Date travelled: November 5-6, 2018
New Brunswick did teach me something. Or, more accurately, the style in which it communicated to me made me reflect on some of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last several years: poverty, housing, and the socio-economics of space.
It was my first time in Saint John. It was very industrial. I heard it was the poorest city in Canada, and I can’t confirm that, but I certainly believe it. The best representation of this was when driving, we passed through a neighbourhood with dozens of boarded up houses, and instead of typical graffiti tags on them, we saw cries for help.
I’ve always struggled marrying social consciousness with the arts. I thought this was a great example of how creative expression can develop social consciousness more effectively than a soapbox speech. Driving by those houses, I couldn’t help but think, wow, there are some structural issues here, and people are obviously impacted. And I can know that intellectually, seeing a spray-painted message on a boarded up house, in a series of blocks of boarded up houses, was like a dystopic unsanctioned municipal art project. I couldn’t ignore it.
The hotel we stayed in reminded me of something out of a 1990s road trip ad. It was all cheap razzle-dazzle on the outside, a children-centred games building attached, fun for the whole family, at the end of a giant parking lot of a busy road. It was the type of place that even as a kid felt a bit empty, a feeling I would later in life be able to describe as depressing.
The city also had a small downtown we walked around briefly and ate in. The most interesting part was probably an indoor market. I wish I could do more justice to the parts of the city that were uplifting, but whenever you spend less than 24 hours somewhere it’s all a bit of a blur.
New Brunswick often gets tagged as the least desirable province, sparring with Manitoba and Saskatchewan as most likely to be skipped over. Aside from Fredericton, which has the benefit of being the seat of the provincial government, and the parts nearest the coast, I have to say it’s mostly felt dreary to me the few times I’ve encountered it.
describing space 