Moncton, New Brunswick

Moncton, New Brunswick

The area now known as Moncton was once an early Acadian settlement known as "Le Coude." After the deportation of the Acadians, the settlement lay empty until a group of eight immigrant families arrived from Pennsylvania in June 1766 with a land grant issued by the Philadelphia Land Company.  A township grew on the site named after the British soldier Lt.-Colonel Robert Monckton, who led the capture of nearby Fort Beauséjour in 1755.  Moncton became a city on the 23rd of April, 1890. Its coat of arms illustrates the agricultural, industrial and railway heritages, along with the world famous Tidal Bore, an ever popular tourist attraction.

Hopewell Rocks

The Hopewell Rocks, also called the Flowerpot Rocks or simply The Rocks, are rock formations caused by tidal erosion in The Hopewell Rocks Ocean Tidal Exploration Site in New Brunswick.  They are located on the shores of the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy at Hopewell Cape near Moncton, New Brunswick. Due to the extreme tidal range of the Bay of Fundy, the base of the formations are covered in water twice a day. However, it is possible to view the formations from ground level at low tide.

Tide is in!

Tide is out

Cape Enrage

Following exploring the Hopewell Rocks, we drove down to check out the Cape Enrage lighthouse.

Cape Enrage lighthouse is one of the oldest on New Brunswick’s Fundy coastline. The original light was built about 1840 at a cost of £600 and was probably a fixed, white light which may have been changed later to a green hazard light. David Tingley sold the land for £50 and allowed a road to be constructed to the Cape at no charge. The Commissioners determined the site to be suitable; it had water, stone for building, some arable land and the point of land reserved for the lighthouse was in direct sight of all points from Rockport southward to St Martins.

How's this for a confusing highway sign

Downtown Moncton Tidal Bore Park - Petitcodiac River

This natural phenomenon is a result of the record high tides of the Bay of Fundy. These cause the water in Moncton's Petitcodiac River to raise with just one wave coming in from the Bay. Within an hour the river can go from a muddy river bottom at low tide to being filled to its banks at some 7.5 m depth. The Tidal Bore can be seen from many points in the Greater Moncton area.

No pictures here, we missed it.  Read the tide table wrong!

Magnetic Hill              

Stories about a strange road where the wagon would run up on the horses heels when going uphill go back to the 1880's. In 1933 stories of cars rolling uphill without power peaked the curiosity of three newspaper reporters from the Saint John Telegraph Journal. They traveled to Moncton and spent hours trying every hill they came to in hopes of unraveling the mystery. After 5 hours of no success they stopped to stretch their legs on the way home and you guessed it,  the car started to roll uphill. They spent a couple of hours retrying the hill and using all the equipment they had brought to discover the secret. They decided it must be an optical illusion. Shortly after they published their article, people started to come out in droves to the site and test it for themselves.  Magnetic Hill has been a top attraction in New Brunswick for over 100 years.

Next stop Windsor, Nova Scotia