Petitcodiac River
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The Petitcodiac River is located in southeastern New Brunswick,Canada, originating in the Caledonia Highlands and eventually flowing past the city of Moncton before emptying into Shepody Bay on the Bay of Fundy. Because of its colour, it is often nicknamed the "Chocolate River". The river is 129 km long and has a drainage basin of more than 2,000 km². There are approximately 175,000 people living in the watershed. The river was formerly navigable as far as Moncton (a distance of 50 km), but a causeway was built across the river between Moncton and Riverview in 1968 causing extensive siltation of the river downstream and blocking the navigation channel upriver from the village of Hillsborough.
The Petitcodiac exhibits one of North America's few tidal bores, a regularly occurring wave that travels up the river on the leading edge of the incoming tide, and hence a tidal wave in the truest sense of the term. The bore is actually caused by the extreme tides of the Bay of Fundy which, due to the rapid rise of water levels, forcibly sends a wave of water flowing upstream in rivers that normally flow into the ocean. This wave can vary in size depending on several factors including lunar phase and atmospheric pressure (storm surge) and is also influenced by the shape and the depth of the river. The incoming tidal wave travels up the river on top of the outgoing water flow.
The lower Petitcodiac River Valley was originally settled by Acadians in the early 18th century and they established a number of farming communities on the shoreline and adjacent marshes. The most important of these was the village of Le Coude (Moncton), founded in 1733. The valley fell under English control during the Seven Years' War, after the fall of Fort Beausejour in 1755. The Acadian population was subsequently expelled. Resettlement occurred in 1766 with the arrival of seven Pennsylvania Dutch families at The Bend (Moncton); re-establishing the pre-existing farming community. Shipbuilding would become important in Moncton during the 19th century. Moncton finally would develop as a regional distribution, transportation and manufacturing centre.
Other communities that developed along the Petitcodiac River include the villages of Petitcodiac, Salisbury, and Hillsborough as well as the town of Riverview and the city of Dieppe.
Commercial shipping on the Petitcodiac River decreased in importance after the end of the wooden shipbuilding era in the 1870's, but the wharves of Moncton remained active until the middle 20th century. A commercial fishing industry also existed on the Petitcodiac with species such as the Atlantic Salmon, Gaspereau (Alewife), Smelt and Sturgeon being important. This all came to the end with the building of the Petitcodiac River Causeway in 1968.
[edit] Causeway controversy
The Petitcodiac River Causeway was constructed in 1968 to supplement the pre-existing Gunningsville Bridge as a connector between Moncton and the growing bedroom community of Riverview. The causeway is about a kilometer long, with only a narrow sluiceway which normally is kept closed in order to create a recreational headpond called "Lake Petitcodiac". The construction of the causeway radically changed the ecosystem of the river with the following effects:
- Rapid siltation occurred downstream. The river at Moncton was shallow in any event and it did not take much siltation to clog the channel and close the river to navigation.
- The narrowing of the river channel due to siltation drastically reduced the size of the tidal bore, effectively destroying one of the region's better known tourist attractions.
- The commercial fishery in the Petitcodiac was obliterated.
- To add insult to injury, it was decided in the early 1970s to locate the regional garbage landfill to a point along the Moncton shoreline just below the causeway in order to allow for a "land reclamation" project.
By the 1990s, the damage to the river ecosystem was so apparent that activists began to lobby to have the causeway removed, or at least to have the sluice gates opened up for a more natural water flow. This proposal has met with stiff opposition from boaters and from landowners along the shoreline of "Lake Petitcodiac" who were quite upset that the recreational headpond would be lost.
Proponents seeking the removal of the causeway eventually formed a local chapter of the Riverkeepers movement. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited the area on several occasions to lend his support. The landfill was closed and relocated to an area several kilometres away from the river during the 1990s. A number of studies were subsequently commissioned by the Petitcodiac Riverkeeper and also by the provincial and federal governments in order to determine how best to rehabilitate the river, the most comprehensive of which was released in 2005. This study stated in no uncertain terms that the causeway should be removed and replaced with a bridge to allow for natural water flow. Final costs for doing this are estimated to be in excess of $100 million. No final decisions have yet been made by the provincial government.
Tributaries of the Petitcodiac River include the:
- Anagance River
- Little River
- North River
- Pollett River
The river's name comes from a Mi'kmaq word meaning "bends like a bow", referring to the sharp curve that the river makes in switching from an east-west direction to a north-south direction at Moncton. One of the names for the settlement that became known as Moncton was "The Bend".
