Prof studies why New Brunswickers hate New Brunswick

St. Thomas University professor Tony Tremblay is studying why New Brunswickers hate their province.

The scholar of English literature is looking to a different kind of narrative to study negative stereotypes about New Brunswick, and how to change them.

Tremblay is collecting stories told by politicians, media, and the public to learn why New Brunswick is associated with what he calls "the notion of backwardness."

For his research, Tremblay defines backwardness in economic terms. ​Tremblay doesn't believe New Brunswick is backwards, but he said identity is created more by the stories told about a community or place than the inherent qualities of the people or place itself.

He said the dominant narrative seems to be about New Brunswick's economic status.

"The stories that circulate around that are stories of New Brunswick laziness or New Brunswickers' unwillingness to get off wealth transfers from other richer parts of Canada. There's stories about lack of mobility among New Brunswickers, New Brunswickers not desiring to move from one location to another to take a job in a community 50 kilometres away," he said.

The statistics released about New Brunswick's standing compared to the rest of the country don't help.

"We have the lowest mean family income. We have the highest rate of [youth] STDs. We have among the highest rates of obesity and illiteracy in the country. Based on the last census, we were the only province in the country with a still diminishing population," Tremblay said.

"It seems like a no-brainer to come up with the conclusion that we are a backward, illiterate, slow-to-modernize province."

However, Tremblay said these conclusions usually don't consider pre-existing structural conditions in the province.

"A set of social statistics does not equate to the nature of a population."

Better knowledge of N.B. history needed

Tremblay believes better self-knowledge and access to New Brunswick's history could help challenge negative narratives.

He said 96 per cent of his students don't know enough about their province's history or literary contributions.

Young people going to school in New Brunswick are learning about writers from other places, but they're not learning about New Brunswick, he said.

"What they are learning about and are hearing are the stories about our backwardness, not the stories of our success."

Tremblay compares the stories told about New Brunswick to those of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

He said those narratives tend to be romantic — stories of Scottish heritage and folk culture, or pastoral escapes from urban life.

The most well-known narrative of that sort is arguably P.E.I.'s Anne of Green Gables.

"The stories told about New Brunswick have a harder edge," Tremblay said.

"They're darker stories. They are stories about deficit, stories about intransigence, stories about an unwillingness to change, a kind of reckless unwillingness to change."

Tremblay is still in the early stages of his research, but he's hoping studying the negative stories and stereotypes surrounding New Brunswick may reveal the best way to change them.