music

As we swung back westward through New Brunswick (NB) inorder to ultimately re-enter the U.S. through Northern Maine, we decided to pay a visit to Fredericton aka the “Freddy”. Freddy appeared to meet our usual city selection criteria — small to medium in size, coffee options, art, live music, bike trails and a city waterfront.

***St. John River, Fredericton, New Brunswick***

We thought we would need two days but the weather was excellent and so much was happening that we ended up staying four nights; before departing on our wood lands ramble into remote northern New Brunswick (Wood Lands Ramble post coming soon).

Bicycling

A coalition of volunteers (Fredericton Trail Coalition) began to mobilize after the Canadian Northern Railway abandoned a number of lines in New Brunswick in 1989. The first trail was opened in 1993. In 1996, 377 additional kilometers of abandoned railway was donated to the province by the Irving Family allowing Freddy to connect a number of trails and create today’s connected network of over 120 kilometers of trail. A key aspect of the donation was the inclusion of the 906 foot railway bridge that spans the St. John River — connecting the trail systems on both side of the river.

As a result, folks in Fredericton have a plethora of riding and walking trail options. It is not surprising that Fredericton was named Canada’s 6th most-walkable city in 2019, one of 5 “Great Canadian Bike Cities” in 2021 by People for Bikes, and was #9 on Canada’s Best Small Cities as ranked by World’s Best Cities.com in 2022. We took advantage of the trail system and delightful weather to explore a number of the trails during our stay in Freddy.

fika

Combining biking with coffee is a double delight. Mill Town Coffee Roasters is conveniently located on one of the trails and we were able to take a coffee break on our way out and back during each ride. Pretty good, eh!

Street Art

In our humble opinion, public art adds a great deal to a city’s environment. We were glad to find that Freddy has several notable street murals in the downtown area, although we would have loved to find more during our walks through town.

Fine art

Freddy is very fortunate to have, in our opinion, a very impressive art museum, especially in light of the fact that the city population is barely 60,000. Much of the good fortune is owed to the generosity of one Lord Beaverbrook — who in 1959 gifted the museum building and 300 valuable works of art to a museum foundation he created for the benefit of the public. Did we mention that the museum is named the Beaverbrook Art Gallery?

The son of a Presbyterian minister in Miramichi, New Brunswick, the future Lord Beaverbrook, Max Aitken, enjoyed early success in Canadian business. In 1910, he left Canada for England, where he was knighted and elected a Member of Parliament, eventually serving as Minister of Aircraft Production in Churchill’s wartime government. No slouch Sir Max!

The museum is noted for it’s collection of renowned Canadian artists but also has works by Dali (not fans but still impressive to see a gallery of Dali paintings in Freddy) and Gainsborough and as well as other internationally acclaimed painters. The Beaverbrook became the official provincial gallery of New Brunswick in 1996.

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989)
La Turbie: Sir James Dunn, 1949 oil on canvas
On Loan from the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation

Medrie MacPhee (Canadian / Canadienne, b./n. 1953)
Locke (1987)
oil on canvas / huile sur toile

Carol Hoorn Fraser (Canadian / Canadienne, 1930 – 1991)
The Guardians, 1976
oil on canvas / huile sur toile

Lucy Jarvis (Canadian / Canadienne, 1896 – 1985)
Iris Swamp (1961)
oil on board / huile sur panneau

Montreal-based painter Michael Smith (directly above and below) is known for his fluid and impasto surfaces as well as his ability to strike a poetic balance between representation and abstraction. Inspired by art history as well as historic and current events, Smith pulls from various sources to create his energetic landscapes and seascapes. His Sea of Change series includes massive canvases exploding with colour and energy, as well as smaller studies on paper. These were inspired by a serendipitous encounter with a 19th-century painting of the Arctic expedition ship H.M.S. Terror during his time as artist-in-residence at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2018. Layering texture and colour, the familiar with the unfamiliar, Smith’s paintings convey (as the artist writes) “a mix of excitement and anxiety of a land [that] although at times bucolic, is riddled with shadows.” Curated by John Leroux

A little bit of history

We often find that the early history of a city is intertwined with the creation of the dominate religion of the ruling class. Fredericton is no exception to that pattern. The city was named for Prince Frederick,son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Subsequently, Queen Charlotte declared Fredericton a Cathedral City (even though its population was too small) so Christ Church Cathedral could be built. The Anglican Church at that time was utilized as a way to impose British custom and law (and to counter Acadian Catholicism) on the inhabitants be they British, Acadian or First Nations.

***Christ Church Cathedral, Fredericton, New Brunswick***

The Cathedral sits on its own park like island of green at the edge of downtown. The surrounding neighborhoods consist of stately and beautifully maintained homes. By many accounts the movers and shakers in Fredericton were members of this parish and much business was conducted and deals made between the businessmen and politicians who belonged here.

We always seem compelled to add a little bit of history (and an opinion or two) when we report on our travels — oh well!

We closed out our stay in Freddy with an afternoon and evening of food and music. The River Jam Music Festival was taking place all around us at our hotel with four or five music acts performing in different areas of the facility simultaneously. We took in a couple of acts, had dinner and camped at the bar (surprised?) to take in the performances in the lobby which ran to midnight. We were treated to primarily traditional music from the Maritimes and the local crowd was up singing along and dancing. So good!

That’s it from Freddy! We had a great visit and look forward to sharing more of our travels soon.

Be seeing you!

Hattiesburg — a very brief history

After spending time in Louisianna we traveled north back into Mississippi to visit Hattiesburg. We were up in the air about visiting Hattiesburg but after a conversation with a former resident of Hattiesburg (that we met in Cleveland, Mississippi) we decided to invest a day and check out the town. Additionally, visiting Hattiesburg would provide an opportunity to ride the Longleaf Bike Trail.

Hattiesburg was founded in 1882 by William Hardy and named after his wife Hattie. The land that is now Hattiesburg became available after the Chicksaw and Choctaw peoples were forcibly removed under the Indian Removal Act which allowed the government to relocate the nations to land west of the Mississippi River.

The city thrived in its early days as part of the burgeoning lumber industry (Hattiesburg sits in the Pine Belt) and is known as the Hub City because of the confluence of rail lines running through the city. While the timber industry is not a major economic force today, the city is still a major rail hub with freight lines bisecting the city.

While Hattiesburg was not founded until well after the Civil War, the town nonetheless did its part to uphold the legacy of slavery and segregation. The Black residents of Hattiesburg were still largely unregistered to vote in 1962 due to the efforts of the municipal government to make it impossible for Blacks to qualify to vote. For more information about the Civil Rights Movement in Hattiesburg click on the link: https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/hattiesburg-civil-rights-movement/

Hattiesburg — home of rock ‘n roll?

One facet of Hattiesburg that we were totally unaware of prior to our visit is the claim that Hattiesburg is the true home of Rock ’N Roll. Musicologists have traced the roots of the genre to the Graves brothers – Blind Roosevelt and Uaroy. The brothers started as Gospel singers but in 1936 joined with pianist Cooney Vaughn to form the Mississippi Jook Band. Two of their songs in particular are now viewed as very early Rock ’N Roll songs. These songs, Barbecue Bust and Dangerous Woman, were performed and recorded long before the genre was clearly defined and popular. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pegm79r1zE

Today, many musicologists consider the roots of Rock ’N Roll began in the African American Churches in the South where the music was “rocking and reeling” and instruments other than the organ were used to accompany the singers (out of necessity as the congregations could not afford an organ). An excellent article on this subject: https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/visual-performing-arts/hattiesburg-birthplace-of-rock-n-roll/

Longleaf trail

The Longleaf Trail is a 45.5 mile paved rails-to-trails bikeway. The southern trailhead is in Hattiesburg and the trail runs in a northwest direction terminating in Prentis. We rode out and back on the southern half of the trail from Hattiesburg and the northern half of the trail from Sumral Station (west of Laurel).

Longleaf is a Hall of Fame trail and for good reason. The trail is paved, in excellent condition and passes through beautiful Southern scenery. Surprisingly, we encountered very few other riders on either of our rides. We highly recommend this trail. The round trip is 91 miles – beyond our current range – so we split the trail and enjoyed two rides.

The town

Laurel is not our ”home Town” but it could be!

Laurel was added to our intinary once we decided to visit Hattiesburg. If you are a fan of the HGTV show Home Town you may recognize Laurel as the small town where husband and wife Ben and Erin Napier help folks renovate local homes. As a result of the popularity of the show, the town has attracted many visitors and new residents.

We visited their retail store and woodworking shop while in town, but there were unfortunately no celebrity sightings. We can tell you their two stores are doing a brisk trade! Good for them – the couple has done a lot to help bring back this former lumber industry town.

We arrived in Laurel on the day of the annual crawfish festival. The festival runs from 11AM to 3PM – all you can eat for $15- Classic Low Country Boil – crawfish, sausage, potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn. Live music to boot. Now that is Southern Hospitality!

Laurel has more than the CrawFest and the TV show to offer. There are several excellent restaurants (The Loft….our favorite) and several neigborhoods with streets lined with live oaks and stately homes. Lastly, the former town library was converted and expanded into an art museum with a very nice collection of paintings and sculptures. We have included several photogrpahs of our favorite paintings at the end of this post.

**William Hollingworth (1910-1944) *The Mystery of a Southern Night, 1941*, Oil on canvas**

**Charly Palmer (1960) *Leadbelly c. 2012,* Acrylic on canvas**

Alfred Conteh (1975) *Preme 2020, Acrylic and Atomized brass dust on canvas*

**John Winslow (1938) *Painting in Marcella’s Studio 1982,* Oil on canvas**

**Janet Fish (1938) *Pink Scarf and Daffodils 2008,* Oil on canvas**

This post is our penultimate post on Mississippi as part of OTR 8.0. If you missed our previous posts you can find them at ctsprinterlife: OTR 8.0: Mississippi Part One and Ocean Springs, Mississippi at ontheroadwithmariastephen.net Our final post will cover our exploration of the Mississippi Delta.

Be seeing you!