Beresford — A Quebecer who was visiting New Brunswick this month is warning other Quebec residents to avoid the Picture Province — just for all the normal reasons.
“There’s not much to do in New Brunswick, so I would suggest that anyone considering a vacation there, or just seeing family you haven’t been able to visit since COVID-19 hit, reconsider. If you can somehow travel to the other Atlantic provinces without driving through New Brunswick, by all means, make it happen,” warned Sandra LeBlanc of Trois-Rivières.
“I expected harassment and threats — nothing new there,” she continued. “But to be that bored, to look at the bleak, bankrupt towns, the cultural wasteland of it…I had almost forgotten how bad it was there, especially in the northern parts of the province.”
LeBlanc provided more details on her trip.
“Did I get yelled at, have my car keyed, and was I told to go back to where I came from? Of course,” she said, with a casual shrug. “Was that the worst part of being in New Brunswick? Hardly. Have you had the food in pretty much any New Brunswick city? They can’t even make a decent poutine. The shopping is non-existent, everyone speaks Chiac but pretends they can’t understand you if you try to order a coffee in Quebec French, and when you’re driving around, no one uses their turn signal. Unbelievable.”
We spoke with another Quebecer who is self-isolating in New Brunswick in order to attend a relative’s upcoming wedding in Miramichi.
“One guy screamed at me to keep away from his property,” said Pierre Boucher of Montreal. “Firstly, I was nowhere near his property, and secondly, if you’d seen his property, you’d know why this was hilarious. It was just a huge patchy lawn covered in dog shit and kitschy, cheap decorations, a broken-down couch used as patio furniture, and a kiddie pool with algae growing in it. In what world would I be tempted to trespass there?! That is so New Brunswick to assume I’d want anything to do with him.
“Don’t get the wrong idea — this particular event didn’t faze me in the least,” he continued. “What really got under my skin was just the fact of being…in this place. Worst summer ever!”
Being from Newfoundland I find it surprising that there is so much dislike in NB for Quebecers, Having vacationed in the Old Orchard Beach area in Maine USA for years, I also learned that as much as they liked the money spent they also had a general dislike of the vacationing Quebecers. It’s an issue that I have difficulty understanding.