A portrait of the winding river that waters New Brunswick
Text by David M. Baird
CENTURIES AGO, an Indian laid down his load at the crest of the portage between Pohenegamook and Temiscouata waters, west of present day Cabano Que., to look out over the limitless green forest and wonder about stories being told of white men landing along the sea coast far to the south.
On June 24, 1604, Samuel de Champlain ordered sails furled and anchored down at the mouth of a large river called Woolastook ("good river") by the Maliseet Indians, Champlain named it Saint John for the patron Saint of the day.
In 1784, families of United Europe Loyalists stepped ashore on the river banks at Maugerville and Sheffield, 100 kilometres above the river mouth, and began to clear the trees, build log cabins and sow buckwheat between the stumps, forging a new life with others who had fled the upheaval of the American Revolution.
Today, a supertanker begins slowing down 50 kilometres out to sea in the Bay of Fundy, preparing to discharge its Arabian oil cargo at the deep-sea anchorage off the river mouth and the city of Saint-John.
This is the river Saint John.
The longest arm of the Saint John (spelled St. John on older maps) begins as Baker Branch, fed by a series of five small lakes, the St. John Ponds, deep in the unsettled heart of northeastern Maine. Seven hundred kilometres from its mouth, the river flows north and northeast, then east, gathering strength from hundreds of lakes and streams in a wilderness that is still much the same as when Indians named tributaries such as Chemquassabamticook and headwater lakes such as Wallagasquequam (now Churchill).
Another headwater, the Southwest Branch, originates in a boggy pond called, grandly, Lake St. John, and forms the boundary between Quebec and Maine for 60 kilometres. Many other streams flow southeast from Quebec's Notre Dame Mountains, crossing the border before joining the river. Small villages such as St. Pamphile, only 50 kilometres from the St. Lawrence River, lie within the Saint John's drainage. The tributary St. Francis River rises within 20 kilometres of Rivière-du-Loup, and other headwaters lie just southeast of Trois Pistoles.
Another tributary, Maine's Allagash River, is almost equal in flow to the main Saint John. It joins at Allagash, Me., 60 kilometres upriver from the pulp and paper town of Edmundston, N.B., where the Madawaska River comes in from Lake Temiscouata ("winding water") to the north.
Until Edmundston, the Saint John is typical of rivers in heavily glaciated country -- with bogs, lakes, rapids and falls, and stretches with serpentine courses on alluvial flats. From Edmundston to Grand Falls, the river valley is open and settled with almost continuous farmland and small villages, Canada on one bank, the United States on the other.
At Grand Falls, the placid river changes abruptly as it passes through a low hydroelectric dam, plunges over a spectacular 25-metre fall, then races through a steep-walled gorge with wild standing waves and leaping waters. In spring it has a noisy flow of 6,000 cubic metres a second, almost the equal of Niagara. In the low-water period of late summer, however, its voice is virtually stilled as the entire flow passes through tunnels and penstocks to the generating station below. This is when great potholes, formed by hard boulders being whirled around in swift spring currents, can be seen in the slatey bedrock.
Just above Grand Falls, almost exactly halfway along its course, the Saint John River leaves the United States and lies entirely in New Brunswick. The Aroostook River, with all but its last five kilometres in Maine, joins from the west at Aroostook. Near Perth Andover, the Tobique River, one of the best salmon streams in eastern North America, brings in its waters from the vast wilderness of northcentral New Brunswick.
From Grand Falls to Woodstock, the valley is beautiful, with rounded hills a few hundred metres high, wooded and farmed in various sections, and includes one of Canada's major potato districts.
Until 25 years ago, the Saint John flowed unimpeded through this gently rolling country, with its islands and fertile intervales (low-lying land along the river), all the way to Fredericton. Now it is dammed at Beechwood, 17 kilometres above Florenceville, and at Mactaquac, 15 kilometres above Fredericton. Some lament the loss of intervales and pioneer farms and changes to the salmon runs, but others point to the lakes formed behind the dams -- new habitat for fish, waterfowl and waterplants.
At Fredericton, the Saint John changes character. Bay of Fundy tides, which rise and fall nearly 10 metres at the mouth of the river, affect it slightly at the provincial capital, more than 140 kilometres upstream.
Near Oromocto, about 18 kilometres below Fredericton, the traveller sees a river with very little current, except in spring. In places it is confined to a single half kilometre channel; then it spreads into lake-like expanses with natural levees and backwaters. Grand Lake and several satellite lakes, once haunts of the Maliseet, comprise a shallowly flooded valley system that joins the river at Jemseg.
At Evandale, the Saint John turns abruptly to the southwest to enter Long Reach, and 30 kilometres farther on, turns at a right angle to flow south. Long Reach is one of a series of parallel old valleys that stretches across southern New Brunswick. They are actually linear features of the earth's crust created by much earlier patterns of drainage and a complicated geophysical history. Flooding back from the river along these old valleys has produced, essentially, a large, many-armed waterway, made up of Washademoak Lake and Belleisle and Kennebecasis bays.
This section of the river was once the main transportation route for riverside communities between Saint John and Fredericton, with regular steamship service into all the branch bays and into Grand Lake as far up as Chipman. Some of the old landings along the river are still visible. Today, the old lighthouses serve only pleasure boats.
Man has interfered with the Saint John River from his first appearance along its shores. Small dams were placed on headwater lakes for log drives, and some of its headwaters in Maine were diverted to the Penobscot River, notably at Chamberlain Lake. The hydro electric dams at Beechwood, Mactaquac and near the mouth of the Aroostook made extensive changes with flooding of shorelines and valleys. Pulp and paper mills at Edmundston, Nackawic and Saint John have poured waste into the river. Food processing plants at Grand Falls and Florenceville and small sawmills have added to the pollution.
More recently, however, settling basins and sewage lagoons, scrubbing plants and the removal of pulpwood booms have largely cleaned up the Saint John River.
In and around the city of Saint John at the river's mouth, glacial deposits have covered the ancient outlets of the river, particularly at Courtney Bay and near Saints Rest. In recent geological times, the river has had to flow through a narrow gorge of its own cutting. This, in effect, has produced a control valve for the river above.
With the 10 metre tides at its mouth, one would expect a large estuary, drained at low tide and filled at high
tide. The narrow restriction, however, produces something quite different. Twice each tide, the river above and the sea below are at the same level and there is no current -- slack tide. As the tide rises, sea level becomes higher than river level above the narrow gorge. Fast saltwater currents form rapids flowing upstream -- first stage of the Reversing Falls -- to make a slightly brackish lake above the gorge. There, the river basin is so large that not enough water can flow through the restricted mouth to raise it to high-tide level before the tide starts down again.
Soon another slack tide prevails, this time a few centimetres higher than the previous one because the level in the basin has risen with the influx of saltwater. As the tide falls below the river level, powerful rapids and currents and giant whirlpools occur -- stage two of the Reversing Falls.
In a few hours, the tide turns and the cycle is repeated. Meanwhile, the river has discharged much of the salt water that went up on the previous tide along with its usual outflow.
In spring floods (called freshets locally), the river sometimes rises so high that there is no inflow at high tide and the falls do not reverse.
Through this narrow river mouth, the drainage of some 65,000 square kilometres of Maine, Quebec and New Brunswick reaches the Bay of Fundy. The waters from forested wilderness, from bog and barren, from farmlands and cities, commingle and disappear in the surging cold waters of the sea.
