level. Watermark by Gerald Beaulieu is a public art installation in downtown Fredericton. It consists

New Brunswick

Flooded Forests

This weekend, I got my kayak out from winter storage and paddled around the mouth of the Nashwaak River. Around a month and a half ago, I was snowshoeing, but now the weather has warmed up enough to get out on the water. Because of the high water level, I

New Brunswick

NB Budget 2017 - Looking Local

As I did the past two years, I went through the New Brunswick provincial budget document that was released today and have some context and analysis to share. In order to keep this tradition useful, I decided to focus a bit closer on one department (Environment and Local Government) this

New Brunswick

A Day in the Bay

For this week's post I made a .gif showing how the water level in the Bay of Fundy changes with the tides over the course of a day. The data came from the Fisheries and Oceans Canada tide predictions; zones 30, 31, and 32 cover the Bay of Fundy. Here

New Brunswick

The Last Long Weekend of Summer 2016

Long weekends are a good time to get out and explore. This past weekend, I managed to get out biking, hiking, and kayaking (a different activity each day!) in places I hadn't been before. I went biking on Saturday along a section of trail from Keswick Landing to Burtt's Corner,