Terminal Tormentine
"Confederation Bridge, built 12 years ago, has changed everything. What was once a bustling and important little village is now breathing its last."
The waves are choppy and the wind blows cold at Cape Tormentine, even though it's early August. “Tormentine”, even the name sounds tortured, tormented, and harsh like turpentine. It's a point of land sticking out into the Northumberland Strait, the beginning of our coastal route and the closest point in New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.
The ferry to Borden, PEI, used to leave from here, but now the terminal is abandoned and derelict. Wind blows through broken windows. Plants are breaking up the pavement and reclaiming the ground. The wharf and surrounding buildings all have fallen into disrepair and are unsafe. A chain link fence attempts to prevent access to the curious and foolhardy.
A few recreational fishermen, mostly retirees, some fathers and sons, cast their lines into the water in the areas on the wharf where they're allowed to go. The confederation bridge, built 12 years ago has changed everything. What was once a bustling and important little village is now breathing its last.
But a few businesses have managed to hang on. There's still a campground here that seems full enough and a restaurant, Smallwoods. Actually, we wonder if they both may be owned by the same person—the campground providing captive customers for the eating establishment.
The decor and the feel of the restaurant, down to the swivel seats at the lunch counter are of the 1950's. Dust motes drift in the dingy light coming through the venetian blinds. It feels like we’re in a mirage or a hologram. It seems like the very molecules that comprise the place struggle to not dematerialize. The waitress at Smallwoods confides, "I hate the bridge. I used to waitress at the restaurant in the ferry terminal". Clearly, this is a step down, way down.
Cottages, tiny palaces of summer pleasure and whimsy, remain, wildflowers and whirligigs in the yard. These cottage folk have stayed for the ocean.
The fate of this village is a story told over and over again in New Brunswick. Progress diverts energy and money away from small, once prosperous towns—and the town inevitably die unless it can reinvent itself. I just realized that I'm speaking of Cape Tormentine as if it's a person. A terminal person (pun intended).
Despite the stark and lonely aura of the place, I find beauty in the sagging, faded buildings. A once perky beauty relaxing into an inevitable graying and softening. The rusting water tower looks like a work of art with its varying shades of orange, brown and blue. The trees that poke out of the windows and wave at us like neighbors’ hands in the wind make me smile. The forest knows it has a good chance of taking over again.
There is passion and excitement here as well, though, and it definitely comes from the sea. Elemental , big whitecap waves, loud surf, wheeling birds, flags and fabric flapping in the wind fills us with excitement, sadness and a strange kind of undefined longing…
But there is some in the water. From a distance, I imagine it's a water serpent arching out of the sea. Or a roadway being held up on the tails of whales. It’s not of the natural world, though, it's man made—the usurping Confederation bridge.
Cape Tormentine's been left behind
