Social geography combines people and places. While immediate families may not eat dinner together as often these days, there is still a need to gather for birthdays, celebrations and important announcements. That power only increases amongst people of all ages as they explore the social geography beyond their doors and, in many cases, return to places grown familiar throughout their lives. Today, teens and shopping malls are synonymous but much of what motivated people to get together in the past is still in place now – theatres, parades, recreation, clubs, exhibitions, school and religious ceremony. Church attendance may be in decline but weddings, funerals and christenings remain important and strong functions.

This website looks at continuities and changes over time from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century through a combination of photographs and documents from the collections of the New Brunswick Museum. Several themes are explored which are at once independent and interdependent with headings such as Community, Schools and Places of Worship. Exploring the Community gallery, we find a 19th century theatre waiting for an audience while a program details the fantastic characters in a play and a crowd is seated inside as the curtains rise. Next we view a picnic excursion and a campsite in the mid-1940s, so familiar and yet so strangely distant. The world is still at war but a nearby stream and fields of grass harbour such peace. Through the images and documents we see a province where the camera and the printing press influence and are influenced by the changing social geography encountered.