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New Brunswick ( ; -frnuvobʁɔnzwikpron) is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province (English and French) in the federation. The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Statistics Canada estimates the provincial population in 2009 to have been 750,457; a majority are English-speaking, but there is also a large Francophone minority (33%), chiefly of Acadian origin. The province's name comes from the English and French partial transcription of the city of Brunswick (Braunschweig in German) located in modern day Lower Saxony, northern Germany (and former duchy of the same name), the ancestral home of the Hanoverian King George III of Great Britain. |