New Brunswick Transportation History - International Institute

Distance and Time
One aspect of geography is distance, and the time it takes to move produce or people from point A to point B. That, of course, depends on the speed of travel, which in turn depends on the mode of transportation. Walk, ride, sail, the ease with which one can move from A to B may well influence how A or B develops and how people’s economic life and jobs expand or shrink. In 18th and much of 19th century New Brunswick, water was not only the easy way to travel for much of the year, but was integral to the shipping and timber economy. Rivers and harbours along two very different coastlines (coastlines separated by the spreading barrier of Nova Scotia) developed in very different ways, and connected their communities to different neighbours.

Rival Towns
We have seen how, where a wide river like the Mirimichi flows into a bay, and ocean-going ships can sail upriver with cargoes, several rival settlements may grow up and flourish. This was also true of St. Andrews and St. Stephen at one end of the Bay of Fundy and Sackville and Dorchester at the other end. The Bend had tidal bore problems and Moncton would not develop as an urban centre until the railways made it “The Hub of the Maritimes.”

Distribution Point
Saint John was really the only large port where sailing up into the river was a problem; the Reversing Falls saw to that. Though the river itself was navigable, the towns and settlements along it could not easily reach the ocean port. It was easier to unload cargo (timber, deal), move it a mile or two, and reload onto an ocean-going ship, or unload the sugar, refine it in Saint John, and send it up-river on a river boat. Saint John became the distribution centre for the whole St. John River valley. However:


 * Saint John’s sway over its own river and Bay of Fundy area by no means extended to the province’s north shore since the city was not the seat of government it could not enjoy the pervasive influence of a centre of political authority. Nor did it really exercise social or cultural headship, which remained with the genteel society of little Fredericton up-river.

It was, however, a major centre of shipbuilding, as well as the only New Brunswick Port of Registry for all shipyards along the Bay of Fundy Mirimichi served the Atlantic coast.

Shipbuilding
Wooden ships with canvas sails—a good introduction to this seafaring world is by Charles A. Armour and Thomas Lackey, Sailing Ships of the Maritimes: An Illustrated History, 1750-1925, which gives details of ship riggings, registrations, biographical accounts of most shipbuilders and many masters, together with a superb collection of ship portraits.

At mid-century (think 1851 census) ships were built along the east coast as Louise Manny records in Ships of Kent County and Ships of the Mirimichi. Around the Bay of Fundy, Esther Clark Wright’s The Ships of St. Martins, E.W. Larracey’s The First Hundred which includes a “List of Vessels Built at The Bend” (pages 234-241), 56 in all, of varying tonnage. Reg. Bowser’s Dorchester Island and Related Areas (1986) includes lists of the ships built there from 1805-1857, and at the later Hickman yard 1867-1882. Lists of the Palmer ships launched at Dorchester, and of Chapman ships built at Rockland have not been published as yet. However, for an insight into the industry as it affected the people you are researching, Esther Clark Wright’s Saint John Ships and Their Builders (1976) is the place to start. In some 35 pages you will find a general rundown of the industry, after which there is a wealth of biographical data on the builders. She reminds us of all the subsidiary trades and jobs:


 * … caulkers, blockmakers, fitters, riggers, sailmakers, carvers of figureheads. There were two or three small steam vessels which were employed to tow sailing ships out to sea, and also bring vessels launched in the outports to Saint John to be fitted and rigged. (page 15)

She also discusses seasonal employment, and the ups and downs in the world economy, and so in the demand for ships that caused hardship to workers.

Things Change
The Historical Atlas, Volume II, Plate 39 “Ships and Shipping, 1863-1914”, gives some idea of the rise and fall of shipbuilding and shipping as a major factor in the Maritime Provinces’ economy. The serious economics of shipping and shipbuilding are examined by Eric W. Sager with Gerald E. Panting in Maritime Capital: The Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914, (Montréal &amp; Kingston; McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990). T.W. Acheson’s “The Great Merchants and Economic Development in St. John 1820-1850”, examines the wealthy merchants’ role, criticising their shortsighted fixation in the 1840s and 50s on the traditional sawn timber and wooden ships economy and for failing to participate in early industrial development.

Alas, steel hulls were more durable than wooden ships; steam engines were faster than horses, more reliable than wind and sail. Saint John had a number of secondary iron and steel firms, “which for decades had possessed the capability of manufacturing complete steamships and engines, and a labour force skilled at working in both wood and iron” (pages 431-2). But in Great Britain there were larger smelters and steel mills, very skilled workers and “while it had once been economic to build wooden ships in New Brunswick instead of England,” the British iron and steel capacity made wooden ships increasingly uneconomic. “The effects came gradually. A peak year for Saint John yards was 1873, and as late as 1888, 2,000 men were still employed there”. (Careless, op. cit. page 255)

The Stage-coach
A lot of the “ships” built around New Brunswick were actually small schooners used by their owners for coastal trade and travel. Transportation by water was easier than overland, but it depended on wind and weather. As settlements grew, roads were built and by 1836 a trip by stage-coach from Saint John to Amherst, Nova Scotia, via The Bend, took two long days with an overnight stop at Petitcodiac—if the weather cooperated and all went well. The Historical Atlas II, Plate 25, shows coach service to Fredericton as well, and by 1850 coach and boat lines served most towns.

The First Railroads c.1850
Look at Plate 26 in Vol. II of the Historical Atlas of Canada: “The Railway Age, 1834-1891’, or better still, study Plates 3 to 7 in Lines of Country which show how the network of rail lines developed in New Brunswick. The first proposal for a railway was made in 1830; a line to run from St. Andrews to Québec City. The survey was started, but then the Ashburton treaty of 1842 gave much of the territory it would run through to the State of Maine. So much for that idea. It was revived, modified, and a line was started in 1851. By 1855 40 km. (25 miles) was in operation, by 1868 it had reached Woodstock, and eventually made it to Houlton, Maine, but went no further.

The European &amp; North American Railway
Meanwhile Saint John interests were involved in plans to build a railway which would link the Bay of Fundy port to Shediac. They also hoped to continue the line west into Maine to Portland. By then, Portland was connected to Boston, and by July 1853 to Montréal (to Longeuil on the south shore actually) by the St. Lawrence &amp; Atlantic (later the Grand Trunk [GTR]).

The European and North American Railway, ran first from Shediac Bay (actually Point du Chene) to Moncton. Built between 1853 and 1857 it joined the ships and ferries crossing Northumberland Strait from Prince Edward Island, to Moncton and the Bay of Fundy. Because shipping from Moncton was limited by the tidal bore, the line was quickly (1860) extended to Saint John. A connection to Fredericton was established in 1870, Bangor Maine in 1871, and Halifax in 1873.

Travel in 1867
When A.G. Gilbert traveled From Montréal to the Maritime Provinces in 1867, to have a look at the new partners in Confederation, he traveled by train from Bonaventure Station in Montréal to Portland, Maine, where he boarded a steamer for Saint John, with a brief stop in Eastport. “The majority of the passengers were sea-sick … Rich and poor, high and low, all leveled by a common misery.“ (page 11) At Saint John he changed to the steamer “Empress”, sailed to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where after a two hour wait, he took a train to Halifax. Here he celebrated the first of July, and after looking over Nova Scotia took a train to Pictou from which the “Princess of Wales” sailed to Shediac, with a brief stop at Charlottetown, P.E.I. at Shediac the New Brunswick Railroad ran down the wharf and passengers had only to step from the boat to the train to Saint John:


 * No one who goes by Halifax should think of returning to either St. John or Portland by any route but by this; the journey by rail and boat is as pleasant as could be desired, with the advantage of a visit to Prince Edward Island, and a sight of its beautiful harbour and scenery. (page 59)

He saw the sights of Saint John, admired the ladies, took the same steamer back to Portland, and so home to Montréal by train. Not until 1890 would the CPR Short Line take passengers directly from Saint John to Montréal.

However, by 1867 it was agreed that the new Dominion government would ensure a railway line be built to connect the Grand Trunk Railway (G.T.R.), which ran to Rivière du Loup, with the Halifax-Truro line completed in 1858. The Intercolonial Railroad (I.C.R.)would connect the Maritimes to the Canadas; no more sea-sick steamer trips to Portland.

Sandford Fleming (1827-1915), later Sir Sandford Fleming, directed all the surveys, supervised the construction, and kept copious notes. The route had to be all Canadian, so went directly up the Atlantic coast, just enough inland to make it easier to bridge the rivers, then through the Matapedia Valley to the south shore of the St. Lawrence and so to Rivière-du-Loup. Here the I.C.R. authority ended and the G.T.R. began.

The Intercolonial Railway
 Canadian Rail,  No. 483 (July-August 2001), is devoted to the Intercolonial Railway, celebrating the 125th anniversary of the date, 1 July 1876, when the line from Halifax to the Grant Trunk was finally open for its entire length.

The final gap had been in the Matapedia valley, and several articles detail some of the politics and much of the engineering. There are also some wonderful photographs of passenger car interiors, and construction sites.

The line in New Brunswick runs through Westmorland, Kent, Northumberland, Gloucester and Restigouche Counties, and if you look at the pictures of the line and its bridges, under construction, one can almost hear the politicians shouting “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!!” There was no heavy mechanical earth-moving machinery in 1867-1876, only men, and teams of horses. Shirley E. Woods also shows and tells about some of the work in Cinders &amp; Saltwater: The Story of Atlantic Canada’s Railways (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1992).

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