West Side Stories: People, History and Local Lore from West Saint John

Richard Wilbur is author of The Rise of French New Brunswick and H.H.
Stevens, 1878–1973, and co-author of Silver Harvest: The Fundy
Weirmen’s Story. His latest book is Horse-Drawn Carriages and Sleighs:
Elegant Vehicles from New England and New Bruns

As the subtitle suggests, this is a close look at a specific locality,
and while the many references to streets and families would be lost on
readers unfamiliar with Saint John, let alone its western part, most,
regardless of where they grew up, would recognize and relate to the
scenes of small-town Canada, circa the 1950s. In this sense, Goss
provides a fund of common social history. As an author of several local
histories, a frequent columnist in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, and
a popular lecturer on local folklore, Goss has a well-established and
loyal group of readers.

Organizing scores of stories into logical sections must have presented
a challenge, but Goss was up to it. The first section, “When We Were
Very Young,” is the most entertaining. The next, “First and Last:
Tales of Saint John’s Famous and Infamous,” has some fascinating
historical sketches, including one about the first air passenger to
arrive in the West Side and another describing the exploits of Frank
Martin, who swam through the famed Reversing Falls four times.
“Doctors, Preachers, Teachers and Other West Siders” plus “Old
Haunts, Travels and Places to Remember” round out the volume.

While I would have appreciated a more direct entry into the majority of
stories that Goss got from taped interviews (at times he intrudes
unnecessarily), on the whole, he has produced another entertaining and
socially relevant collection.