Apple Quest 109 km in one day

I wasn't about to  travel all the way from the south of Mexico without tasting fresh seasonal New Brunswick apples and they don't come better than directly from a tree.

McKay's U-Pick was the closest place I could find on Google Maps and it didn't look that far from the center of Saint John. All I needed was a map. A real map. Google Maps doesn't quite do the trick for an excursion like this. You lose your place and sense of perspective from zooming in and out on a small phone screen. A real map is steady, making it easier to find your last point of reference

 Finding a decent road map turned out to be a lost cause but I gave it my best.

I struck out first try at an Irving Station, formerly a place known for carrying all the different road maps you could want. "A what?" They haven't had maps for several years. The digital age has killed the demand.  I took a detour downtown. I had time.

At a Hallmark, the young clerk remembered what maps were right but asked me what I wanted one for.  Um, to navigate a road trip.

Near a book store (closed) I saw this wall of Saint John celebrities. Everyone knows Donald Sutherland, the bad guy from Hunger Games. Others are less likely to be familiar to the younger generation.  Some of them  I hadn't realized came from here. I'd always thought Stompin' Tom Connors was from P.E.I. but my father told me he grew up in an orphanage on the East Side.  

A smoking shelter outside the City Market.

This is what I finally came up with. There was a tear off  pad of these for free in a hotel lobby. Not much detail but good enough for a general sense of direction.

Lily Lake at Rockwood Park was peaceful and inviting.

It got warm.

I had all day so I chilled here for a while

That map wasn't much use in finding the ferry crossing but, after a pointless detour through UNBSJ, I was narrowing in.

There it was, ready to push off.. I was only 2 hours later than expected but I had all day.

                                     

With a name like Sea Dog Cove, I figured it might be worth a detour.

I decided to follow the inviting little trail another day. I'd already taken enough detours and breaks even if I did have all day.

Half an hour along the Kennebecasis River, I finally realized I'd missed a turn because there shouldn't have been a river on my right. Fortunately, I found a shortcut so Google Maps is not entirely useless but nowhere near as practical as a road map.  In order to enlarge the map enough to find one, I lost sight where the turn-off ended or whether it was direct or too winding country-style to attempt. 

The short cut turned out fine. By the time I finally reached the Milkish Inlet No. 1 covered bridge in Bayswater and checked my progress on the map, I realized I didn't have all day after all. It was a lot further than it appeared on the map and those detours and delays hadn't helped a bit.

By this time, I knew I would never make it back home before dark, whether I continued on or turned back. The question was would I return home with apples or without apples.

I wanted apples.

I had no confidence in the map or google anymore so I stopped to ask a man doing yardwork if I was still going in the right direction. He told me I was doing fine and couldn't possibly miss it.

He was wrong about the part about not missing it. I went right by that little sign the first time. It wasn't until I passed another little sign pointing back the way I had come that I knew.

There it was, finally, down a long steep gravel driveway. I'd made it.  And just in time.  They shut down at 5 pm and it was already 430.  Phew!

So fresh and yummy.

I got my apples!

Time to roll home.

Realizing how dark that country road I'd come down on was going to be after nightfall, I opted for crossing the river at the Harding's Point-Westfield ferry.  Whether it was shorter or longer, at least I'd be riding through the bedroom communities of Westfield and Grand Bay with houses and lights.

The ferry landing on the Westfield side was impressive.  There is a visitor centre (closed for the season) and a sheltered picnic table where I ate a couple of my apples and the last of my trail mix.

The coolest thing had to be this public bicycle pump with emergency bike repair tools dangling from metal cables.  I'm just glad I hadn't needed them but it was nice to know they were there.

So, I had about 30 minutes of fading daylight.  It was dark by the time I hit Grand Bay.  I missed the turnoff  to Acamac and ended up on a very dark highway, adding another 10 kms or so to the trip.  A lot of it was long dark hills and I was so glad to have accepted Dad's offer of bicycle lights.  At the time, I thought I would never need them.  I would just return home before dark.  I was so wrong. 

There were no lights and it was so dark.  How dark was it? I didn't always realize how fast (too fast) I was rolling down some long hills until headlights approaching behind me would light up the road and I found myself racing.  It was that dark I couldn't even judge the angle of descent.  

Sometimes I would think I saw the glow of the city over the horizon only to learn it was from approaching headlights heading the other direction. 

I finally rolled home a little after 10 pm.  It has been many years since I've covered so much distance in a single day and I was so glad to get back to a warm house.  I could have managed by myself.  I still had a tiny bit of reserve energy left in me but I was grateful when Dad heard me stumbling up the steps and opened the door for me.  I was as dead as the battery on my phone.  Somehow, Mom had a warm dinner on the table for me in 5 minutes.  

I wasn't very active the next day.

Exploring the West Side, Saint John, NB 2022: Dark history swept under a carpet

The excursion begins on the East Side of the Reversing Falls Bridge

Notice the park to the right on the opposite side of the river.  That is 
Wolastoq Park, formerly the site of Centracare, originally named The New Brunswick Lunatic Asylum, Saint John's own Arkham.  Now we have
this lovely park and information about the old hospital on the internet is quite scant. Some history will be painted over and forgotten. 

 

Highlights of the journey are in the video below.

https://youtu.be/IixdMNzxKOQ

I found a few old pictures on the net but not too much.  I couldn't find articles about how Centracare and other mental health institutions began closing in Canada, the U.S.  and other countries.  I remember at the time, that a lot of patients were released who weren't really prepared to take care of themselves.  They were in those hospitals for reasons after all. The quality of care in these institutions had been criticized for good reasons but closing them instead of investing in upgrades and reform didn't seem to be a practical answer unless the real purpose was only to keep more tax money in the pockets of the rich.   These were easily the most vulnerable people of society and easiest to write off as a lost cause without any of them putting up a fight.

 I remember reading how, in Toronto, former psychiatric patients tended to congregate in certain low-income neighborhoods and were easy prey to predators.  Who knows what became of them?  If they survived, perhaps they were the early settlers of Toronto's own Tent City (also abolished around 2004 -2005).  Waiting for a friend on the patio of Second Cup in downtown Toronto, a resident of Tent City (still standing at the time but not for long) dropped by to tell me several fantastic stories about the secret life of Toronto.  There were no tax funded hospitals to help out this poor demented soul.  He would survive the winter in a tent or whatever he managed to construct from cardboard boxes and other waste material, in a dangerous, often violent, community of outcasts like himself, or he wouldn't.

View from the hill on the West Side. 

 In this documentary, they are always careful not to show Centracare.  A corner appears for just a second and that is it.  Most times the camera shoots from this direction or the hospital is blocked by the Irving Pulp Mill.  

At the 20:39 mark, you can see they were using old film stock from the 70s as the old Irving Gas Station can be seen on the East Side.  That gas station blew up in 1974.  The explosion smashed windows from 5 miles away. Our neighbours ran out of their homes, thinking the basement furnaces were exploding.  My family slept through the event.  Again, this is another piece of Saint John history that seems to be disappearing into obscurity.  Below is an image of the aftermath and a link to the story.  Where does Saint John history go?  Doesn't the old newspaper have archives?

Some people recollect the event here.

aftermath | Very early in the year 1974, Saint John suffered… | Flickr

 

Wolastoq Park, where Centracare once stood.

Then

Now

There is no mention of Centracare anywhere.  The first rule is "Don't talk about Centracare!"

So, over the land that once housed mental patients before abandoning them in the 80's, we have all of these sculptures of more important Saint John people as opposed to, well yeah, the other people we prefer to forget.  That is so cold.  

A large broom factory would have blocked this view of the Pulp Mill but it has been demolished and forgotten too.

Martello Tower.  Closed for the season.

  Carleton Martello Tower National Historic Site (pc.gc.ca)                                      

Large views of the city from Martello Tower.  You can see the breakwater to Partridge Island from here. The church tower blocks the actual island.

It's one of those places that lots of people plan to visit but never do so I turned that way next.  Trusting my general sense of direction, I maneuvered through West Side residential streets to a dead end.  See the video.  Access to the breakwater was blocked by a chain link fence and some uninviting tanks reeking of poisonous smelling chemicals.  But I found the way soon enough, just not that day.

Partridge Island (Saint John County) - Wikipedia