New Brunswick

[Eastern Canada, continued]

The lighthouse at the tip of Ile Miscou.

Frederick Town, New Brunswick, Canada

When we crossed over the border into Canada, we pressed the button which changes the dashboard instrument panel to metric. Sarah, who is still doing the driving, won't drive the speed limit on the Trans Canada Highway. Although the speeds in miles per hour are no higher than what she has already driven, she's not comfortable driving at triple digit kilometer speeds.

As in Maine and most of the U.S., Fredericton is having unusually high temperatures. The weather aside, we had a lot to do here. Fredericton is small and visitor-friendly.

One can easily walk the entire downtown and historic area. Beginning at the Visitor Centre in the old, but still used, City Hall, one can take a free 90 minute guided walk around the city. On the walk one can see and learn about many buildings and other places. The tour does not go into anything but the historic cemetery. We took the guided walk and also visited some of the buildings. Other free things for tourists are: parking, concerts, & building tours.

Fredericton, named for Frederick, Prince of York, the second son of George III, is the capitol of New Brunswick. We visited the Provincial Legislative Assembly Building, but it is in session only from November to June. We visited the chamber of the City Council, which meets twice a month in City Hall. They weren't in session that day. As no man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session, it looks like Frederictonians are safe for a while.

After the American Revolution, many who remained loyal to the British crown left the U.S. and went to New Brunswick and founded Frederick Town where they were given tracts of land. The large homes some of them built in Fredericton, as the town soon became known, are like those that they left behind on the plantations of Georgia and the Carolinas, but closer together. They ultimately relocated to the Loyalist Burial Ground.

The military buildings erected by the British in their Canadian colony are currently museums. We had a guided tour of the York-Sunbury Historical Society Museum housed in the former Officers' Quarters. Although one can see the museum without a guide (same cost...cheap), many of the exhibits aren't extensively explained; the guided tour makes the visit much more worthwhile.

Here come the guards....

Twice daily on the grassy plaza outside of the Officers' Quarters' is the changing of the guard. The 'guards' are in the red tunics and expeditionary helmets of the 19^th century British forces.

...and there go the guards.

Maxwell Aiken (who, when knighted, took the name Beaverbrook from a place near his New Brunswick home) was a patron of Fredericton who donated much time and money to Fredericton. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery has several paintings by Salvador Dali, Beaverbrook's friend. Other buildings with the Beaverbrook name are the hotel, ice skating rink, and theatre. As you might imagine, Lord Beaverbrook had bucks. (Newspapers) There is a statue of him in the parade grounds adjacent to the Officers' Quarters. He was present when the statue was unveiled.

Fredericton is a college town and, as such, had a wide selection of ethnic restaurants: Brazilian, Caribbean, Mexican, Pakistani, etc. We tried several; I have the stains on my shirt to prove it.

The only synagogue in Fredericton is the Orthodox 'Sgoolai Israel.' It was built in 1961. The Jewish community here predates that.

A peck of pipers on parade.

The New Brunswick Highland Games and Scottish Festival was in Fredericton at the same time we were. We saw the bagpipers parade down the main street and attended a concert of Celtic music (without bagpipes). When the parade was over, we had seen and heard as many pipers as we cared to. We left the concert after the different tunes started to sound alike; they did, however, have different names, but in a Celtic tongue. Needless to say, we didn't attend the festival: a lot of which consisted of competing piper bands. Also, neither of us wanted to taste haggis nor spend a lot of time watching men toss telephone poles, a traditional Scottish sport.

Fredericton is Canada's first free wireless city with 'fred e-zone' which currently covers downtown, shopping malls, and city-owned parks and arenas. We used it and it works.

Acadian Peninsula

We left Fredericton and headed to the north east corner of New Brunswick, the Acadian Peninsula, which is still populated by the French Canadians who date their ancestry back to the time that this was the French colony of Acadia. Most of the French settlers (Acadians) were expelled by the British. Of those that weren't killed, some relocated to French-controlled Louisiana and became the Cajuns; others languished in warehouses in Britain for years before finally making their way back to Acadia.

New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province. Official signs are in both English and French, but not here in the Acadian Peninsula: French-only signs can be seen on the streets.

We followed the Miramichi River, with its salmon and logging history, to Miramichi, the Irish capital of Canada. From the mouth of the Miramichi we followed the coastal Acadian Trail which goes through picturesque fishing villages and towns. With much seafood served at home, there are few seafood restaurants for tourists. Some common local restaurants are Chinese, fried chicken, and Subway. [There are five Subways in Miramichi, a city of 12,000.]

Miramichi has the boyhood home of Lord Beaverbrook and his ashes in a bust in the town square.

The small islands of Lameque and Miscou jut into the Gulf of St. Laurence at the extreme northeast corner of New Brunswick. They are known as the 'Ecotourism Islands.' There are extensive peat bogs here and the sale of peat is a major industry along with fishing. There are many small commercial fishing/lobstering boats in the local harbors.

Sarah and the minstrel.

The weekend that we stayed on Lameque was the overlap of two festivals; the Peat Bog Festival and the Baroque Music Festival. Decisions, decisions.... We attended one of the activities of the Baroque Music Festival at which a costumed 'minstrel' told stories about and demonstrated many instruments used by minstrels from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. You could say that much of the stories was lost in translation as it was all in French: We appeared to be the only non-francophones in the audience. We did, however, get the gist of some of what was said and enjoyed seeing and hearing the instruments, some of which, like the hurdy-gurdy, that we had never seen before.

We drove most of the roads on these small islands seeing the bogs, forests, meadows and numerous small villages as well as the lighthouse which marks the entrance to Chaleur Bay, home to the major fishing fleet of New Brunswick Acadian Coast.

The fishing must be good: The quaint spare homes in the picturesque fishing villages that were used by generations of fishermen have been replaced by fancier modern homes over the past two or three decades.

To see the next portion of this trip, Quebec, click here.

Down East

Sarah atop Cadillac Mountain with the city of Bar Harbor and the Porcupine Islands in the background.

We spent a day looking at the outside of the Newport (R.I.) mansions as we traveled north to Maine. We saw the homes of the fabulously wealthy families of the past who summered here such as the Vanderbilts. We also saw the mansions of those who are merely rich. As my leg was giving me trouble from an injury I got shortly before we left, we didn't take any of the mansion tours. As we didn't want trouble with the police, we didn't go into any of the other homes either.

We did go to see the Touro Synagogue which is the oldest existing synagogue in the U.S. The first, in NYC, was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. Other than its antiquity, this synagogue is famous for its letter from newly elected president George Washington which contains the phrase describing the fledgling United States of America “...which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance....”

We couldn't see the outside of the building because it was shrouded in plastic for renovations. We signed up for the weekly 'hard hat' tour of the inside, but the contractor didn't show up. We got a talk and our money back.

Sarah has been doing the driving (my leg, remember). She has been doing a generally good job, but on the country roads in Maine she won't pass slower cars. I've been trying to get her to understand that it's okay to pass on these roads: That's why they make air bags.

We toured Bar Harbor, Maine for several days. While here we visited Acadia National Park which makes up a large part of Mount Desert Island. The granite summit of Cadillac Mountain rises to just over 1,500 feet which makes it the highest point on the eastern seaboard.

It is claimed here that the first rays of the rising sun in the U.S. first touch the summit of Cadillac Mountain because it is the highest point on the east coast. Some Maine communities that are at lower elevation but further east dispute that claim. It has yet to be resolved.

In any case, the claim pertains to the contiguous states only as some of the Aleutian Islands, which are western Alaska, are on the western side of the International Date Line and are thus the easternmost part of the U.S. They get sunrise most a day ahead of Maine.

We drove the three mile road to the summit and wandered around getting good views of the national park, Bar Harbor, and the numerous small islands which dot the Atlantic off of coastal Maine.

I never owned a Chevrolet, so I never had the opportunity to drive my Chevy to the levee. I did have a GMC, which is identical to the Chevy except for the grille and name plate. I drove my GMC to the levee; maybe I get part credit. In Acadia, I drove my Cadillac up Cadillac Mountain, but, as far as I know, there is no song about that.

BTW: Cadillac Mountain is named for Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the person given the area by Louis XV. Cadillac, the person, went further west and founded the city of Detroit, Michigan.

While in Acadia N.P., we took tea at the Victorian 'Jordan Pond House' on the shore of, where else, Jordan Pond. The Jordan Pond House is world famous for their ice cream and pop-overs. As we've never heard of this place outside of this area, they must only be world famous on Mt. Desert Island.

I was not thrilled: The ice cream wasn't bad, but I've had better. As for the pop-overs, they consist of air surrounded by a thin layer of fried dough. When I first saw them, I thought that they were really large muffins and worth the money. Imagine my surprise when I picked one up. At least I save a lot of calories. The stuff was pricey and the wait was long. The last time we were here, I probably said, “Never again.” I said it again this year; I'll probably forget again.

In the park and in town are divisions of the Abbe Museum which has a collection of Indian artifacts from the area dating as far back as 13,000 years. The oldest item is a clovis spear point which was named for Clovis, New Mexico where the first of this kind of stone point was uncovered. The concept, it seems, spread far and wide. The clovis point is often given credit for the disappearance of large mammals in North America. It's sort of the AK-47 of the paleo-Indian.

While on MDI, we also visited the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory which does research into genetic diseases using cold water fish. There was a brief lecture and, for the kids, a touch tank. They had two bright blue lobsters in a tank. They are considered very rare. I had never seen one before, now I've seen two. You can't touch those.

To see the next portion of this trip, New Brunswick, click here.