Madawaska County

Located in the northwest corner of the province, Madawaska County is defined by tidy farms and towns along the St John and Madawaska Rivers.  Its primary inhabitants know themselves as “Brayonne”, a unique combination of Acadians who either escaped from or were expelled by the British from the lower reaches of the St John River, and Canadien who moved south along the portage route from Riviere du Loup.

The area has been a critical link between the St John and St Lawrence River systems since time immemorial, and an essential focus of communications for the First Nations peoples, and later the French and British empires in North America.  For that reason the British build several forts along the portage route in the nineteenth century, including a blockhouse that still stands at the mouth of the Madawaska River in Edmundston.