Fredericton

Raymond B. Blake is an assistant professor of history at Mount Allison
University in New Brunswick.

This is a beautiful and colorful little book about downtown Fredericton,
the capital city of New Brunswick. With more than 60 color photographs,
Sherman Hines, one of Canada’s best-known photographers, captures the
splendor of Fredericton, complete with its stately elms and historic
buildings—some dating from the arrival of the Loyalists in the 18th
century.

For the most part, Hines’s photography fits nicely with the brief
introduction by Alfred Bailey, Professor Emeritus at the University of
New Brunswick. They both portray a romantic image of Fredericton, where
the creative spirits of Charles G.D. Roberts and Bliss Carman found
expression. However, Bailey notes that the sounds of whippoorwills and
the dense forests around the campus of the University of New Brunswick,
for example, have been replaced with “the sounds of horns and
motors” and “an assortment of malls and attendant structures.”
That side of Fredericton is not represented in Hines’s photography.
Moreover, many of the stately homes that Hines captured on film have
been converted into apartments and student housing. Too bad!