Monday, along the St. John River

August 6th

Cable ferry, Westfield Point

"Uptown" at Saint John, during our breakfast at Cora's again, not very early in the morning, we watched the low cloud begin to lift, but had already booked a third night at the Hilton (at the special holiday weekend rate of $119 per night this was too good an opportunity to miss) and decided to drive around in the rental car for the rest of the day, exploring the lower reaches of the St. John River. Come to think of it, I ought to link this post to my River Diary blog.

As soon as we left the coast road out of town the sky above us was clear and blue: no sea mist beyond the immediate vicinity of the shore, and it was turning out to be much finer than forecast. Our first stop was at Westfield Point at a ferry station at the lower end of a wide stretch of river called Long Reach. The two ferry boats in operation here were operated by cables, a local invention from the 1900s. Its reliability is not perfect*, but in normal weather conditions it works fine. Originally, horses used to haul the cable around the drum, but now it's fully automatic.

* That accident report contains some very interesting information about the Westfield ferry, by the way.

Scenery seen from one of the ferries

Around the tourist information building in the car park, from which country music was being broadcast ––"...drifting too far from the shore ..." on fiddle and mandolin, for instance––several historic plaques told the story of this area. French (Acadian) settlers and British Loyalists had settled here, with co-operation from the native population. When the Loyalists arrived after the American War of Independence (ca. 1784) each family was granted an urban plot at Saint John plus a larger plot up-river. We drove through several of these little communities, hardly any of which had shops, lodgings or places where you could buy food, up the west side of Long Reach as far as Nerepis Marsh, the name meaning "place where the eating is good," presumably a reference to the ducks and fish that still live there.

The old church at Kingston

From the marsh, not finding any other ferry in the vicinity of Hampstead (as marked on my obsolete road map of the maritime provinces) and unwilling to drive as far as the bridge beyond Gagetown on this occasion, we did a U-turn and backtracked to the ferry we'd spotted at Evandale. I'd also spotted some parasols there that hinted at a place for lunch between our road and the river––the Evandale Resort, a riverside inn with mooring facilities for motorboats. After eating there we drove onto the ferry, crossing onto a sizeable peninsula between Long Reach and Belle Isle Bay, an inlet of the St. John. We got onto the wrong road, raising a cloud of dust, and had to turn around again. Someone was tending a magnificent vegetable plot on the hillside. Crossing the water on the longest of the cable ferries at Long Point where a spit of sand pointed into the lake we carried on to a place called Kingston––Westfield ... Hampstead ... Kingston: it sounds like a tour of greater London––where we came upon the oldest surviving Anglican church in New Brunswick, Trinity Church, clad in white clapboard siding. We parked for a pause at the General Store which is about as old as the church (1788), selling Irving Oil (as does every other roadside halt in NB), then drove down another country road back around many curves to the Westfield ferry again.

Sand Cove beach

Time to return to the hotel now, we thought, but we took a wrong turn for the third time and ended up at Sand Cove instead, near the Irving Nature Park where you can hammer at the rocks in search of fossils. The part of the beach we walked along had sandy cliffs eroded by rain; in the distance we could see a container ship anchored out at sea.

After another supper at A Taste of Egypt we walked further through the atmospheric streets of old Saint John, through a rough area with pawn shops and liquor stores. In a park square stood a lonely statue of Samuel de Champlain (who named the Rivière St. Jean) that clearly didn't fit with the statues of Thomas Carleton and Sir Samuel Tilley in King's Square further uphill.

People apart, coming together (detail) by Hooper

The former docklands were being gentrified, it seemed, with new waterfront condos for sale and souvenir shops for cruise passengers. There used to be an imposing customs house in this part of town, a fine piece of architecture to judge from the old photos; it had been torn down in the 1960's to be replaced by concrete blocks with no curves to them; what a shame. However, more recent buildings have given the city quite a stylish, modern look, and the realistic sculptures of townsfolk by John Hooper, such as the group of People Waiting outside Barbour's General Store, are great fun.

People Waiting, by John Hooper (plus me)

Grand Manan to Ste Flavie

Written in a notebook on Tuesday evening, when we couldn't get the Internet connection to work.

We'd booked a room at Marcel Gagnon's Centre d'Art and Auberge here in Ste. Flavie weeks ago so were obliged to arrive today. It's another place with a sea view from the bedrooms, this time including the artist's Grand Rassemblement of concrete figures wandering up onto shore or being submerged in the waves.

There's amazing clarity in the air here as well. We flew through a "mild cold front", hardly noticeable but for a few bumpy clouds and a clearing of the haze that lay over the New Brunswick coast when we took off across the island of Grand Manan to the north, with one last glimpse of the Swallowtail light, fishing weirs and cliffs. We crossed the open water parallel to the route taken by our friends in the ferry on Sunday, with a view of The Wolves, small islands in the Grand Manan channel. Even hazier views inland though we could make out the military practice area south of Gagetown and as we approached our destination we passed a series of ponds in the muskeg magically full of cloud reflections that made for some good photos (appearing here soon). Joining left base in the circuit for "Freddie" (Fredericton) we saw the elegant bridge over the St John River, and then we were down for a late breakfast in the terminal building. 70 nautical miles.

The second leg of our journey was 180 nautical miles, east of the St John River on a line almost directly north (i.e. magnetic north) from Fredericton to Mont Joli. This route took us over some very wild country where the only sign of human interference was a maze of loggers' tracks in the hilly forests. There wasn't much on the map either though I identified the Tobique River, the Kedgewick River and the Restigauche in the valleys in the vicinity of the Quebec / New Brunswick border. We could hear other pilots coming into Charlo on the Baie des Chaleurs, but I never spotted the bay for the hills that were now covered with dark blobs of shadow as the clouds thinned out. They finally disappeared as the St Laurence estuary came in sight with the sunny rolling countryside--fields of barley-- on its south bank. That's where we were headed.

While Chris was tying PTN down and having her refuelled I went into the Mont Joli terminal and rented a car for our two days at the "Gateway to the Gaspésie". We drove to our lodging then back up the hill to retrieve the SPOT device that Chris suddenly remembered leaving on PTN's nose, and so on up the road a couple of kilometres into Mont Joli which is liberally decorated with frescoes depicting past times, called Les Murmures de la Ville. I like that name. We had a snack at the railway hotel restaurant, rather a grand place considering that the Montreal-Gaspé train only stops here twice daily, both times in the middle of the night.

During the rest of the afternoon I drove us to the edge of Rimouski, discovering the Pointe-au-Père Historic Site where were three tourist attractions, the 2nd tallest lighthouse in Canada, a museum about the wreck of the Empress of Ireland (a Titanic like disaster) and a naval submarine... these to be described in the next blog because we visited them on the morrow.

We watched the sun go down behind the distant shore, at which Chris made hissing noises, then ate an excellent supper at a window table, where we could gaze at the afterglow.