Name changes for municipalities reflect their character
Published Friday September 11th, 2009
PETIT-ROCHER - It's only a minor detail, but one that holds major significance for some New Brunswickers.
In an effort to better reflect its French-speaking population, the words "village of" and "town of" have officially been removed from the official names of several communities. The Town of Caraquet, for instance, will now be officially known simply as Caraquet. The spelling of other communities have also been changed, so that Cap-Pele becomes Cap-Pelé and St. Leonard becomes Saint-Léonard.
Local Government Minister Bernard LeBlanc announced the name changes to eight New Brunswick municipalities this week, in response to resolutions he received from municipalities.
LeBlanc said the amendments, which were instituted July 23, are a better reflection of the province's linguistic makeup.
"Historically, in accordance with the justice system in place, New Brunswick municipalities were named in English," LeBlanc said in a statement.
"However, with today's reality, and with New Brunswick now having the status of an officially bilingual province, it is only logical that we adapt municipal names to reflect this status."
Caraquet Mayor Antoine Landry has been pushing for the provincial government to scrap the word town from its official title since he took office in 2001.
"For us to have an English name didn't make much sense," Landry said, explaining that 99 per cent of his town's 4,100 residents are French-speaking.
Caraquet was incorporated in 1961, when laws were written solely in English, before the language reforms of Premier Louis Robichaud and the 1969 Official Languages Act.
Landry says the English name was a occasionally source of confusion and good-natured ribbing from visitors.
"People would say, you're the cultural capital of Acadie, but you're name is in English. How come?"
Landry says residents refer to it as Ville de Caraquet anyway, but the change means that all legal documents will no longer have the word town.
The Village of Petit Rocher is also now officially known only as Petit-Rocher. The word village has been removed from the name and a hyphen added. Mayor Pierre Godin, who originally pushed for the change during a previous term in office in the mid-1990s, says the change, however slight, was long overdue.
"We want our village, our municipality, to be known for what it is," he said.
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"minor detail"? The 'minor' details have a habit of adding up over the decades.
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