Normally rivers flow into the oceans, but at high tide, the enormous surge of seawater into the Bay of Fundy pushes upriver, reversing the rapids.
From the shore, it appears that a surfer could ride a wave for several minutes at the spot where the river rapids meet the ocean tide at its peak, like a jogger on a treadmill or an expert on Royal Caribbean's Flowrider.
It's an interesting natural phenomenon which occurs approximately every 12 1/2 hours.
High tide wasn't expected for a few hours when we began our hop-on, hop-off tour of Saint John aboard the Big Pink Sightseeing Bus.You may be interested to know that some of the proceeds for the Big Pink Bus support breast cancer research.
As we rode around, the live tour guides shared many interesting facts about the city.
I should stress that if given the choice between a live guide or a recorded narrator, I would always choose the live guide.
It is true that the recorded narration is efficient and provides all of the standard information, but a great live guide will give it a more personal spin.
Occasionally guides can be mediocre, but fortunately most seem to be locals who love their communities and enjoy sharing their knowledge gleaned from a combination of training and their own experience.
We took a couple of laps on this bus, and each time included fresh material.
Of course, there are a few informational milestones they all cover, like the fact that the Wolastoqiyik (translates as "People of the Beautiful River") lived in Saint John for thousands of years before the French explorer Champlain arrived in 1604.
As you may recall, Loyalists, who did not want to revolt against Great Britain, counterbalanced Patriots throughout the war. When the colonies unexpectedly won, thousands of Loyalists did what anti-Trump celebrities promised to do if he won: they moved to Canada.
About 14,000 Loyalists established two settlements by the Saint John River.
After two years, a British Royal Charter incorporated these settlements into the combined city as Saint John.
On our first lap, after forgoing stops at several historic sites in downtown, we hopped off upon arriving at an inviting park with a beautiful lake encircled by multicolored trees and a hiking trail.
We actually had plenty of time to explore alternative paths, but we wanted to see the rapids before high tide as a sort of baseline, so we hopped back on the bus with a different guide. We arrived at the Bay of Fundy and snapped a few photos of the flow of the river into the bay.
While the river itself and distant shore retain subtle, rugged beauty, there's also a huge paper mill that's something of an eyesoar, belching what is mostly steam with the smell of wet cardboard (actually probably pulp) from its industrial hulk.
In contrast to the rest of the trip, it was a nippy day, so we decided not to wait a couple of hours for the tides to reverse.
We took another lap instead, riding up to a ridge overlooking the Bay of Fundy where huge chainsaw-carvings of historic people and a man-sized beaver overlook the water.
Our guide said that at one time, beavers the size of men actually did live in the area, as evidenced by skeletons found in excavations, but the beavers evolved to be smaller.
As with most mysteries of nature, there's a native American legend to explain this. According to lore, large beavers kept damming up the river which caused villages to flood, so Koluscap, who was a sort of god man who solved a lot of these problems, warned the beavers repeatedly to stop obstructing the river flow. Finally, he smashed their dam with his giant club and made the beavers small so they wouldn't be able to build such big dams any more.
However, don't buy into hyperbole about "Reversing Falls," expecting to see the equivalent of Niagara Falls flowing up a cliff, or you'll be disappointed. You may find you like the parks of Saint John better, as I did.
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