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What’s happening in Canada this summer?

Canada’s oldest farmers market, Saint John, NB

by Kathryn Harley Haynes 7 April 2009
Canada’s oldest incorporated city, Saint John, NB, can look a little rough around the edges: industrial, rocky, windswept. It’s part of the pleasure of this port city. Its urban flavour includes grit along with business, arts and a great seasoning of history, the Carleton Martello Tower, which dates from the War of 1812, the19th-century streetscape, the 20-block Trinity Royal, a Saint John Heritage Preservation Area and Canada’s oldest continuing farmers’ market, with its ongoing shopping appeal.
 
The Saint John City Market traces its origins to the 1785 Royal Charter that established Saint John, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have found lobster antipasto at the stalls in those days. The Loyalists (or Tories, as the Americans called the losing side of the Revolutionary War), who fled the new United States and founded the city and the market, may well have shopped for herbal soaps, meat, fish and produce like those you can find today. But the veggies then wouldn’t have included lo bok and galangal. The bread wouldn’t have been labelled organic, and I’ll bet you couldn’t have gotten a good macchiato, either.
 
Originally held outdoors, the market’s been housed in its current building since 1876. The structure scales the steep hillside that runs up from the harbour, and its rafters recall the timbers of the wooden ships once built in the city. Designated a National Historic Site in 1986, the market is the bustling centre of downtown Saint John, operating year-round Monday to Saturday.
 
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Usage guidelines

We welcome you to use these story ideas as inspiration for your own stories about Canada. The CTC owns all rights worldwide. (Our images are also royalty-free and available for editorial print, broadcast and electronic use.) If you choose to reproduce these texts for editorial use only, please include the author's byline and "courtesy of the Canadian Tourism Commission." If you cut, edit or modify the text in any way, please include this note: "The text has been modified from the original." Thank you.

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Photo credit : Victoria Island, Northwest Territories © NWTT/Terry Parker - Background Image