Chipman is a community in Queens County,

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

, Canada. It held village status prior to 2023 and is now part of the village of Grand Lake. The community of Chipman is located on the banks of the Salmon River at the head of the Grand Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the Maritime provinces. The village itself is located around 73.4 kilometres from the capital city of

Fredericton Fredericton (; ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of New Brunswick. The city is situated in the west-central portion of the province along the Saint John River (Bay of Fundy), Saint John River, ...

History

Chipman is named after Ward Chipman Jr. (1787-1851), who served as Chief Justice of New Brunswick from 1834 to 1851. The village of Chipman was founded in 1835, and was made up of portions of the older parishes of Brunswick and

Canning Canning is a method of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container (jars like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans). Canning provides a shelf life that typically ranges from one to five years, although under ...

. The first settler in what would become the Parish of Chipman was

Alexander McClure Alexander Kelly McClure (January 9, 1828 – June 6, 1909) was an American politician, newspaper editor, and writer from Pennsylvania. He served as a Republican Party (United States), Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representative ...

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. Its county town is Omagh. Adjoined to the south-west shore of Lough Neagh, the cou ...

, who arrived in 1820 with his wife, Mary McLeod and their five daughters. Earlier settlements upriver at Gaspereau, and downriver at the Range, existed prior to 1820, consisting of local settlers and Maine businessmen who established the first sawmills on the Salmon and Gaspereau Rivers. Immigration to the Chipman area escalated rapidly in the 1820s through the 1850s, with the large majority of new arrivals hailing from the northern counties of Ireland, in particular: Donegal, Londonderry, and Tyrone. The rapidly growing lumbering and sawmill industries were the primary impetus for this growth, which continued through most of the 19th century. The Parish of Chipman quickly became prominent because of its large population in comparison with the surrounding parishes, aided by the lure of employment from the burgeoning lumber mills, the coming of the railways, the development of the coal mining industry, and later in the 1930s, the establishment of L.E. Shaw's brick and tile plant. A large, modern sawmill currently provides many jobs for area residents. The Grand Lake Coal Mining industry began in the 1630s when French settlers, called Acadians, learned about surface deposits of coal in the Coal Creek area now called Chipman, NB. The French used coal in their fort at the mouth of the Saint John river and in 1639 began selling coal to the British colony in the area now known as Boston, USA. This commercial trade in coal has been recognized as a National Historic Event and the First Export of Coal in America, by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Parks Canada. Despite its prosperity, economic growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was insufficient to provide employment for all the population at a time when families typically produced several children. As a consequence, Chipman experienced its own exodus of surplus labour force, particularly young men who had gained valuable experience in lumbering and milling. Chipman-area natives became pioneering founders of the embryonic sawmill industries in

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

Washington state Washington, officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is often referred to as Washington State to distinguish it from the national capital, both named after George Washington ...

and California, as well as leading businessmen in other ventures in the new western U.S. territories and states. In 2018, a controversy arose when a "straight pride" flag, designed by local resident Glenn Bishop, was raised in Chipman but removed the next day due to public outcry and criticism of its potential harm to the LGBTQ+ community. Bishop claimed the removal as discrimination against straight people. On 1 January 2023, Chipman was amalgamated with the village of Minto and all or part of five local service districts to form the new village of Grand Lake. The community's name remains in official use.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Chipman had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Notable people

Elizabeth Brewster, CM SOM (26 August 1922 – 26 December 2012) was a poet, author, and academic.

History

Demographics

Notable people

See also

References

Further reading