 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
SOUTHERN NEW BRUNSWICK
So having thrashed down the Trans-Canada Highway in hot pursuit of a diesel train, I made it to Florenceville and from there, eventually to Centreville. Here, I had a brief wait for someone to answer the phone. I didn't know where I was going once I made Centreville (I never know where I'm going at the best of times, but that's another story) so I needed directions. And I'm not afraid to ask, either.
In case you are wondering, I had two good reasons for visiting Centreville, and they are clearly shown in the photograph her on the left. These are my two great nieces Hannah Marie and Zoe Lynne, who I had never ever met before. Don't you think that they are sooooooo cute?
It was nice to meet up with Rachel and Darren again - I hadn't seen them since their wedding in 1992. I can always remember the wedding for an incident that occurred when Rachel's French friend Laurence from Macon was struggling with her English, and trying to describe our Aunt Mary who, like myself doesn't eat animal products.
"Aunt Mary - she is a v-v-v-veg-vegetable"
And who was it who said "you are what you eat"?
Where Darren and Rachel live is right up close to the border with the USA.
"You can spit into the United States from here" said Darren.
So I did.
Frequently.
So did everyone else who lived here.
It reminds me of the story I was told about the North American Free Trade Association.
"The United States joined NAFTA to trade with the poor, backward and undeveloped country on their southern border. Canada did the same".
But cute little great-nieces notwithstanding, there are other things to see in Canada. Like Darren and Rachel's new pickup, for example. Nice big V8 diesel too. I have to admit though that it's not my cup of tea - I prefer a late 60's or early 70's straight 6 diesel F350, especially with a flatbed body. Having said that though, this would do me to be going on with while someone sorts me something out. If you have one, then and we'll see if we can't do a deal.
It didn't take me long to get taken out for a drive in it. If anyone is offering anyone a sightseeing trip, well, I'm first in the queue for that. Especially in one of these beasties. Mind you, I had to wait for nearly two years before I got a turn behind the wheel. I was just content to be a passenger. I'd never ridden in one of these before
We had a nice spin out in the Chevy. Darren gave me quite a good sightseeing tour of the local area, and we ended up at the Hartland Bridge over the Saint John River, just down the road from where they live.
Hartland Bridge, as you can see, is one of this area's legendary covered bridges. And of all the covered bridges, this is the longest in the world. They used to call them "kissing bridges" in days of yore, because the local youths of the day used to take their girlfriends into them in horsedrawn buggies in the 19th Century and ... er ... embrace them during the crossing, out of sight of passers-by.
However most of the bridges were nothing like this long. Makes me wonder what you could get up to in a buggy with a nice young girl, what with all the time it would take to ride through here.
This photograph on the left shows the Saint John river - as in the legendary "Babe I'm Going To Leave You" as written by Anne Bredon, Paul Bennett and Edward Darling. But forget the insipid Led Zeppelin cover version - the best ever was by Quicksilver Messenger Service and is on their double album Sons of Mercury
The Saint John River flows into the ocean down at Saint John, by the way, which is a fair drive from here. There was something about Saint John that rung a little bell with me, buried deep in the back of my mind. It was perplexing me as to what exactly it was.
You know just how well you get on with someone when his idea of a good day out is to go to visit all the local scrapyards and vehicle dumps in the area. Consequently I got on with Darren very well indeed. I just wish it had been a little warmer - it was far too flaming cold to take off my gloves otherwise there'd be a lot more interesting photos of interesting items around here.
Of course, in North America there is a different quality of scrap than in Europe, and the authorities are a lot more laid back about it being available for inspection by the casual passer-by, such as yours truly. Not like in Europe where everyone has to conform to the stereotype of the nuclear-age family ideal with 1.7 children and 1.2 cars with an average age of 3.7 years (the cars, not the children), otherwise the local authority simply hounds them out. The idea of running an old car and keeping a donor car for spares like I did until I emigrated in the early 1990s, and I still can do in France, and my friends who remain in the UK want to do it - well, it's just out of the window now.
My idea of paradise would be to build a little community of vehicle enthusiasts on an island somewhere off the mainland - each one living in his own little cabin, and all the cabins forming a circle surrounding the communal vehicle dump. And I think that in rural Canada this dream could become a reality.
But I digress. Ohhhh what a surprise - ed
Now this is what I call an interesting vehicle. It was lying all parked up and abandoned in a truck scrapyard in Connell, New Brunswick, just down the road from Darren and Rachel.
Now I know what it is, but I just wonder how many other people do. Saying that it is a fuel tanker, by the way, scores nil points. I was curious to know just how it ended up here, but there was no-one around to ask.
You have to admit that it's a serious piece of kit, but I'm not sure exactly what purpose it's serving being here. The only thing that came into my mind was that someone is stripping it for the engine, the tank and the pump. Actually, now I come to think about it, I could do some serious good with that tank.
You have to admit though that Connell, New Brunswick, was almost the last place on earth you'd expect to see one of these.
I spent a pleasant 24 hours or so with my family here, but all good things have to come to an end sooner or later. I had to move on, so I would just have to come back again. The next step for me to take was in the direction of Bar Harbor, Maine, where I had some friends in the radio broadcasting business at The Broadcast Web. So a stop at Woodstock for a coffee and a look at the map for for the best way to get there. Quickest way was to head west from here and down the highway to the U.S. border and I could be there tonight.
But something else caught my eye. Saint John, and the Bay of Fundy was only 250 km away - the Bay of Fundy as sung about by Joni Mitchell - the Bay of Fundy of romatic school geography lessons (I enjoyed geography at school but then I always was a bit bizarre) with its 12-metre tides the highest in the world, its fogs, its squalls and storms, its whales. And Nova Scotia on the other side. You only pass some roads once in your life, but it would take a good day out of my holiday and I only had 8 to play with. There just wasn't any decision to take really. I got back behind the wheel of the car.
Three hours later, I was in Saint John.
SAINT JOHN
I arrived in Saint John quite late that night, and found a motel at the entrance to the town shortly after pulling off the motorway. Nothing special, but neither was the price. I had a walk around the area but there was absolutely nothing at all to see, let alone eat, so I made do with nibbling on whatever I had in the car.
Next morning, I was up early and tracked down the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, Nova Scotia. I absolutely had to make that crossing. This was definitely going to be a highlight of the entire journey.
Down at the dockside already moored was the "Princess or Acadia". I had to say that I was ... er ... surprised. The photo doesn't actually reproduce adequately the condition of the ferry. Just let me say that it was built in 1971 here in Saint John, and looked every day of its 30 years of age.
Given that it is "an asset of the Federal Government and leased to the ferry company" then I can only say that I am not surprised. I suppose whenever there's a repair to be done, they both try to pass the buck to the other interessee, and of course no-one is going to invest money in tidying it up when it's not in the financial interest of any of the parties.
It displaces 10,000 tons, which is a good size, but not a patch on some of the ferries on which I made 3-hour crossings over the open ocean some three or so year later. And frankly, at first sight, I'd have been happier on one of those.
Someone loitering in the vicinity told me that the boat wasn't due to sail for a few hours yet, so I went for a drive around the town and a poke about the mall. There didn't seem to be much to see - mostly factories and industrial units and so on. Usually there are all kinds of stuff loitering around on industrial estates in North America, and they are well worth a good poke around. But not here, so I wasn't disappointed when I had to make my way back to the boat.
BAY OF FUNDY
So once we'd got ourselves all organised on board, and the ship started slowly to reverse from its berth, I wandered off to take a few photographs. There was a good view from up on the top deck of the ship.
Looking at the oil tanks you can get an idea of Saint John - since the railway arived here it saves a great deal of time for the larger ships to pull into the Bay of Fundy, unload, and then for the freight to go by rail up to Montreal, instead of the ships having to negotiate the Saint Lawrence River.
This photograph shows the north bank of the Saint John River and the commercial centre of the town. Much of it seemed to be fairly new, and I recalled from my drive around that there wasn't a gread deal worth seeing. The Saint John River is off to the left of shot.
I mentioned that the tides in the Bay of Fundy are claimed to be the highest in the world, reaching a height of 12 metres (or 40 feet in real money). Here in Saint John, this has created an interesting phenomenon - that of the reversible waterfall. In the river are some quite high rocks and when the tide is out, the river cascades over them into the bay. When the tide is flowing in, it creeps up the river and when it reaches a certain height, the water then cascades over the rocks back upstream.
There are quite a few examples of this in the area, as you would expect.
The photograph on the left gives a good idea of the industry that's here in the city of Saint John.
There's quite a considerable traffic of cargo ships sailing into and out of the harbour here - more so than in many other ports where I've been obliged to wait. In fact, I think that only Dover has been able to match the volume of maritime traffic that I've seen, and most of that was passenger ferries to and from the mainland.
Here is a really good view of the town, with the river right in the centre of the photograph.
But I really took this photograph because I suppose you might say it's symbolic. I think I just about caught the flag perfectly, and the sharpness of the wake of the ship has come out really well. The nice blue sky, indicative of good clear weather, sets the scene quite nicely.
I was really impressed with this, and had it on the desktop of my computer at work for a while. When I explained to my colleagues that it was symbolic, one of them replied that it was "bolics", or something like that.
And look at this lot! Yes, the nice blue sky that we had earlier and which was indicative of good clear weather has disappeared, as you can see. What happened?
I'd been downstairs in the restaurant tucking into this huge plateful of traditional fish and chips, which was absolutely delicious. I'd noticed the ship starting to toss about, but I'd just taken it as being the turning of the tide, and thought no more about it. I was totally astonished when I went back outside afterwards, and all of this met my eyes.
The Village People
And I'll tell you something else too - the sea might look rough in this photograph, but in reality it was 10 times worse than it looks. We weren't half being thrown about in a typical Maritime storm. The speed at which it sprung up can easily explain how disasters such as that at Escuminac in 1959 could happen.
This is Nova Scotia, in the middle of a nice raging storm. The gap that you can see in the coast leads to a sheltered bay known as the "Digby Gut". This is where the port of Digby is situated, and it was just as well, I reckoned, that it was in some kind of shelter. When I was able to stand still and not be tossed about the deck, I could get a good view of the mountains in the background. The deep grey in those clouds coupled with the freezing windy conditions told me that there was one wicked snowstorm going on up there.
I stood out on deck here for a while having a good look, and it really wasn't such a good idea. This was where I reckon I caught my childhood bronchitis again.
But that was later. Right now, we're arriving in Digby, and the end of the journey and where we all disembark, suitably fortified by enormous plates of delicious fish and chips. We've been on the ship for 3 and a half hours of crossing, and the price for the car and my good self? - $90 CAN or about £40. What possible justification can P&O and the other cross-Channel ferry companies put forward with the prices that they charge for an equivalent crossing across the English Channel? Don't forget that in 1998 this ferry crossing was taken over by a private company and is now run on a commercial basis, and the aim is to make a profit.
At least - that was what I wrote in 2001. In August 2006, the company announced that it was suspending operations at the end of October due to "low ridership and the high cost of fuel". There were also claims that the "Princess of Acadia", still in operation, was "at the end of its natural life". The local and national government gave the company $8,000,000 to carry on sailing, but no decision was made as to whether or not to replace the ship. And there won't be any more money coming from the government either.
I said higher up the page that the ship looked every day of its 30 years. Heaven alone knows what it looks like today. When you think of all of the improvements in engine efficiency and fuel economy that have taken place over the last 35 years, and the number of modern ferries that are laid up out of service and for sale and the price that is being asked for them, then someone could spend that money on something much more modern, and get the benefit back from the fuel saving.
There was real snow too when I got off the ferry. Proper powdery stuff. I was going to enjoy the drive down to Yarmouth and the ferry over to Bar Harbor in Maine, wasn't I?
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