Recreation and Places to Visit

New Brunswick offers numerous recreational opportunities related to its natural environment and cultural traditions. Many visitors are attracted to the province’s forests, rivers, beaches, and many parks. All seasons have something to offer vacationers. The fishing season opens in spring, and the province’s salmon streams—especially the Miramichi—are particularly well known. In summer, resorts flourish along the beaches of the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while hikers and campers explore the northern woods. Autumn brings hunters to the province’s acres of game country, where deer is the principal quarry. In winter ski enthusiasts flock to northern resorts such as Sugarloaf, located in Campbellton.

New Brunswick has two national parks. Fundy National Park, opened in 1948, is located between Saint John and Moncton on the Bay of Fundy. It offers camping facilities and cottages for visitors who come to enjoy its forests, lakes, streams, and ocean beaches. Kouchibouguac National Park on Northumberland Strait, established in 1969, offers campsites, trails, windswept dunes and beaches, and waters rich with fish.

New Brunswick is home to many historic sites and museums. Fort Beauséjour, near Sackville, includes the site of a fort built by the French in the 18th century and later used by the Acadians when they were under British attack. The Village Historique Acadien (Acadian Historic Village), at Caraquet, re-creates the Acadian way of life in northeast New Brunswick. Kings Landing Historical Settlement, near Fredericton, focuses on pioneer life in the Saint John River Valley. Also in the valley, at Hartland, is the world’s longest covered bridge, which was built in 1901 and spans 391 m (1,282 ft) over the Saint John River. Popular museums include the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John; the forestry and woods museums at Kedgwick in the north and at Boiestown in central New Brunswick; and marine museums at Saint Andrews in the south and Shippagan in the northeast. There are also many local museums throughout the province.

On Campobello Island, in the Bay of Fundy, is the summer home of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945). It is maintained as Roosevelt Campobello International Park by the Canadian and U.S. governments and includes facilities for small conferences. Other popular attractions include the Trappist monastery at Rogersville; Magnetic Hill near Moncton, where vehicles appear to roll uphill because of an optical illusion; and the rocks at Hopewell Cape, fantastic shapes of sandstone carved by the tides of the Bay of Fundy.

Natural Regions

New Brunswick is a part of the Appalachian region, a geographic zone that runs almost the entire length of eastern North America. The highest lands in New Brunswick are located on a plateau that dominates the northwest of the province and provides headwaters for several river systems. At the center of this region is the highest peak of the province, Mount Carleton, which has an elevation of 820 m (2,690 ft). In central and eastern New Brunswick are gently rolling hills. A maritime plain slopes to the sea in the north and east. On the southern coast, a line of steep hills, called the Caledonia Highlands and Kent Hills, drop to tidal marshes and the sea. In the southwest a lowland plain extends inland from the coast.

Even in lowland areas the landscape of New Brunswick varies considerably. Numerous rivers and streams have cut deeply into the surface, creating rough terrain that is difficult to traverse. Everywhere the land shows the effects of ancient glaciers, which covered New Brunswick during the last ice age. A thick mantle of sandy materials deposited by glaciers covers most of the province. In the lowlands, glacial deposits have created a large number of lakes and swamps.

Rivers and Lakes

Because of its generally abundant precipitation, New Brunswick has an extensive network of rivers. The largest is the Saint John River, 673 km (418 mi) long, which originates in New Brunswick’s northwestern borderlands and flows south to the Bay of Fundy. The Saint Croix in the west and the Petitcodiac in the southeast also empty into the Bay of Fundy. Other major rivers include the Restigouche, the Nepisiguit, and the Miramichi, which originate in the northern plateau and flow north and east to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The rivers of New Brunswick are one of the province’s most important geographic features and have shaped much of its development. They provided the primary means of early transportation and opened access to the thickly forested interior lands. Once used extensively for log drives and steamboat routes, the rivers are increasingly important for fishing, boating, recreation, and hydroelectric development. All of the province’s major cities are located on rivers, as are most of the smaller settlements.

Grand Lake, the largest lake in New Brunswick, is in the lowlands, east of Fredericton. Most other lakes are located in the northern and southwestern parts of New Brunswick.

Coastline

The coastline of New Brunswick is broken by many deep bays, inlets, and estuaries. All of New Brunswick is within 200 km (124 mi) of the ocean. As a result, marine-based activities remain prominent in the economic and social life of the province.

Chaleur Bay (Baie des Chaleurs) to the north is one of the major inlets on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the south is the Bay of Fundy, which is noted for some of the world’s highest tides. Other large bays are Passamaquoddy, Miramichi, and Nepisiguit bays. Chignecto Bay and its arm, Cumberland Basin, is also a significant body of water.

The exceptionally high tides in the 150-km- (90-mi)-long Bay of Fundy produce a series of spectacular natural phenomena. The bay is narrow, especially in its headwaters area, where waters entering it from the North Atlantic Ocean are bottled up. As a result, the variation between high tides and low tides normally runs from 10 to 15 m (30 to 50 ft). However, spring tides, or unusually high tides, raise the water level by as much as 18 m (60 ft). The Saint John and Petitcodiac rivers are especially affected by the bay. On the Saint John River the result is the famous Reversing Falls, where the force of the incoming tide reverses a series of low waterfalls where the river meets the sea. The water then rushes uphill in a tidal wall against the normal flow of the falls, appearing to defy gravity. On the Petitcodiac River near the city of Moncton, high tides also produce a tidal bore (crested wave). There the waters of the incoming tide rush in with such speed and force that they enter the river as a solid wall as much as 2 m (6 ft) high. The vigorous tidal activity in the Bay of Fundy helps keep its ports, most notably Saint John, ice-free in winter.

Museums

The New Brunswick Museum at Saint John includes collections dedicated to heritage, history, fine arts, humanities, and natural science. Founded in 1842 as a private museum, it is the oldest continuing museum in Canada. It became the provincial museum in 1930. The Miramichi Natural History Museum in Chatham is devoted to wildlife and local history. At the Village Historique Acadien, in Caraquet, visitors can view the culture and life of early Acadian settlers. Fredericton is home to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, which was donated by Lord William Beaverbrook, a noted British statesman and newspaper publisher. One of Canada’s major galleries, the museum includes many important works by British and Canadian painters.

Source: MSN Encarta: Online Encyclopedia