Covered bridges over troubled waters
 
 

By CHRIS MORRIS
Canadian Press

 Hartland, north of Fredericton, is the world's longest covered bridge at about 390 metres.
FREDERICTON -- This year's spring floods are pretty much over in this Maritime province and people are tallying up damage from the ravages of ice and high water.

For many people, this season's toll is higher than usual because the province lost one of its prized covered bridges, reducing the total number to just 66.

"I cried, I really did," says Joan McKenzie of Welsford, N.B., recalling the sight of the landmark bridge lying in a field where it was deposited by a flash flood.

"I've rode horses through it, I've drove horses through it, I've rode my bike through it and I've walked through it ... It's like losing an old friend."

The bridges, built in the late 1800s and early 1900s, are symbols of a gentler, more secure time. But, once they're gone, there's little chance they'll be rebuilt.

The New Brunswick government plans to replace the Welsford bridge with an uncovered, concrete-and-steel span.

"We don't have a policy to build covered bridges," says Transportation Minister Sheldon Lee.

"We have a policy to retain them, maintain them, keep them in good shape and never take one down. If we have to rebuild a bridge, we build a bridge in the area but we leave the covered bridge there."

In the past 35 years, New Brunswick has lost 112 of the picturesque, wooden bridges with their plank walls and shingled roofs.

Bob Alston of Sussex, N.B., who owns and operates a covered bridge gift shop, says New Brunswick has the second largest number of the structures in Canada, after Quebec which boasts 94.

There's also a covered bridge in Ontario and one in British Columbia.

The United States has about 870, most of them in New England.

Alston says that in the past decade, the beautiful and increasingly rare spans have become big tourist draws.

He says at least some of the renewed interest is due to the wildly popular book and movie, The Bridges of Madison County, about a lusty love affair played out against a backdrop of covered bridges.

"You can build all the water slides and stuff to entertain tourists, yet it's these covered bridges which really draw people," Alston says.

Remaining New Brunswick bridges include the one at Hartland, north of Fredericton. It's the world's longest covered bridge at about 390 metres.

Every spring, residents in the town of Hartland keep an anxious watch on the rising, ice-covered St. John River, praying it won't damage the famous, 97-year-old link.

Part of the historic structure was carried away in a 1920 flood and residents are still nervous it might happen again.

"Almost every year there's a little scare," says John Glass, a lifelong Hartland resident and co-author of The Bridge (Little Ireland Press, 1990).

A modern bridge built near it carries the heavy traffic. Only local car traffic uses the covered bridge.

Lee said close attention is paid to the nearly 100-year-old Hartland bridge and this year several spans will be repaved and the roof repaired.

"There comes a time when you simply can't do anything more for them ... But with the Hartland bridge, I expect it'll be there for quite some time."

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