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Thanksgiving lands on Monday, October 12 this year, which means one last long weekend of peak fall colour before the season turns. Whether you’re hosting, travelling home, or just looking for something to do between turkey sandwiches, here’s what to expect across the province

There’s a short window in early October when New Brunswick belongs to the people who live here. The summer visitors have gone home, and the leaf-peeping buses haven’t quite arrived. The maples are starting to turn, the air is crisp, and you can still have a trail or a beach almost to yourself.

For years, New Brunswickers have heard a shifting set of numbers about how many people don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner

Most people plan their Bay of Fundy trip around summer — warm days, long light, kids out of school. Fair enough. But ask anyone who lives near the Fundy coast when they’d actually choose to go, and a surprising number will say autumn.

New Brunswick doesn’t do fall colour by halves. Between the mountains, two river valleys, and two very different coastlines, the province turns into a rolling wave of red, gold, and orange that moves from north to south over several weeks.

New Brunswick has a new roadmap for growing tourism, and it comes with a big price tag attached to its ambitions.

There’s a two-week window every fall when New Brunswick is at its absolute best — the maples have turned, the air smells like woodsmoke and cider, and every farm in the province throws open its gates.

The province added more than 11,000 people last year. The fastest growth rate didn’t belong to Moncton, Fredericton or Saint John — it belonged to an island of fewer than a thousand residents.

September in New Brunswick is the province’s best-kept secret. The summer crowds have thinned out, the ocean is still warm from August, the bugs have finally called it quits, and the light turns that particular gold that makes the Bay of Fundy look like it’s on fire at low tide

There’s nothing quite like a New Brunswick autumn. Sugar maples turn the highlands into a wash of crimson and orange, the Saint John River Valley glows gold along its banks, and the Bay of Fundy coastline gets its own moody, salt-tinged version of the show.

New Brunswick’s microclimates make it one of the better apple-growing corners of Canada, and most of the good orchards cluster in two places: the Saint John River Valley and the Acadian Coast.

Rakers are back in the barrens, freezer trucks are lining up at processing plants, and across the Acadian Peninsula and down into southern New Brunswick, the wild blueberry harvest is once again the season’s defining event.

September has arrived, and for anyone living in New Brunswick, that means one thing: we’re now in the most dangerous stretch of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Labour Day lands on September 7 this year, which means this is it — the last long weekend of the summer season in New Brunswick. The tide is still warm(ish), the campgrounds are still open, and the festival calendar is absolutely packed.