The St. John River, Past And Present

Browsing the CTV website today, I found this story about flooding on the St. John River:

In Maugerville, southeast of Fredericton, the [St. John] river has risen to cover parts of Route 105, the former Trans-Canada Highway.

"We have some homes in the Maugerville area that are being affected, mainly flooded basements," said Wilmot. "We haven't had anybody have to be taken from their homes or anything like that by members of first responder groups -- fire and police."

And it reminded me...

In the early 70s, when my dad was still in the forces, we were stationed just across the river from Maugerville, at CFB Gagetown in the town of Oromocto. During the spring of 1973 The St John River experienced some of the worst flooding in its history.

Now, Gagetown is about 30 miles South East of the provincial capital of Fredericton (towards the upper left corner of the Google Earth image above, but out of the picture), and I remember our family trying to drive into town during the worst of the flooding.

Traffic was backed up where the river had topped the highway, and a couple of RCMP were keeping an eye on things should it become completely impassible. As it was, water came half-way up your tires and another few inches would have sent the cars literally floating away. I guess the police were there to close things down should that have started happening.

It didn't, but I remember seeing, on the North side of the highway (towards the river), a couple of teenagers row a canoe right in through the front door of their house, the rest of their family watching out the windows of their second floor bedrooms.

And on the South side, where the land fell away again to form a shallow basin, there was a car parked in water up to its windshield wipers. The owner had rigged a big wooden sign on the roof that read "For sale: $10, as is!"

New Brunswickers have always had a good sense of humour about such things.