Bay of Chaleur Forgotten Treasures

Richard Wilbur is supervisor of the Legislative Research Service at the
New Brunswick Legislature, and the author of The Rise of French New
Brunswick.

Local newspaper editor A.J. McCarthy has cobbled together a wonderful
mix of stories, mostly from the weekly Northern Light and earlier New
Brunswick publications. The result is somewhat uneven, with most stories
running barely a page and ending as abruptly as they began.

For readers not familiar with New Brunswick’s feisty “north
shore,” McCarthy’s arrangement of the stories (“Ships and
Shipwrecks,” “Trains and Trainwrecks,” “War Stories and
Heroes,” etc.) provides a lively history. The brevity of some of the
items only whets the appetite for more details. For example, a fuller
account of the exploits of Joe Gammon, “the well-known Bathurst barber
and liquor sleuth,” would have been welcome. Or of the story of Samuel
Napier, who along with his brother returned from the 1850s Australian
gold rush with a 145-pound nugget that was “95 per cent pure gold.”
Somehow they got it to England, where they showed it to Queen Victoria
and then sold it to the Bank of England for ten thousand pounds.

This collection provides an entertaining glimpse into a region that
still contains some of New Brunswick’s most colorful characters.