What New Brunswick does have is an affinity for the quirky, an affection for the unusual and the offbeat. On a recent four-day trip, a sampling of those oddities proved there is reason to pause and take a closer look at this often-underappreciated Atlantic Province .
The attractions have names like Reversing Falls, Magnetic Hill, the Tidal Bore, and the flowerpot rocks of Hopewell Cape. And if that's not enough, there's the world's largest lobster sculpture.
St. Stephen, the gateway to New Brunswick, lies just across the St. Croix River from Calais, Maine, a comfortable six-hour drive (about 330 miles) from Boston. On the way, keep a lookout for American bald eagles and moose on Route 9, the wild, sparsely populated, so-called Airline Road from Bangor to the border.
Once across the river, where a billboard proudly proclaims St. Stephen as the home of Don Sweeney , a former Boston Bruin and Harvard University hockey stalwart, the ambience instantly adopts a Canadian accent. Highway signs post distances in kilometers, and French translations are the norm.
The plush Victorian resort town of St. Andrews by-the-Sea is nearby, but its landscaped lawns, waterside golf course, and quaint downtown is far from odd. On the contrary. Think of a cross between Newport, R.I., and Great Britain, where fine dining at The Fairmont Algonquin hotel mixes with bracing, crashing surf on Passamaquoddy Bay. Gracious, exhilarating, and elegant.
But St. Andrews, a sanctuary for Loyalists who fled the rebellious American colonies, is a digression from the bizarre. Continue along Provincial Highway 1 to St. John, the oldest incorporated city in Canada, where the head-scratching allure of the Reversing Falls awaits.
Located where the 420-mile-long St. John River meets the harbor, the curiosity gets its name from a natural phenomenon that is linked with the world's highest tides in the nearby Bay of Fundy. Here the falls spill into the harbor through a narrow, rock-walled gorge at low tide, but then double back on themselves as the water rises.
