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100 KILOMETRES
SACKVILLE: COLLEGE TOWN CACHET
Follow Hwy. 925 along the Fundy Coastal
Drive, southeast from Moncton to Sackville.
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| Mary Read/Design Studio |
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It's a short drive from Moncton to
Sackville, yet the communities are
worlds apart. Moncton is a hub of
New Brunswick's Acadian culture,
while Sackville is an English university
town. Moncton is attuned to the
powerful ebb and flow of the Fundy
tides; Sackville is as mellow as the
marsh that sits at its centre. But
behind Sackville's quiet facade is a
rich cultural life you can easily
unearth.
Sackville is made for walking.
Along its broad tree-lined streets and at
the century-old town centre, you'll find
galleries and craft shops, two historic
curiosities — the Sackville Harness Shop,
housed in an 1846 building, and the
Campbell Carriage Factory Museum — a
fine bookstore, a comfortable café and
a
gracious university campus. Mount Allison
University has the oldest fine-arts program
in Canada, and its focus on art, theatre
and music has been a major
influence on the town, which boasts
an impressive number of cultural
happenings for a community of
approximately 5,300 people.
Begin your culture course by
heading to the tourist information
centre to pick up a map of the
Sackville Centennial Arts Walk, a
90-minute walking tour that winds
past places celebrating the visual
arts. You can start your tour at the
Owens Art Gallery. The oldest
university gallery in Canada, it
opened in 1895 and is displaying
works from its 18th- and 19th-century
permanent collection during the
summer of 2006 (and every second summer thereafter)
at the Salon Hanging.
You will also visit the Fog Forest Gallery,
featuring artists and craftspeople of
Atlantic Canada, and The Craft Gallery, an
artisan-operated shop of local crafts. The
Struts Centre is a contemporary artist-run
facility offering exhibitions, performances,
workshops and screenings of regional and
national importance, while The Crofter has
fine crafts from Atlantic Canada.
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| Photo: Gilles Daigle/Photocanada.com |
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Evenings in Sackville are alive with
entertainment. The Live Bait Theatre is
known for its high-energy Maritime shows,
while the old Sackville Bandstand hosts the
local citizens' band, complete with tuba
and drums. A bit off the beaten track and
a little more edgy than the bandstand is
George's Roadhouse, where you might
catch live blues. A stop by Mel's Tea
Room, with its jukebox and mid-50s decor,
feels as if you've entered a time warp.
Spend the night at one of the historic
inns, such as the Marshlands Inn or the
Savoy Arms Bed & Breakfast. Visit the
Sackville Waterfowl Park at dawn and join
a chorus of marsh birds to greet the day.
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200 KILOMETRES
CAMPOBELLO ISLAND: A KINDER, GENTLER TIME
Follow Hwy. 1 to Sussex. Take the River Valley Scenic Drive west past Saint John,
then the Fundy Coastal Drive west via Hwy. 1 to St. George. Hop the ferry at Letete
to Deer Island, and transfer to the Deer Island ferry for Campobello Island.
Campobello
Island is a quaint fishing island with miles of
beaches. It's also a place with a princely
past and a rich sea presence. The three-hour
drive from Moncton to the
ferry at Letete takes you past farms
and forests, through old villages and
covered bridges and along the wild
coast of the Bay of Fundy. Once
you're on the ferry to Campobello,
your sea adventure begins.
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| Photo: Gilles Daigle/Photocanada.com |
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Campobello lies in the Bay of
Fundy, which is famous for its tides.
And, as the world's richest feeding
grounds for whales, this is one of
the best places on Earth to see
finback, minke, humpback and
endangered northern right whales.
The ferry ride may inspire you to book one
of the whale-watching trips available out of
Campobello. Before you do that, however,
you'll want to explore this island retreat.
The bracing air, rugged beauty and
stirring sea surrounding Campobello Island
must have been what attracted its most
famous residents: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
("FDR") and his wife Eleanor. The Roosevelts
were visitors to the island for decades and
eventually occupied their own "cottage"
every summer from 1909 to 1921. Built in
1897, the magnificent Arts and Crafts-style
home — with its 18 bedrooms, 7 fireplaces,
6 bathrooms and huge kitchen — sits on
1,133 hectares of unspoiled terrain. The
furnishings, which date from the 1880s to
the 1930s, span the time frame from FDR's
first Campobello trip to his last. The house
is filled with the minutiae of everyday life.
In the kitchen, for instance, mixing bowls
and utensils sit on the counter. The cottage is the centrepiece
of the Roosevelt
Campobello International Park and is open from the
Saturday following Victoria Day until late
October free of charge; the rest of the park
is open year-round.
A trip to Campobello is like a trip back
in time. Away from the stresses of urban
life, you can beachcomb, explore bogs
and lighthouses or hike scenic coastal
trails. Many of the trails connect the
Roosevelt Campobello International Park
with Herring Cove Provincial Park, which is
home to a nine-hole golf course and a fullservice
campground. To live the history,
book yourself a room at the Owen House,
which dates from 1835, or stay at the rustic
Lupine Lodge. (Note: The ferry starts
running in late June. You can also reach
the island by bridge via Lubec, Maine.)
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300 KILOMETRES
CAMPBELLTON: JOURNEY INTO THE MARITIME WOODS
Follow Hwy. 15 east to the Acadian Coastal Drive/Hwy. 11. Head north to Miramichi,
and then take Hwy. 8 to Bathurst and follow Hwy. 11 northwest to Campbellton.
The picturesque Sentier NB Trail winds its
way hundreds of kilometres through New
Brunswick. Built primarily on abandoned
railway lines, it is an all-season, multi-use
network enjoyed by hikers, cyclists and,
where permitted, horseback riders.
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| Photo: Gilles Daigle/Photocanada.com |
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You can join the Restigouche section of
this outstanding trail at the village of Tide
Head, just outside Campbellton, where it
runs 122 kilometres to Saint-Quentin. Tide
Head is just one of many points of entry
(or exit), so you can choose between an
adventure lasting a few hours or a multiday
outing where you can cook and camp
along the way. You can also cozy up at
one of the inns in Campbellton, Tide
Head, Kedgwick or Saint-Quentin.
Restigouche is the crown jewel of
the Sentier NB Trail. Stillness is your
constant companion, broken
occasionally by the sight and sound
of moose, foxes, eagles and bears.
The bulk of the trail cuts through
wilderness — following streams and
valleys into mountain ranges and
through evergreen and hardwood
forests — but its gently graded rail
bed is easy on hikers.
Southwest of Tide Head, you
enter a valley into the Appalachian
Mountains. This ancient, well-worn
range differs dramatically from the sharp,
snow-capped peaks of the Rockies but is
no less beautiful. Along the route, you'll
encounter the Upsalquitch River, one of
New Brunswick's finest sport-fishing rivers.
From the Upsalquitch bridge, you can
count the salmon swimming in the crystal-clear
waters below. The trail then crisscrosses
Grog Brook 17 times as it wends
its way south through the valley between
steep rock walls toward the village of
Kedgwick. At Saint-Martin-de-Restigouche,
some 20 kilometres before Saint-Quentin,
you leave the mountains and enter a
coniferous forest that eventually joins the
rolling farmlands of Saint-Quentin, the
maple capital of Atlantic Canada.
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