New Brunswick government started at Fredericton’s first coffee house

Coffee has been a popular beverage in Fredericton, New Brunswick for a very long time - records show that ‘the cup that cheers’ has been drunk here for at least 236 years. We can trace back the history of coffee in Fredericton to the establishment of the town’s first cafe, or “coffee house”. Coffee houses were more than just a place where one could drink coffee: they were often inns as well, and many served liquor into the evenings. They were the center of important business transactions, too: merchants would meet there to hammer out deals, and even governmental meetings were conducted.

Fredericton’s first known coffee house was the “British-American Coffee House”, founded in 1786 on the corner of Queen and St Johns Street, in a house that was built by the loyalist Olivier Thibodeau.

This photograph, taken about 1900, is part of the Harvey Studio collection at the Provincial Archives. Credit: Provincial Archives of New Brunswick/P14-4.

Fredericton's first coffee house was located at the corner of Queen and St. John Street.

Sadly, the house was demolished in 1961, but a photograph from 1900 shows the coffee house in all its glory. The coffee house would have attracted many British officers accustomed to the bustling coffee house culture in London and other European cities.

In fact, New Brunswick’s first Lieutenant Governor, Thomas Carleton, used the British American Coffee House as his Fredericton residence while awaiting the construction of his permanent home (Old Government House was not built until 1816). It’s said that the very first meeting of the provincial House of Assembly took place at that coffee house on the 18th of July, 1788.