Although originally settled by the Germans, a good chunk of the city’s residents speak French, and many are bilingual. It’s not just home to Atlantic Canada’s only French-language university, the University of Moncton, it’s also host to Acadian food. The city was named after Colonel Robert Monckton, but the ‘K’ was left off in a clerical spelling error when the city was incorporated.
Poutines râpées is a ball of minced pork rolled up inside a thick, chewy layer of coagulated grated potato. It’s almost exactly like German Knödeln. It has to be cooked in boiled water (not boiling) that is left to simmer on very low heat in a covered pot. Leave it in for too long or too hot and it’ll have the consistency of toothpaste, leave it in for not long enough and you’ll end up with lumps of raw potato powder on the inside. It’s a hard art to master – I know because I make it at home.
The Free Meeting House, built in 1821, is the city’s oldest standing building. The graveyard has the remains of inhabitants as early as 1816. It was designed to be an omni-denominational place of worship for settlers. It was also the only place of worship, so it had to accommodate Jews, Catholics, and protestants until 1963. Today, it is used for special religious events from all groups.
Resurgo is Moncton’s motto, also the name of its main museum, meaning I rise again in Latin. Moncton’s fishing industry declined, followed by an economic recovery in shipbuilding, giving the city its motto. The neoclassical façade inside the museum came from the old City Hall when it was demolished in 1971. It was taken apart block by block and rebuilt when the museum was constructed.
Magnetic Hill claims to have cars rolling uphill, but these kinds of slopes are just optical illusions. The public road running parallel to the theme park’s private road doesn’t have the same effect. The nearby Lutz Museum is the only other thing I could find resembling German influence in the city.
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