Walking through Irishtown Nature Park, on the northern edge of Moncton, the winding path suddenly straightens out. According to historian and Roadside History columnist James Upham, it isn't a coincidence. "We could look at this as like a park design approach to brutalism in some fashion or another, which it's not," Upham said from the straight, flat pathway inside the park.
"It's a railway — it's an abandoned railway, and it's the railway that kind of shaped this area that we're in right now." The Moncton and Buctouche Railway, as it was called, was chartered in 1883 and opened in 1887, said Upham. At that time, New Brunswick did have some roads, but Upham said in today's context, they would be some of the roughest dirt roads you could imagine.
"It's really hard to get our heads around from a modern context, of sitting in air-conditioned vehicles going along at 100 and some odd kilometres an hour down a highway," Upham told Information Morning Moncton . "There's kind of a famous line from the early 1800s from New Brunswick to say that, you know, at that time, there was less than 10 good miles of road in the province, and they weren't consecutive." This photo from 1910 shows a train that worked the Moncton and Buctouche railway, with the train station just visible in the background.
Upham said trains revolutionized the ability to travel. (Provincial Archives of New Brunswick P211-15313) That's why, Upham said, if someone needed to get somewhere efficiently or move something.
