Hub City of the Maritimes — Magnetic Hill, the Tidal Bore, and Acadian Culture
Moncton is the commercial hub of New Brunswick and the largest city in the Maritimes — a bilingual English-French city where Acadian culture is alive in festivals, cuisine, and community. Magnetic Hill, where vehicles appear to roll uphill due to an optical illusion, draws a million visitors a year. The tidal bore from the Bay of Fundy reverses the Petitcodiac River twice daily, and the Resurgo Place museum covers 10,000 years of local history.
The site of Moncton was home to the Mi'kmaq people for millennia before European contact; the city was formally chartered in 1855 and named for General Robert Monckton, who commanded the British forces at Fort Beauséjour in 1755. The city became a railway hub in the 1870s when the Intercolonial Railway made it the junction between Halifax and Montreal, cementing its role as the economic heart of the Maritimes. The Acadians — French colonists and their descendants, deported by the British in 1755 and later allowed to return — form roughly a third of Moncton's population today.