One was the Reversing Falls (sometimes called the Reversing Current), a part of the river where the water runs into the ocean, except at high tide, when the ocean floods back into the river, causing it to rise and flow backwards.
(This is the view at high tide.)
The second place I wanted to see was the port where my mother and her family had arrived in Canada in 1929, when my mother was 10 years old. We drove over to see it, but got no farther than the parking lot!
The family had come to Canada via England, where they had changed ships. When they arrived in Saint John, they boarded a train that took them across Canada to Edmonton, where they had friends.
We drove around the older part of town near the port, wondering what buildings might have been there in 1929.
Would my mother as a child have seen any of this? I wondered...
Thinking of them arriving - tired and anxious immigrants, wondering what lay in store, brought tears to my eyes - especially in light of what happened to those who weren't lucky enough to escape when Stalin took their land. Many of my grandparents' neighbors either died or were shipped to Siberia to worked as forced labor.
Saint John had been the gateway to my mother's new life in Canada - where the family grew and thrived.
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