Caring for the children of New Brunswick for 171 years.

1855-2025

New Brunswick Protestant Orphans’ Home Manawagonish Road, Saint John NB

OUR HISTORY:

The early 1850’s were not a happy time to be born into the City of Saint John, New Brunswick, especially if your family was poor. It was a busy port city; shipbuilding was thriving; new industries were being introduced; there was no problem finding work, though wages were low. The population was growing much more rapidly than the amenities and services essential for urban life. There was no hospital, no public water supply and no public sewage system. Population grew as more and more immigrants arrived. In 1847 typhus took a fearful toll on immigrants. Doctors and nurses from Saint John gave their lives in endeavors to give them help and the city could not escape the ravages of the plague. The disease spread like wildfire as disease bearing dust was blown around in the air. In order to meet the emergency of 120 children left without a father, mother, relative or guardian to care for them, work for the orphans began. In that year Protestant Clergy in Saint John arranged for several houses to give them food and shelter and a committee convened a public meeting on January 12, 1855 to present formally to the citizens of Saint John the proposal the Saint John Protestant Orphans’ Asylum be established in the city.

The records of the Orphans’ Asylum from it’s openings in 1855 until the Great Fire of 1877 were destroyed in that fire and resulted in a bigger increase in orphans, necessitating greater accommodation and enlarged facilities as the orphaned children were now being raised in different homes around the city - Pond, Peters, Carmarthen and Brittain Streets that housed 100’s of children.

The name changed to the New Brunswick Protestant Orphans’ Home on June 2, 1922. In 1923 work began on the new orphanage on Manawagonish Road on forty-five acres, combing the Flewelling Farm and the James Manchester property. On this site, the orphanage consisted of boys and girls wings, a school, superintendent’s house and infants building. It also operated as a farm providing milk and vegetables, and life skills to the children from 1924 until 1964.

The New Brunswick Children’s Foundation was created as a result of the closure and sale of the assets of the New Brunswick Protestant Orphans’ Home, following a shift in social policy in the mid-1960s and the departure of the Home’s last child on July 1, 1976.

One great example of how the New Brunswick Children’s Foundation has continued to serve the unserved began in 1982 with the commencement of a Latch Key program. In 1982 staff ladies of the Boys and Girls Club saw children going through garbage cans at lunch time. The ladies started a very small program of soup and sandwiches for the children. The need was so great that it became obvious that the women could no longer supply the necessary food to satisfy the hungry children and the club made an application to New Brunswick Children’s Foundation to implement a hot noon meal program for children from the surrounding area. The meal program commenced in the 1982-83 school year with $20,375 which enabled 20 children to have lunch meals, however the numbers grew and grew. The benefit to the children are many, with better attendance at school, improved attention span in the classroom, less absenteeism, and better grades. In addition to the nutritional meal, children were taught personal hygiene and proper table manners.

Today, the Foundation is governed by a fifteen-member board representing New Brunswick communities. Though the name and configuration of the Home has changed over the years – its mission to support children in need has remained the focus. It is a charitable foundation focused on serving the vulnerable children of New Brunswick for which annual applications for funding are accepted and considered four times per year.

Since its incorporation the Foundation has awarded over $20 million to organizations and charities who support the needs of children throughout the province. That number continues to grow every year.

Our legacy for more than 170 years has been to support and provide for the wellbeing and success of the children in our province, meeting the ever-changing needs of the times. We pledge to continue to uphold that mandate for the next 170 years.