fredericton

Dates traveled: August 1-2, 2016; November 6-7, 2018

On my first east coast road trip, Fredericton was an impromptu stop to cut up the drive. Upon arriving I quickly realized that I knew nothing about it.

It was a foreboding introduction. The hostel was a converted dorm that was empty and had that ‘horror movie’ feel, complete with small mirrors everywhere, torn up furniture in the halls, and closets about as big as the actual rooms.

The one bar that was open was halfway between a classy old-fashioned pub and the legions you find in tiny remote towns that double as the lone bar. I returned to that same bar over two years later on a very different purpose (work trip vs. road trip). I bought the glass in the featured image off the bartender. He said people often tried to buy the shirts off their backs because they were so in love with the branding.

I love foxes. If one day I end up with a giant plot of land in the middle of nowhere, I’d love to have a couple rescued foxes. In my dreamscape they’d be special foxes who were also somehow vegetarian so I wouldn’t have to feed them raw meat. For now, the fox on the beer glass and the photo of the fox in my bedroom are as close as I’m going to get.

Fredericton’s architecture was impressive. Around downtown were mansions with stone pillars, and a lot of the buildings were early Victorian heritage-like, but with a bit different character from what I’m used to seeing in central Canada.

I noticed a lot of military-themed stuff on my first visit, which stood out, particularly because it was summer and the University of New Brunswick students weren’t around. So the spookiness of the quiet town with military undertones and a foggy river permeated how I thought of the city for years.

As you might expect in an older city, a lot of the cooler architecture was courtesy of churches or buildings that look like they used to be churches. I think these buildings are increasingly being renovated or used for other purposes, since there can’t just be dozens of giant, mostly unused beautiful buildings in a downtown. I know in Ottawa they get rented out a lot; I’m guessing Fredericton isn’t much different.

A city tells you things about itself if you understand how to read it. Alternatively, you can make up interpretations and come away with your own personal analysis of that place and its contexts. Sometimes shared stories are little more than someone’s narrative that caught on.

The posts in the photo below measure water height to determine flooding levels from the river. I guess if the water’s above the top pole, everyone’s screwed.

Fredericton isn’t on the way anywhere, and it’s a ways from the main highway, which means it doesn’t get as much through-traffic as other places. And it’s not exactly a tourist hot-spot. But it’s the capital, so it has a strong local economy, and there enough people kind of hanging around during the day.

Its lifestyle seems both unremarkable and just fine, like one of those places that almost no one is pining to go to, but also that no one particularly minds when they’re there.

I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to be an artist in a place like that, with only the small local community, each of you joined together in the obvious smallness of what you’re doing – if there are places where you can find each other at all. On the plus side there are less distractions, less politics to influence what you feel like exploring.

On the downside there are fewer influences to spark new ideas and ways of practice, and it’s harder to buy into the illusion, as an ‘up and coming’ artist, that there are myriads of people out there who give a shit about the thematic underpinnings of your marijuana-curdled words and images.

Fredericton probably isn’t a destination in and of itself unless you have something to go there for. It’s a stop-over if you’re going out east anyway and want to catch a glimpse of all the places you’ve heard of or all the provincial capitals. It seems like a nice place to raise a family.

Sometimes I think the best places to live are the ones like that, that don’t generate too much tourism but have stable local economies and people who know each other. That are big enough that there is an all-hours grocery store, even if you never need to use it.

That have a big enough body of water to have the constant threat of flooding, your livelihood never quite secure enough for you to forget you exist.