Bypassed treasures
The village of Codys, once a vibrant centre, has textbook examples of gracious 19th-century architecture. They're featured in a heritage tour on Sunday.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference
- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (1920)
In this impatient era of speed and technological transformation, we have become transfixed by our need to eliminate the impediment of time - high-speed Internet, instant messaging, straighter divided highways, direct flights. . . Very often we find it hard to slow down and appreciate the simple beauty and meditative qualities of the journey itself.
While I admit that I don't hunger for 1960s-era travel, when it took more than four hours to drive from Fredericton to Edmundston (it now takes a little over two and a half), my mother still speaks longingly about the winding single-lane road that meandered between the two cities along the beautifully scenic St. John River. The Trans-Canada Highway is efficient and far safer but it is often uninspiring in its point A to point B design that avoids long-established communities and picturesque irregular landscapes.
Until relatively recently, New Brunswick's unofficial motto was Canada's Picture Province. Until 1972, our licence plates displayed the moniker of "Picture Province" below the registration numbers. As someone who has spent the past two years travelling New Brunswick roads with camera and notepad in hand, I can attest to the truth in the motto; our region is undeniably worthy of having its picture taken.
Many outstanding places are off the beaten track on country roads and bypassed routes that run through once-vibrant rural areas. Case in point are Codys and Cambridge-Narrows, two small communities on Washademoak Lake. Seven of their buildings are featured Sunday on a public heritage tour organized by the Queens County Historical Society.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Codys and Cambridge-Narrows were prosperous farming villages with regular riverboat stops connecting them to the thriving St. John River valley. Much of their remaining wooden architecture of this period is remarkable in its scope and state of conservation. Yet they remain barely known due to their rural location which is, admittedly, only minutes from the new Trans-Canada Highway that cuts through the province.
The circa-1890 Robinson House in Cambridge-Narrows was the home of James Springer Robinson, a prosperous lumber mill owner and shipbuilder from an established Irish family in the area. With its long wraparound verandah, double window bays, and connected barn, the house and its contents are virtually unchanged from a century ago. It is now the Heritage Tea House operated by its new owner Julie Steeves, who has lovingly kept all the furniture and domestic artifacts on display. The tea house's material history and architectural splendour are so exceptional that an Ontario appraiser recently said that its carriage house was one of the best preserved in Canada.
Codys was named after the Loyalist Cody family who settled the area in the late 1700s. Their most notable offspring was the late Archdeacon Hiram A. Cody (1872-1948), a noted novelist, poet and public speaker who became one of Canada's best-known authors in the early part of the 20th century. Cody began his literary career in the first decade of the century during a five-and-a half-year period of service as a missionary in the Yukon. While his novels became international favourites, he also played a leading part in the religious and cultural life of Saint John, and was named Archdeacon in 1927. The elegantly simple double bay, hip-roofed house in Codys known as Hillscote was his birthplace, and was recently designated a provincial historic site.
The circa-1890 Codys train station, while moved from its original site, is a clear reminder of the vibrant economic and transportation past of the now quiet community. Gerald Connell, a former station master, remembers its glory years in the early 1950s when the station handled nearly $1 million of freight a year. Closed in 1963, the structure is in need of some repair, but it still possesses its original ticket booth and separate men's and women's waiting rooms, with the employee's apartment upstairs.
Just north of Codys is one of the most picturesque covered bridges in New Brunswick, the Long Creek NO.1 Bridge on Starkey Road. Sited above a reeded marsh and adjacent to a once prosperous shipbuilding site, the 1912 bridge creates a delightful water gateway to the nearby Starkey House. With its triple set of gabled dormers capped by rich gothic revival trim, the circa-1860 Starkey House is a little-known New Brunswick architectural treasure. Its heavily decorated bargeboard trim and finials at the roof peaks give a light air to a large five-bay gothic residence built by deputy surveyor Samuel Starkey. From its four windows and central door at the ground floor to the three second-storey windows under each gable to the single attic window at its apex, the Starkey House is a textbook example of the ornate gothic revival style for a country home.
Other historic landmarks included on the tour are the circa-1890 Leonard House, the 19th-century Codys Baptist Church which was given a new belltower and decorative stained wood interior in 1928, and the Codys Women's Institute Hall. The hall is a wooden Gothic Revival structure built as a fraternal lodge in 1870. Guarding the entrance to Codys Lane with a refined elegance and dignity, this provincial historic site is significant as an example of late 19th-century community buildings located in villages throughout New Brunswick.
I highly recommend taking this opportunity to tour some of our province's built treasures. Tickets are $20, and can be purchased up until today by calling the Queens County Museum at 488-2966 or Dawn Bremner at 488-2295; or on Sunday by visiting Crafted Images Pottery at 52 Codys Lane in Codys. Consider it a chance to take the road less travelled.
John Leroux is an architect and art historian who lives in Fredericton. He can be reached at johnnyleroux@hotmail.com.
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