I pause briefly, unsure what to make of the enormous crustacean. A gangly pair of whip-long antennae curl out past a creepy set of mandibles as thick as a wrestler’s thigh. It weighs fifty metric tons, is over ten metres long, and I think it’s staring at me. This reversal of the food chain’s natural order is mildly disturbing.
“It’s just a statue, Daddy!” my ten-year old shrieks as she bounds past me up the pedestal’s concrete steps and plants herself smack in the middle of it. My eight-year-old is already hanging from a gigantic steel claw playing dead as she pretends to be the victim of a mutant lobster attack. My wife and I shrug our shoulders and clamber up.
Welcome to New Brunswick. Shediac, specifically.
My encounter with the world’s largest lobster — a project of Shediac’s local Rotary club – is just one of the many delightful surprises sprinkled across the Fundy coast. After driving nearly nine hours from our departure point in Quebec City, I decide to put off checking in to our Moncton hotel and proceed along a ribbon of gently rolling asphalt toward the famous Hopewell Rocks. It’s just after 5 p.m. and the viewing platform is crowded with visitors snapping pictures of oddly shaped geological formations. Over thousands of years of erosion, the base of the rocks have been reduced to thin necks. A series of tall trees have grown on top of the bloated upper portions of the rocks — hence the “flower pots” moniker. A rugged steel staircase descends from the viewing deck. Only halfway down the staircase, we encounter a wall of muddy brown water gently lapping at our feet — the rest of the staircase is submerged. This is exactly what I’ve come to see: the highest tides in the world. When I return the next day at low tide, the full staircase gleams high and dry in the morning sun. The murky chocolate waters are visible off in the distance and the flower pot rocks stand fully exposed from tree tip to dirt. The tide sucks 115 billion tonnes of water out of the Bay of Fundy — a distance of 15 metres. The entire drama unfolds day-in and day-out in just over six hours.
Just thirty minutes away, after navigating a series of progressively narrow hairpin turns, we arrive at Cape Enrage. The iconic lighthouse stands guard high above the frothing waters below as we pick our way along the rocky beach collecting plant fossils frozen in time millennia ago. I quickly agree when the kids demand a non-educational detour to the Cape’s nearly 200-metre zip line.
It’s hard to top a gargantuan lobster for kitschy tourist attractions, but Magnetic Hill takes an admirable run at the crown. The gently downward sloping hill on a simple stretch of one-lane asphalt gives no hint of its bizarre claim to fame. I deposit my fee with the cheery booth attendant who instructs me to drive down the hill stopping at a white post marker in the distance. I shift into neutral and slowly take my foot off the brake. We’re rolling. Uphill. It begins slowly at first but quickly we’re making a mockery of Newton and defying gravity at a somewhat unnerving speed. I had been warned not to apply the brakes or we wouldn’t have sufficient momentum to roll entirely up the hill, so I’m steering video-game style using the video feed from my rear-view camera until we gently return to the very spot we departed from. With an attached mini zoo and amusement park, Magnetic Hill is the kind of tourist trap I would normally view with the disdainful smugness of a seasoned traveller, but the surreal charm of the hill itself is worth a short visit.
Returning to our spacious family suite at the Marriott Residence Inn in the heart of Moncton, it was quickly decided that some rest and relaxation was called for. A pair of parks, one provincial and one national, fit the bill perfectly. At Parlee Beach, warm shallow waters and fine white sand stretch off into metallic blue sea capped by sail boats bobbing in the distance. If it wasn’t for the tell-tale triangle of a classic east coast lighthouse, I might mistake the beach for a Florida getaway. No such mistakes in the afternoon as we park at the trailhead for the Caribou Plain hike in Fundy National Park. The vast coniferous forest is wreathed in light ringlets of fog generated by the Bay of Fundy. We pick our way slowly through a mix of easy boardwalks and gentle dirt paths drinking in the unmatched sensation of traversing this trail at sunset in complete privacy. We spy birds, flowers and some truly unusual lichens, moss and fungi but none of the moose we were so hoping to meet. Oh well. We’ll always have that lobster.
From the vast open spaces of New Brunswick’s Fundy Coast to Canada’s smallest Province, keep following The Crime Traveller as he and the family press eastward into Prince Edward Island.
Edward Prutschi is a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer. Follow Ed’s criminal law commentary (@prutschi) and The Crime Traveller’s adventures (@crimetraveller) on Twitter, read his Crime Traveller blog, or email ed@thecrimetraveller.com.
Travel assistance provided by Tourism New Brunswick.