St. John, New Brunswick

 

If the library advocates in Sydney, four hundred miles away at the eastern end of Nova Scotia, saw the majestic library Carnegie provided St. John in 1904, a year after they had their Carnegie Library in-waiting derailed by its city council after having approved it, they would have been distressed beyond description.  Here was an edifice of great renown that could have graced their town if not for the shortsighted of their town council.

It would be beyond any sensible person’s  comprehension that such an incredible, long-enduring gift could be rejected.  One can’t help but look upon the beauty and stature of St. John’s library and have their spirit elevated and drawn into its equally majestic interior highlighted by a domed foyer.   It is another of the hundreds of Carnegies that is the center of a community and something to be proud of. 

It was replaced by a much larger library in a vast mall on the waterfront a few blocks away in 1983, but continues to serve the community as an Art Center.  It was a hive of activity late Friday afternoon with an early evening opening just commencing. I rushed to the replacement library fearing it would close at five, and was a few minutes late, delayed a blocked road due to construction. I had hoped to make it to St. John by four, but was deterred by a ferocious wind off the Bay of Fundy, so I missed out on the opportunity to ask its librarians if they were aware of the sad saga of Sydney”s Carnegie.

Even with a population of 70,000, the second largest in New Brunswick behind Moncton, the Carnegie remains the most prominent building in the city, facilitated too by its location in a central plaza on a hill.  St. John is Canada’s oldest incorporated city dating to 1785.  Its population was inflated after the Revolution to the south by a mass of Americans who wished to remain under British rule. Along with the distinction of having the lone Carnegie in the Martine Provinces and the eastern most Carnegie in North America, St. John can also lay claim to Donald Sutherland, who was born there in 1935 and went on to have a storied cinema career starring in M.A.S.H., Klute, 1900, Ordinary People, The Hunger Games and countless others.  In 2017 he was given an honorary Oscar.  He is considered the most noteworthy actor never to have received an actual nomination. 

Other than the late-in-the-day headwind that picked up as I neared the Bay of Fundy, I’d had a fine day, the first in six days where it had warmed up enough that I could shed my puff jacket.  It was just twenty-four when I started the day with two frozen solid water bottles on my bike.  I wondered if they’d thaw by the day’s end.  It was all garb on deck when I set out, wearing two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves and the hood of my jacket over my wool cap, forcing me to open the tightening strap on my helmet as far as it would go.  

As has happened in the past, I had found a large insulated workman’s glove with a rubber exterior the day before which was just what I needed.  It was left-handed, just what I needed as my right glove was larger than the left and could accommodate my thinner glove, so I could wear them both when the temperature dropped to freezing.  My thinner glove wouldn’t fit under the slightly smaller mismatched left heavier glove i had set out with for when the temperature dipped below forty-five. The only extra layer I could use with it was a plastic bag, so finding the glove on the road was a godsend.  It was nice to learn I could easily survive sub-freezing temperatures on the bike and in the tent too, though I had to put on extra layers when I zipped myself into the sleeping bag for the night.  My feet were fine, but for the first time I awoke with cold hands and had to put on gloves.

I finished off my candles before I fully wrapped myself in my sleeping bag, so was happy to come upon a Dollarama in the morning, where it would be much less of a hike around its aisles than the nearby Walmart to find them.  A clerk stocking knew exactly where they were.  It was the first dollar store I’d ventured into in Canada, so didn’t know they only had one aisle of food and no dairy.  It hardly seemed a dollar store without ramen or peanut butter or baked beans.

I had to go to the Walmart after all for chocolate milk, which meant I could avail myself of its Wi-Fi, which Dollarama didn’t offer, unlike some of the dollar stores in the US.   The dollar store may not have had milk or Wi-Fi, but it at least had a garbage can out front, which none of the three chains of US dollar stores provide, a most customer-unfriendly cost-saving measure, almost enough reason not to patronize them, though I often have no choice out in small-town America.  

From St. John it’s just seventy miles back to the US.  It won’t be any warmer there, but I’d like to think it will be less rainy.  As long as I’m dry I can manage the cold.  After riding in twenty and thirty degree temperatures, fifty seemed almost toasty.  It took several hours to get that warm,  and when it did, all was well with my world. The fifty held all the way to quitting time.  It’s no hardship whatsoever to slip into the tent when it’s fifty, even if it’s going to drop into the thirties,  

After a night in a motel the tent is all the more welcoming.  I may have gained a little extra benefit staying at the Holistic Healing Center.  I’d had an inexplicably sore and inflamed shin for several days.  I don’t know whether I bumped it, or a limb had scratched it or poisonous leaf brushed it in the forest in the night when I got up to take a leak or if it might have been bitten by a spider or some other insect.  By days end it was slightly painful to walk on or to pedal with much exertion.  

It always felt better in the morning, but the swelling hadn’t gone down and was still slightly painful to the touch.  After several hours of pedaling the pain would gradually make itself known once again.  I was tempted to have the master healer give it a look and maybe perform some acupuncture on it, but I didn’t want to be told to take a day off.  Turns out I didn’t need to as after my night in his premises, the the positive vibes was all the healing it needed.  I didn’t want to think my hours and hours  of daily pedaling had exacerbated something, as this had never happened before.