INDEPTH: MUNICIPALITIES » CITY STATES
Moncton and Saint John:
On the move, or not
CBC News Online | July 24, 2004
A series on CBC Radio's The House
Reporter: Alex Mason
Producers: Alan Guettel, Margaret Daly
 LISTEN: Alex Mason full documentary (Runs 38:12)
What makes Moncton hot right now, and Saint John not so?
Now that old-line industries and government bailouts are fading memories, it seems that the big difference between these two New Brunswick cities is attitude. But how long can a boom in development and growth last when it's largely fueled by good will?
When actor Marshall Button got a call offering him a job running the theatre in Moncton, he didn't hesitate a second. "No," he said. Things were fine for him in Ontario. But Moncton wouldn't take no for an answer, and convinced him to try it out. Now, he says he has no intention of ever leaving Moncton.
That's the kind of story you hear over and over again in one of Canada's hottest real-estate markets – in a city whose official slogan used to be: "Moncton, you're okay."
That's when plywood was the biggest selling item in town – for boarding up store windows – after thousands of railroad jobs disappeared.
Not so far down the road, with some crippling job loses of its own, Saint John is losing population, and Moncton is threatening to overtake it as New Brunswick's largest city.
The people taking the plywood off the windows in Moncton have a can-do spirit that you rarely find in the Maritimes these days.
A big part of that is the new Acadian middle class that was produced by the University of Moncton. The city is also the transportation hub of the Maritimes: only a few hours drive to Halifax, Saint John, Fredericton or Charlottetown makes it a natural for Susan Chalmers-Gauvin. She now runs the only professional ballet company in Atlantic Canada.
Her landlord, a retired hockey player, put $100,000 into an abandoned church for her troupe's headquarters.
That same hub position on the map attracts shoppers from all over the Maritimes and has given rise to the only international airport in the province. Also, a legacy of the 1990s boom in call centres is a lot of new buildings that are as cost-efficient as the pay scales of the workforce.
While it's true that in most lines of work, you still have to leave town to accept a promotion, things could be worse. And in Saint John they are, though a lot of people really want to turn the situation around.
In the port section, industries are dying, but the city is turning a lot of land into a waterfront park, entertainment and shopping district adjacent to the fine old Victorian brick neighbourhoods of the downtown central district known locally as "uptown."
Saint John is trying. But after so many years of not living up to so many promises, a lot of Saint Johners just don't have the faith.
"No jobs," say the kids. It's been all downhill since the Second World War, says an old timer. Another remembers when you listened to the radio to find out how many new sets of strong arms were needed at the docks tomorrow. Not any more.
Saint John's former mayor, Shirley McAlary, blames the provincial and federal government for the situation where voters kicked her out.
Former Moncton mayor, Brian Murphy, says Saint John just needs a good kick in the butt. It needs to be desperate, the way Moncton was after the CN yards shut down. It needs immigrants "like my father was," says John Rocca. The federal government, he says, wants the kind of immigrant who is educated and well off enough to make choices. And these sorts of people don't choose Saint John.
Rocca's father came with nothing. He started a family construction business that grew into one of the major developers in the area. "The immigration policy in Canada doesn't allow people like my father to come to Canada."
Yvon Lapierre, mayor of Dieppe, the fastest growing suburb of Moncton, agrees that lack of immigration is the time bomb in Moncton's picture. You can grow off migration from the impoverished New Brunswick North Shore for only so long. Eventually, everyone who's moving to town will have done so. The recipe for ongoing success requires three ingredients, he says: new people, new investment and new attitudes. While Moncton has had all three, Saint John has suffered.
Even so, some of Saint John's young people are supportive. "It's like a city with good bones that just doesn't quite know how to dress yet," says Mara Mallory and her friend Stephanie Bell. "And I guess it was our turn to take [it] shopping."
They've created a group called Fusion, to give people in their 20s and 30s some hope for Saint John– if only for the community to recognize: "Saint John, you're okay."
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List of big city mayors, from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities:
Vancouver: Larry Campbell
Surrey: Doug W. McCallum
Calgary: David Bronconnier
Edmonton: Bill Smith
Regina: Pat Fiacco
Saskatoon: Don Atchison
Winnipeg: Sam Katz
Brampton: Susan Fennell
Hamilton: Larry Dilanni
Kitchener: Carl Zehr
London: Anne Marie DeCicco
Mississauga: Hazel McCallion
Ottawa: Bob Chiarelli
Windsor: Eddie Francis
Toronto: David Miller
Gatineau: Yves Ducharme
Montréal: Gérald Tremblay
Laval: Gilles Vaillancourt
Québec: Jean-Paul L'Allier
Longueil: Jacques Olivier
Halifax: Peter J. Kelly
St. John's: Andy Wells
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Watch Brian Stewart's documentary "Cities: The Last Colonies"
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