{"id":195149,"date":"2021-03-05T21:43:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T18:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/new-brunswick-could-lose-another-covered-bridge-unless-this-town-can-save-it\/"},"modified":"2021-03-05T21:43:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T18:43:42","slug":"new-brunswick-could-lose-another-covered-bridge-unless-this-town-can-save-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/new-brunswick-could-lose-another-covered-bridge-unless-this-town-can-save-it\/","title":{"rendered":"#New Brunswick could lose another covered bridge. Unless this town can save it."},"content":{"rendered":"

“#New Brunswick could lose another covered bridge. Unless this town can save it.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n A feisty group of covered bridge advocates in tiny St. Martins, N.B., worry their timber-planked crossing won’t outlast a powerful lobby for steel and concrete interests in Fredericton\n <\/div>\n
\n At a summertime rally in 2019, with the fate of a local tourism hot spot up in the air, one in five residents of a New Brunswick community blocked traffic in a show of force. Fully two-thirds of the population signed a petition asking for the landmark\u2019s protection. Some waved hand-written signs: \u201cSAVE OUR BRIDGE.\u201d<\/p>\n

The demonstration may sound impressively large, but only about 300 people live in St. Martins, a half-hour\u2019s drive east of Saint John on the Bay of Fundy. Visitors are always streaming in and out, though, getting their portraits snapp<\/a>ed at an iconic spot where you can see a lighthouse and two covered bridges\u2014those distinctive timber structures so familiar to East Coasters\u2014in the same frame.<\/p>\n

One of them, the bridge spanning Vaughan Creek, is in disrepair (a temporary, single-lane Bailey bridge has been installed for vehicle traffic). Despite local pleas that it be restored or rebuilt, the province has recently approved a new, $3.5-million design that purists suggest is just a poor facsimile. For a village that has long struggled to be heard at the seat of provincial power, it\u2019s a bridge too far.<\/p>\n

Protesting the new design is the man behind the 2019 rally, a proud New Brunswicker whose love affair with covered bridges, and with fly fishing underneath them, began during a trip<\/a> to his sweetheart\u2019s family farm 57 years ago. He still fishes; they\u2019re still married.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been looking at these things, and studying them, for a long time,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery time somebody wants information about covered bridges, who do they call? Not Ghostbusters, I can guarantee you that. They call Ray Boucher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boucher waxes poetic about the tourism value of bona fide, traditionally built covered bridges. Only 58 are still standing in New Brunswick, 54 of which are managed by the province, and countless sightseeing tours are built around them\u2014one motorcycle club in Fredericton holds a covered bridge \u201cchallenge\u201d every year.<\/p>\n

Despite his title as president of the Covered Bridges Conservation Association of New Brunswick, which boasts several hundred members, Boucher says government officials won\u2019t give him the time of day, either on Vaughan Creek or on a province-wide covered bridges strategy expected sometime this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re basically told we don\u2019t know what we\u2019re talking about. \u2018Shut up and we\u2019ll get you across the river.\u2019 And that\u2019s it. Bang. This is how a lot of our association members feel,\u201d he says. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many emails I received when the news<\/a> for the Vaughan Creek covered bridge hit Facebook<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The St. Martins Rally was the start of a province-wide petition signing event sponsored by the Covered Bridges Conservation Association of New Brunswick. (Courtesy of Nicholas Lowe Photography)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Rookie minister Jill Green, who was newly elected last September and vaulted to the transportation and infrastructure file, admits she is not familiar with the arguments of Boucher\u2019s group, but says all options were considered for Vaughan Creek. \u201cWe want to be able to support tourism into the St. Martins area, so we\u2019re putting in a solid structure bridge, a modern bridge on the bottom, the sides and the travelway. We\u2019re going to be able to accommodate tour buses and lots of vehicles and traffic both ways. But we\u2019re still going to put the facade of the covered bridge on top,\u201d Green explains. The approved design was deemed the safest for travellers, she says, but still recognizes the bridge\u2019s cultural significance: \u201cOur highest priority is the safety of the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green\u2019s department says the existing bridge must be dismantled or moved to accommodate the steel replacement, though the minister says no decision has been made about what to do with it afterward.<\/p>\n

Dan Tingley, a senior design engineer at Wood Research and Development who has built timber bridges all over the world, doesn\u2019t buy the minister\u2019s rationale. For one thing, the facade won\u2019t fool anyone, he says. \u201cPeople know better. That\u2019s fake to them. They don\u2019t want it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if the government decided against repairing the existing bridge, a two-lane replacement made out of the traditional timber, at the same tonnage, meeting the same safety requirements, would only cost $1.5 to $2 million, Tingley asserts. It would perform better on environmental impact and longevity, too. \u201cThey\u2019re going to build a bridge 21 times less carbon-efficient. It\u2019ll last 48 years, in a salt environment, when a timber one would\u2019ve lasted 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government has plenty of evidence to support those assertions, he says\u2014including that neighbouring Nova Scotia has in recent years seen \u201cdramatic\u201d savings from opening tenders up to include an option for timber. Although it feels like the ship has sailed on Vaughan Creek, he and Boucher are holding fast to the hope that New Brunswick will follow suit.<\/p>\n

At issue is what Tingley describes as a deep-set mentality among senior bureaucrats whose minds are simply set against timber. He is loath to blame politicians like Green for what he believes is a long-held departmental attitude, exacerbated by a powerful lobby for steel and concrete interests in Fredericton.<\/p>\n

But he says the preservation of covered bridges is a \u201chot-button issue,\u201d emblematic of a deeper divide with real political consequences. \u201cPeople in rural communities feel that the governments are not in touch with them. They feel that the big cities get the grease, the squeaky wheel,\u201d Tingley says. \u201cThe lightning rod is little old St. Martins, where you have this rural group of people pitted against the government of New Brunswick in the matter of a bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

This article appears in print in the March 2021 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s magazine with the headline, \u201cIn the matter of a bridge.\u201d Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here<\/a>.<\/em>
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“#New Brunswick could lose another covered bridge. Unless this town can save it.” A feisty group of covered bridge advocates in tiny St. Martins, N.B., worry their timber-planked crossing won’t outlast a powerful lobby for steel and concrete interests in Fredericton At a summertime rally in 2019, with the fate of a local tourism hot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/COVERED-BRIDGE-SMITH-FEB3-01-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[96429,67806,70356],"class_list":["post-195149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-covered-bridge","tag-editors-picks","tag-new-brunswick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}