The Cruise: New Brunswick, the Bay of Fundy and the case of the reversing waterfall

Caves on beach at Bay of Fundy

Day 8 arrived, and Barbara and I splurged on room service coffee, tea, oatmeal and yogurt, watching the sun swell from the Atlantic horizon, adding color to the gray scale of dawn.

The good ship Anthem of the Seas had arrived in the night at Canada's third-largest port and largest ship-builder, St. John, New Brunswick. Of greater interest to us, however, was the Bay of Fundy, home to the world's highest tides . . . and the prospect of seeing the St. John River reverse its course, and its falls flow backward with the Atlantic pushing into the bay with such force that the tides rise more than 40 feet during a roughly six-hour cycle.

Sue: best guide ever

Our colonial dress-clad, moose hat-wearing guide, Sue, was proud of her Scottish-Irish heritage, and an avuncular, (fast) walking encyclopedia of facts about her "town" of 67,000 souls.

Historically, St. John's is Canada's first incorporated city; when the British lost the American Revolution, it also became refuge and new home for loyalists fleeing the fledgling U.S.A.; riots in the 1840-60 era, between Protestant Scots, Anglican Brits and an influx of Irish Catholics were rampant; and the Fire of 1877 blackened 40 percent of the city.

Today, St. John is a city amid revitalization downtown, and slow, considered suburban growth further out. It seems, with its garden-quality medians, clean streets and thriving arts community -- and some uncharacteristic (these days) community pride -- a great place to live.

One (I suppose) tartan-wearing fly in the chowder would be its high tax rates. The Canadian government's social welfare and single-payer national health insurance comes with a price, and the Province and municipality add their own demands. All told, more than 50 percent in taxes on income, Sue told us.

As for the culinary brand of chowder, we had the best we ever tasted at the tiny Bay of Fundy village  of St. Martins. Then we took a long walk on the beach to some ancient caves; nearby colorful fishing boats rested on wooden cradles in the low-tide mud, awaiting the rising of the inbound Atlantic to get them afloat.

Our Irish balladeer

Back in St. John, we stopped at an Irish pub, packed with customers and welcomed as guests with glasses of golden,  Moosehead lager while a middle-aged Irish balladeer sang folk songs imported from the Emerald Isle itself.  (Sue, fueled by her own ale and her moose-antlers hat firmly affixed to her gray locks, laughed and danced behind our Hibernian crooner.)

The outing concluded with the promised incoming high tide. And sure enough, there it was: the St. John River reversing its course, its many waterfalls disappearing to flow upstream as the Bay of Fundy swelled.


So, sometimes, boys and girls, water does run uphill.

And that is kind of encouraging for those of us unwilling enlisted by the unrelenting passage of time within the ranks of the malodorous, yet revered Scots Order of Auld Fairts.

(*Next: Back in the Big Apple, on the way home)

The Cruise: On countering a year of loss, with celebration of life

Death and loss had become an unwelcome companion in 2019. First my father, then three months later, my mother.

Never mind that for both -- one afflicted with severe arthritis and dementia at 96, the other with Alzheimer's and in a near vegetative status at 91 -- the end of life on this planet was a blessing.

It was still . . . death. It was emptiness, where once resided the breath of parents who had loved unconditionally for 66 of my years on Earth.

While I firmly believe we will be reunited in God's light and love, But until then,  I must live in the here and now. And now, they are gone.

So, having saved up for several years, Barbara and I booked a 10-day cruise along the Northeast Coast, from New York City to Boston, Portland and Bar Harbor, Maine, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, in Canada.

We chose to break the cycle of mourning with celebration of life, of seeing places and people we had never seen before.

New Jersey, New York and Boston were fascinating for all the usual reasons -- their mere size, density, skyscrapers, and historicity. And, they were confirmation that we would never want to live there . . . and underscored our appreciation for less crowded, more amiable and beautiful for raw outdoor variety of mountains, forests, rivers and deserts of the West.

I'm going to take my time recounting our cruise and excursions over the coming several blogs.

It is a time of life, and set of experiences, worth tasting in full.

Stay tuned.