August 31, 2010

We had a nice day of a tour of the city and a quiet afternoon of R and R. Walt took a walk and I took a nap. We started the day with a bus tour of Saint John. After all of the driving we did yesterday and how difficult it is to drive in the city. They have very narrow streets with many dead ends. The city is along the Saint John River so it is a narrow strip thru the valley with refineries, a pulp mill, railroad and a large harbor.
 We are staying a Rockwood Park while in Saint John. It is one of Canada’s largest municipal parks. It has lakes, camping, a restaurant, golf course, horseback riding, wild blueberry picking, a zoo with a Siberian Leopard which was born in this zoo, and hiking trails. They also have 4 other city parks – 2 Kings parks and 2 Queens parks-plus other small parks. The city is also taking part in the Blooming City Program. This is when a city strives to bring flowers in the city in many way. They are a sister city to Portland Oregon. They did have flowers in the public areas and also a vegetable garden. There were no flowers around the houses in some areas because the houses were very close to each other and built right up to the sidewalks. There was a fire in the late 1800’s which leveled about 2/3’s of the city, so a law was passed to charge huge taxes to those who had large front yards. The reasoning was that the firemen did not want to run across large lawns to fight a house fire. Can you believe that??? Oh by the way the fire was started by wet hay in a barn.


We saw the Carleton Martello Tower which was built during the War of 1812 to monitor the harbor. It sat on a high hill in the city. When we were on our tour we also saw the City Market. It was a short 20 minutes to walk thru the market and check it out. They did have a fish market so we go some salmon. They packed it on ice and Walt enjoyed it this evening at supper.


The most popular tourist attraction in Saint John is the reversing falls. There are no falls as we think of falls like Niagara falls. The reversing falls located at the mouth of the Saint John River are created when at low tide the river descends into the ocean at the bottom of a 449 foot gorge. At slack tide the waters are quiet. Then, with the incoming tide, the ocean rises upstream through the chasm and causes huge violent turbulent waves of moving water. It is quite spectacular.


Trivia


The city of Saint John was discovered in the 1600’s by an explorer from France. He discovered the river and set up in the area on the feast day of Saint John, therefore named the river and the future city Saint John. The city has and unemployment rate of 6% and the average yearly income is $35,000. The housing is very simple and a huge old mansion just sold for 165,000 dollars. There very few huge single family homes. The town is pretty well controlled by the Irving Family. They own the rights to the lumber, oil, gas and newspapers/radio stations. The original Irving gentleman has died and now his two sons run the business. They are a strong force in this town.