Today was weird. Really weird. We were heading on from our stay in Prince Edward Island. As we drove across Confederation Bridge on the way back to New Brunswick, just across the bridge I noticed a lighthouse in the distance. A lovely bridge and a lighthouse, those are 2 things I could not resist. Christiane was not so keen, so she stayed in the car. Imagine that! She left me to go on a frolic of my own.
As soon as I got through the entrance building to the Jourimain Nature Centre in New Brunswick right beside Confederation Bridge, I noticed the beautiful view of the bridge. We had seen the bridge before, but this view of it was special. I quickly phoned her in the hopes of rousting her from her doldrum. I told her I would proceed because it was about a 15-minute walk to the lighthouse. I would meet her on the way back I said.
After that, I continued up a wide trail through the woods to the lighthouse where, of course I took a number of photographs.
The Cape Jourimain Lighthouse is a tapered, octagonal wood-frame tower that was built in 1869 and it measures 15.5 metres (51 feet) and is located at the narrowest section of the Northumberland Strait. That’s why the bridge was built there. The lighthouse sits within the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre on the New Brunswick side of the Northumberland Strait.
Shortly after Confederation, the new Canadian government decided, wisely no doubt, that it should build a line of lighthouses and light stations along the coasts of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to assist those mariners to navigate the coasts. Shipwrecks had been rising in the area, which was not good for shipping in the area. As a result, they built a lighthouse at Cape Jourimain. One was built here because the surrounding water are shallow and contain rocky shoals.
None of this was weird. Weird came when I returned to the viewpoint for the bridge. I went off the trail to see if I could find Chris. As I was looking for her, she spotting me chatting with 2 women who were most enamoured of me. Hardly surprising. Actually, they liked my cap made by my daughter-in-law. She always gives me chick magnets. After a couple of minutes of chatting we returned to the main path to go back to the car parked in the parking lot, when we heard the cry: “Auntie Chris! Auntie Chris!” It turned out that Chris’ niece Margot, who lives in Gatineau Quebec, across the river from Ottawa, was also walking through the small park and recognized her. She was walking with her parents, Chris’s sister Monique and her partner Norm. Needless to say, we were all surprised to meet each other thousands of miles from our homes. It was truly a weird coincidence. So we stopped there and had a nice short visit far from our homes.