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Wednesday June 29th Fredericton to Edmunston
We left the Peasleys’ late in the morning so the kids had more playtime. From there we went to King’s Landing historic site. It is very close to Fredericton. The park is done as a living museum, like Acadian Village. It was created back in the 1970’s (I think), when they were raising the water levels on the St. John river near Fredericton for a dam. They took a series of Loyalists houses from the 1800s that were to be flooded and moved them to create the village. It was very well done. Well spread out like farms and villages would have been. All the buildings are from the 1800’s and most are original. Some like the sawmill and flour mill are wonderful recreations. The sawmill is really cool because it is powered by a water wheel which turns all the belts and pulleys to run the saw and move the log through the saw. Unfortunately they had a flash flood last year that shifted their dam so the sawmill wasn’t running while we were there. The fellow told us that at that time there would have been over 55 sawmills on the St.
John river alone. Mostly producing lumber for export to britian and for ship building. he also told us that part of the sawmill worker's pay was 2 rations of rum each day (at their break times) - I guess drinking on the job wasn't a problem back then!
On the wagon ride back to the entrance at the end of our visit we learned that they are raising Canadian cows there. These are apparently the strain of cows that Champlain originally brought over to Canada. They were very good for meat, milk and as oxen so were well suited to the early settlers. They are now very rare, but Claude looked them up on line afterwards and there is a small breeding program in Quebec with one company making a special cheese just from these cows, so now we have to search out this cheese to try.
It was very interesting to visit King’s Landing shortly after seeing Acadian Village. There was a distinct difference in the affluence and moderness of the homes of the English Loyalist settlers as opposed to the French, who were not really wanted in the Maritimes at that point. The English homes were
not fancy by any means but certainly of a higher status than the French one of the same vintage. The Loyalists would have brought many of the new innovations from the United States up with them. Most of the French had fled Nova Scotia to the Acadian peninsula of New Brunswick when the French were deported from there after the English took over the colony.
After King’s Landing we drove back up north to Edmundston, NB to spend the evening with Claude’s cousin France and her husband Michael. It was great to visit them as Claude and she have been very close since childhood. Enroute we drove through the longest covered bridge in Canada in Hartland, NB. Each section (from pier to pier) was about the length of most covered bridges we had seen, so it was about 6 x longer than most.
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Visit to King's Landing, NB
I like your blog. I am fund of traveling and visiting new places too. Now I need to find hotels near that address, so I can stay a little bit longer and experience everything.