St. Stephen (2001 pop.: 4,667) is a Canadian town in Charlotte County, New Brunswick.

The town is situated on the east bank of the St. Croix River at .

The river and surrounding area was first explored by the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain when he and his men spent a winter there in 1604. Officially incorporated as a town in 1871, five years later St. Stephen's business district was almost totally destroyed by fire when eighty buildings and 13 wharves burned. The population of St. Stephen has declined 5.9% since 1996.

Historically a lumber and ship building economy until the early part of the 1900s, by the end of World War II the town's main employers were the Ganong Bros. Limited chocolate company (established 1873, Canada's oldest candy company), and the second largest textile mill in Canada built in 1882 on the river where it operated with its own hydro-electric generating station. In 1957, the textile mill closed but the confectionery maker remains a key employer.

A hotbed of baseball interest, in 1934 the Boston Braves of baseball's National League played an exhibition game in St. Stephen against the local "Kiwanis" team. The enthusiastic fans in attendance numbered more than half the town's population. In 1939, the local baseball team won its ninth consecutive New Brunswick senior championship, topping off a decade of dominance in the sport at both the provincial and Maritime levels.

The town is also the home of St. Stephen's University.

International border

New Brunswick visitor information centre in St. Stephen's former Canadian Pacific Railway station.

Residents of St. Stephen and Calais often regard their community as one place, cooperating in their fire departments and other community projects. As evidence of the longtime friendship between the towns, during the War of 1812, the British military provided St. Stephen with a large supply of gunpowder for protection against the enemy Americans in Calais, but the town elders gave the gunpowder to Calais for its Fourth of July celebrations.

Construction is expected to begin in 2008 on a second bridge connecting the two communities. The new bridge, currently scheduled to open in 2009, will serve primarily commercial trucking traffic, while the current bridge will remain in use for passenger vehicles ^[1].

St. Stephen is also connected to the town of Milltown, Maine via the Milltown International Bridge.

The new Ganong chocolate factory.

Media

St. Stephen, being a small town, has only two media organizations: a radio station and weekly newspaper. Radio station CHTD-FM, known as "The Tide", plays country music and offers regular news updates. Founded in 1865, the Saint Croix Courier is the town's weekly newspaper, it also publishes another newspaper, the Courier Weekend. It should be noted that the Courier is one of the few papers in New Brunswick that is not owned by the Irving family. Radio stations located in Calais, Maine can also be heard, including WCRQ, WQDY and WMED.

People from St. Stephen

• Sandra Barr - N.B. Hall of Fame athlete
• Henry Burr, radio pioneer and early recording star
• Allan Fraser, folk musician and songwriter
• Rowland Frazee, chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada
• Arthur Ganong, businessman, politician
• Gilbert Ganong, businessman, statesman
• Hardy Ganong C.B.E., Major General, Canadian Army WWII
• William Francis Ganong, botanist, historian and cartographer
• Don Sweeney, former NHL hockey player with the Boston Bruins and Dallas Stars
• Samuel Heywood, prominent early settler of Berkeley, California
• John Ralston, actor

External links

• Town of St. Stephen Website
• St. Stephen's University
• Charlotte County Guide
• Ganong Nature Park
• 

References

1. ↑ "U.S. gives go ahead to third bridge", St. Croix Courier, September 26, 2006.

Further reading

• Joshua M. Smith, Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820, University Press of Florida, 2006.
• I. C. Knowlton, Annals of Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick, 1875 (Online)

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