Minto is a community straddling the boundary of Sunbury County and Queens County, New Brunswick, Canada. It is located on the north shore of Grand Lake, approximately 50 kilometres northeast of Fredericton. Minto held village status prior to 2023, when it was amalgamated into the newly-formed village of Grand Lake.
Minto is known to have taken its present name in 1904 upon the retirement of Canada's eighth Governor General, The Earl of Minto. and the story remains that the village adopted its name from the local Minto Hotel. From the St. John Daily Sun of 1903: "Just how the name of Minto came to be adopted is said to have occurred in this way. A letter which was sent from Moncton to Mr. Kennedy was enclosed in an envelope which bore the name of the Minto hotel, Moncton. The family thought Minto a good name for their hotel, and so it was named. Then the people generally adopted the name for the place, and so the railway people designated it."
History
Minto did not feel the depression, or at least did not feel it in the same way as most other places in Canada; during recession and the Great Depression, Minto was profiting from a coal mining boom. The coal brought a level of financial prosperity to the community in the early 1900s, which by the late 1930s turned into a profitable venture for companies, and brought starvation and disease to a then impoverished community. As stated in the United Mine Workers' Journal of 1937, "Nowhere on the American continent, is there a strife which combines the elements of greed, harshness, cold, suffering, and want, as exists [in Minto]."
Early in Minto's coal mining exploits, land owners were permitted to mine under their own land without obtaining a license from the Crown or paying any royalties, which ended in 1915. During the boom, both mining conditions and the living quarters of miners' families degraded with lowering wages and lack of maintenance in the mines and homes supplied to the miners families. Although a tally of the number of deaths related to the coal mining industry in Minto is not available, deaths did occur.
Amalgamation of Minto and surrounding communities
On 1 January 2023, Minto was amalgamated with the village of Chipman and all or part of five local service districts to form the new village of Grand Lake. The community's name remains in official use.
The villages of Minto and Chipman protested the forced amalgamation. The mayor of Minto (2021), Erica Barnett, stated in a letter posted on the Village of Minto's Facebook page that "the government's current plan is absolutely not in the best interest for either Minto or Chipman..." She mentioned also that this was a fact of reducing the provincial funding the villages got. This created an uproar among the townsfolk who were scared of losing the few things the village had, such as their cared-for arena. The public also feared "having to combine health clinics, schools and fire stations." The distance of 24 km between the two villages could ultimately cause major issues.
Coal Mining Industry
The need of transporting coal brought the railway to Minto, and was to make the area "the most prosperous place in Canada." The New Brunswick Central Railway ended at Chipman (about north-east of Minto) and in 1901 the railway was planned to be completed by constructing through the village to Fredericton, and connect with the Canadian Pacific railway. By 1904 the railway was completed as far as Minto, merging with the existing Central, however by 1905 completion to Fredericton was abandoned and the remaining railway was not built until 1913.
Although the railway lines through Minto have since been completely removed, the railway station continues on as a local museum. By the end of 2010, coal mining in Minto ended when the last coal mining company, NB Coal, closed.
During the early years of the Great Depression, the New Brunswick Power Corporation built the province's first thermal generating station south of the village on the shores of Grand Lake. Opened in 1931, the Grand Lake Generating Station accessed coal from nearby deposits. An NB Power subsidiary, NB Coal, was the only mining company left in the Minto area and performed strip mining. NB Power closed the Grand Lake Station when its operating license expired in June 2010. As the Station has been NB Coal’s only customer since 2000, NB Coal closed in December 2009. On April 19, 2012 the Grand Lake Generating Station was demolished, and by this time all coal mining in Minto had ended.
