New Brunswick

Reversing Falls, one of the many cheesy tourist attractions in NB











St John, NB : We had more than one suggestion on how to improve the vista of this town... The paper mill, steel plant and other manufacturing facilities clashed with the old city and nature...

New Brunswick, on the outskirts of Fundy National park, I first witnessed a moose accident. It was not pretty, I never actually went near to see, so the memory is not that startling; but I heard painful groans and that was not pretty...

So we are driving, it's 10pm and dark... I was telling how I ran over a already hit deer while driving to Sudbury and thought it was a moose... we see one headlight, I say 'ah look a motorcycle?'. We get close, it is in fact a car and it looks damaged. We think, oh that car hit a moose but we see from the headlight of another car that just stopped that there is no one in the car, so we are thinking, whoever got hit was taken to the hospital. We stop anyway, and as my friend gets out, the driver of the other car who was had approached the damaged car before us, who, I kid you not, was wearing a monocle, runs towards us saying 'call 911, call 911'. We pull out our cell phones, no signal... this is in the middle of no where after all... There's apparently a girl lying on the road, on the forest side of the car... My friend (who, a couple days earlier could not put a live homard into a pot of boiling water and when I finally put it after much ado, cos I didn't want to do it either, felt fainitish...) takes some paper towels to her and comes back with blood soaked paper... I get out of the vehicle and start walking away - I am thinking, as far as I could so I would not hear the dying girls groans... I hear some rustle in the woods and think, 'well more moose', so I come back... The driver of the other car leaves his wife at the scene and says he's going to drive as far as it takes to get cell phone reception. My friend and the wife are talking to the girl trying to keep her alive or something... Several cars stop by... 'I am a 3rd year med student' one of them says, 'from NYC'. Everyone's so relieved, but the med student takes one look at the blood soaked girls and almost faints... the police come after 45 minutes... the paramedics too... The police take statements from all of us... we bid each other good bye, the med student extends his hand to us, my friend says "I am sorry I don't shake hands for hygienic reasons" - well I thought that was ironical after being all over the dying girl, but hey... The police says this is a suspicious incident...

On our way back from that creepy province, we see no less than 7 moose on the roadside, turns out NB puts up these huge fences by the highway for a reason...

We are analyzing - Hmmm.... the perfectly parked-on-the-side-of-the-road car, the woman lying on the ground on the non-driver side of the car, even though the passenger side door was un-openable as the police said, the hustle in the woods... Did we see another truck that looked like it was putting up construction signs about a half a mile before this incident..? The two extremes: 'a murder mystery' to 'well the woman was driving by herself', and everything in between came in to mind...

Back in Quebec, we google this incident... :

"SUSSEX - A 36-year-old man from Mechanic Settlement charged with leaving his girlfriend seriously injured as he dodged an accident will go to court next month.

It was at 10 p.m. on June 17 in Mechanic Settlement that a vehicle collided with a moose on Highway 114. When police arrived they found a single female accident victim and pleaded through the airwaves for information to identify her. They believed at the time she was the driver of the 1990 Pontiac.

Later that day, as she lay in serious condition in the hospital, someone heard the identity explained on the radio and contacted police, identifying her as a 32-year-old Mechanic Settlement woman. She remains in serious condition.

Police have charged the Mechanic Settlement man with leaving the scene of the accident. Police believe he was the driver of the car and took off on foot after the crash.

Police say the vehicle was not licensed or registered.

"RCMP identified a suspect and made several attempts to locate him," Sgt, Bruce Reid of the Sussex RCMP said. "On June 24, the driver turned himself in to the RCMP."

He will appear in court in Sussex on July 9."