While home for a summer visit to Saint John, I did the usual tour of my favourite places. Tired of capturing just pictures, I created a video tour of the city. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I do. Sadly, I did not have enough time to include everything that I believe fully represents Saint John, but I hit on many of the areas that are important to me.
Enjoy!
Also check out some photos I took in a separate blog post.
[YouTube]
While home in Saint John for a summer visit, I took photos around town as I usually do. I also created a video which I have entered in a separate blog post.
Here are some of my favourites:
I have probably taken this shot before in Rockwood Park, but I don’t care. It always looks beautiful.
From a fairly remote area of the park, I took this photo overlooking Lily Lake with a view of Uptown.
The St. John River as seen from UNBSJ is always a beautiful site.
The clock donated by Irving is a wonderful addition to the foot of King Street. The architecture of Brunswick House behind makes it even better.
Uptown during a work day is generally a quiet place when there are no tourists. These guys are always outside, though!
This view of Saint John Harbour reminds us that this is a working port, even though the major tourist attractions are not far away.
Check out the rest of my new photos from Saint John in my gallery. Also check out my Saint John tour video in my other blog post.
This month, I returned to Saint John for a visit. Of course, I tried to time this to occur in July when the Port City usually has less than horrible weather. I was in luck on a few sunny days and went out with my camera.
There are some very nice, well kept homes in Millidgeville. I was drawn to the colour of this house. Hopefully no one saw me, wondering why I’m randomly taking a picture of this house.
From this shot in the North End, Saint John looks quite dense! However, what you don’t see here is the large open area of mostly-empty highway lanes and roads in between the buildings in the foreground and the uptown high rises in the distance.
Uptown Saint John!
The view from Harbour Passage is somehow one of the most scenic you can find anywhere on the ground in the city, even though there isn’t anything entirely unusual in this area.
Measure twice, cut once! Work is progressing on the Market Square expansion to add new office space. From where this guy is standing, it’s a long way down if something goes wrong!
Someone’s porch has a nice, decorative clock on the patio of their uptown condo. I can’t imagine actually wanting to sit here though simply because people like me are always walking or driving by.
On the first sunny day in a while, Saint John Harbour is entirely void of any cruise ships. Oops. I liked the lines visible in this photo. This same picture should (hopefully) look entirely different in 10 years because the coast goard site at the left will hopefully be redeveloped. Many the city will find a way to actually use the new cruise ship terminal properly and get rid of that tacky white tent too. While we’re at, they could condemn the Canada “Customs Building” (which actually has no customs offices inside anymore) for unsightly premises. It is ugly!
Barbour’s General Store is looking nice at its new location across from city hall. This building has moved many times in its history. It must have a solid structure! The Brunswick House office tower is visible in the window reflections.
A horse chows down at Rockwood Park. It seemingly has no problem living off the system.
A lifeguard seat is empty at Fisher Lakes. Actually, there was lots of people at this beach behind me. This was the last photo I took in Saint John while home, just a couple hours before I hopped on my plane to go back to Calgary.
Gone are the days when a bird’s eye view of where you live is something you can only imagine or see in an airplane. Google Maps has for years allowed you to type in any address and zoom in on it right on your computer screen. At least this is how it is for many cities outside Saint John. I’m not entirely sure where Google gets its imagery from, but I think it needs a bit of a refresh for the Saint John area. Let’s take a look at Google Maps for Uptown Saint John:
Not a pretty sight. There’s three sets of images coming together and only the greener section in the top right is actually high resolution when you zoom in. Harbour Station is barely visible at all!
Until today, I have just given up and assumed there are no higher resolution images available for Saint John. This was until I tried out Microsoft’s Live Search Maps:
The imagery in this similar view from Microsoft’s service is much better, so much better in fact that I was able to zoom in on my own neighbourhood and discern my father’s trailer parked in the driveway outside my house, whereas I can barely see anything at all on Google Maps. Microsoft’s system also seemed a bit faster and more responsive, without any ugly copyright watermarks splashed across the maps. This is saying a lot for Microsoft since I was using a non-Microsoft web browser in a non-US location, circumstances that usually lead to a better experience with Google’s services.This puts my respect for Google down a peg since they, as the supposedly hip and fast moving innovators, are always too quick to attack Microsoft for being the slow-moving dinosaur, when the roles actually seem reversed somewhat here.
As most locals already know, a couple weeks ago, Irving and the Saint John Port Authority announced their plans for development along the waterfront. Irving wants to build a new world headquarters on the site of Long Wharf. With that would come development of public green space. Since this is right next to Harbour Passage, it’s not a bad idea to be improving the quality of the parks and green space in the area.
In this artistic concept courtesy of the Irving press release, you can see what the development will look like. Right now, most of this space is a big ugly concrete field. Since this is currently active port space, this deal is conditional on the former sugar refinery site being transferred to the Port Authority to use instead. There’s no loss. In fact, there’s a gain. The area would continue to act as a secondary cruise ship terminal, keeping the other space always free for other purposes.
Here, you can see the building as an artistic rendering from the ground level. Instead of a high rise, the use of a low-rise structure is more practical and will not block out too much view of the harbour. The press release also cites various environmental considerations leading to the choice of this type of structure.
Exactly why is anyone opposed to this? Some people suggest that Irving should build a taller building or that the location is bad, and they should use the old Centracare site instead. How stupid. It’s clear to see why a large company like Irving would want its headquarters centrally located in a prestigious spot of the waterfront. It’s also obvious to me that this city isn’t yet big enough to be in a position to start demanding high rises when all we need is more appropriately sized low rises.
Some people think it’s a good idea, but a bad location because we’re “losing valuable port space”. That isn’t true at all though because the sugar refinery space would open up as new space. In fact, I think that space would be even more valuable for the port’s purposes since ships could avoid entering the main part of the harbour and dock at the entrance instead.
Those who know me well know that I’m often not the hugest Irving fan, but let’s be realistic, this is a good idea. I hope it goes through. What do you think?
On Tuesday afternoon, about 30 students from the Saint John campus of the New Brunswick Community College demonstrated uptown, converging at the office of the post-secondary education minister, Ed Doherty. They are trying to send the message that they need to get back to school. Classes have been cancelled as a custodial strike enters its second month.
There’s nothing wrong with this. Enough is enough, and these students should be back in school. But there’s one thing that bothers me. I’ll give you a second to figure it out.
Okay, here’s the deal. Only THIRTY students demonstrated. What the hell? Where are all the other students? They’re falling behind in classes now and could lose the rest of the school year if the strike isn’t resolved, but this does not seem to a huge concern to most students. Okay, so maybe I am overreacting since the government is promising to end the strike by legislating them back to work. But still. It’s not like these other students should have been busy doing anything else, since they would normally be in school during the time of the demonstration.
I can’t say this surprises me. Back when we were holding huge rallies in Saint John to protest the PSE report, relatively few college students chose to participate, even though the report’s recommendations were to affect the college campus in this city as well. The school used the old “gagged by the government” excuse to explain their relative quietness during the whole ordeal.
Bull shit.
Take a close look at this photo I took at the Edmundston Rally. The signs say CCNB and UMCE everywhere. BOTH the college and university campuses in that city were part of the demonstrations, showing their support, and making their voices heard.
I guess the gag order was only applicable to the anglophone college campuses.
On my lunch today, I went to watch the demolition of the YMCA-YWCA. I always find these type of things interesting to watch. Unfortunately, I didn’t have either of my good cameras, so I used my new cell phone instead!
About half of the building (to the left) is already gone.
In this photo, you can see the machine operator sorting out the usable metal and other stuff. For some reason, my phone decided to make everything appear as if it were glowing.
The top floor which has been blown open now is the gynasium, with lockers below it still in place.
Quite a mess indeed! From start to finish, this is expected to take 3 weeks. As far as I know, the building was fairly healthy, but they are tearing it down to make way for the new courthouse as well as other controversial developments North of Union Street.
Last Friday, I attended the Red Friday Support Rally held in Uptown Saint John. The rally’s purpose was to bolster awareness of Red Fridays where people wear ribbons signifying support for the troops. One of the main people championing this initiative is Laurie Greenslade, mother of David Greenslade.
Plenty of people are visible from St. Patrick’s despite the inclement weather. The day’s events began with a march from Market Square and the Brunswicker towards Long Wharf along Harbour Passage.
CTV’s Steve Murphy acted as emcee. Originally a Saint Johner himself, he made light of the rain describing it as the city’s “heavy fog”.
You’d think it was Canada day with the flags being waved about, just as the sun was beginning to come out.
One of the event organizers, Ivan Court, standing beside Laurie Greenslade. You can tell she was having a good time, which is quite amazing given everything she has gone through this year.
The Greenslades
