Tall Tales and Curious Happenings

Richard Wilbur is the author of The Rise of French New Brunswick and
H.H. Stevens, 1878–1973, and the coauthor of Silver Harvest: The Fundy
Weirmen’s Story.

Through his Walk ’n’ Talk community exploration tours and writing
workshops for students, David Goss has probably done more than a score
of classroom teachers in awakening young New Brunswickers’ interest in
their province’s past. Tall Tales and Curious Happenings is a
collection of his recent columns in the Saint John Telegraph Journal.
The 97 items testify to his knack for finding people with colorful
stories and a willingness to part with them.

The columns run the gamut from ghost stories to a well-researched piece
explaining the subtle differences between dandelions and coltsfoot.
While Goss assumes that his readers are familiar with the geography of
his home town in particular and the New Brunswick side of the Bay of
Fundy in general, a map indicating the main settlements and geographic
features would have helped visitors using the collection as an
introduction to the area. Most of the columns are supported by
well-chosen photos.

It was back in 1978, when Goss was a recreation supervisor for the city
of Saint John, that he began his Walk ’n’ Talk tours. Now a
freelance writer and tourist promoter, he tells us that he spent “the
three summer months [in 1998] looking for ‘characters’ who could
lead interpretative walking tours in specific locations in the
southwestern part of the province, including the islands of Campobello
and Grand Manan.”

Too often, collections of newspaper columns are outdated and stale.
That’s not the case here. David Goss has come up with a lively
potpourri that informs and delights. It will be welcomed not only by his
regular readers, but by other residents in southern New Brunswick who
want to expand their knowledge of the area’s history and folktales.