Moncton Tour

Moncton stretches along the Petitcodiac River in roughly east/west direction; its three main streets similarly run more or less east west. This driving tour points out a few somewhat idiosyncratic highlights along them.

As you come east along Main Street from Dieppe, the bridge across Hall's Creek marks the beginnings of the oldest part of Moncton. In the late 1800's to early 1900's the riverbank was lined with wharves from about Hall's Creek to well past Bore Park. Old timers can still remember schooners and trading ships docking here to discharge kegs of molasses from the West Indies, coal, and other goods; these were then taken by draft horse to the nearby brick warehouses of the wholesaling companies. Communication was then largely by water; indeed one Moncton company timed its annual sales to coincide with the tides so that shoppers from down river could come to town on a rising tide and leave again on the falling tide.

Continuing West along Main Street takes you past some of the older merchants buildings from this period. Curiously, the North side of the street seems to have been more kindly to heritage buildings; most of the ones on the South side being gone. Noteworthy among the survivors is the elegant brownstone "Merchants Bank" building across from the Delta Beausejour Hotel. Like many other old business buildings this also is built of local sandstone, a memento of the active building stone and grindstone quarrying industry, which flourished in the area. Between Main Street and the river was pretty much all industry, shipbuilding, sawmills and foundries. The names Foundry Street and Mechanic Street date from that time.

Now you'll come to another Moncton landmark, the railway underpass, known locally as the "subway," a name which sometimes perplexes visitors. It's built just low enough that three or four times a year incautious transport trucks fail to make the passage.

Continuing West on Main Street takes you past the Brunswick Hotel, the unmistakeably governmental stalinist gothic of the "old" post office and Highfield Square Shopping Mall. Turning right, up Cameron Street, and crossing St. George Street, the second main east-west artery, takes you through older residential areas to Victoria Park, a small downtown green space donated by three Moncton businessmen in the late 1800's.

At "Jones Lake", an artificial lake just under 1 km West along Main Street from Highfield Square, old Moncton ended. If you drive here in the spring, watch out for the mother ducks crossing Main Street with their little ducklings tagging single file behind them. Past this lay more or less open fields on the right and railway yards and industry on the left. The brick complex of the former Swifts meat packing plant still stands in this open area at some distance from the street. This was once a major employer, and there is an amusing story that on one occasion this company paid all its employees in two dollar bills, so that, by this unusual flood of purchases made with two dollar bills, the grocers and other merchants would notice just how much Swifts contributed to the local economy.

Now you'll come to the traffic circle at the Moncton side of the causeway to Riverview on the opposite side of the Petitcodiac. Taking the first right exit off the traffic circle and then swinging right again onto Saint George Street takes you east toward the centre of town again, past Centennial Park on your left, an area of walkways in the woods. The old steam locomotive number 5270 at the entrance to the park testifies to Moncton's railroad heritage from the Intercolonial and then Canadian National. The stretch of St. George Street just past Centennial Park is known as the "Golden Mile," one of the first non-central concentrations of business.

After the major intersection where Vaughan Harvey crosses St. George Street, you're back in "old "Moncton. This section was more or less Moncton's second business street. The massive Assumption Cathedral, built in the 1940's is a landmark here; on the opposite side, at 199 St. George Street, a former fire station now houses a drug store. A little further on, across the railway tracks and at the corner of Botsford and St. George you'll come to the former Aberdeen School, now a flourishing cultural centre of galleries, a theatre and ballet company, and working artists and performers.

Just past this, St. George Street meets King Street, which in turn becomes Mountain Road, the third major east west street. Swinging left onto King Street takes you to the Moncton Museum, whose facade is the reconstructed entryway to Moncton's old city hall, which used to stand downtown in the vicinity of the Delta Beausejour Hotel/Assumption Place complex. Immediately adjacent to the Museum is the "Free Meeting House" a carefully preserved heritage property, originally built in 1821, it seems, to offer the shipbuilding labourers of the time a more salubrious place to frequent than the taverns which up to then had been their chief entertainment. Over the years, it has become an interdenominational place of worship and is used for other purposes as well.

Here, you're almost back to where the tour started, and space dictates that it draw to a close.