Keith Hoyt’s cows used to be the neighbourhood celebrities.
On a nice day, locals and visitors would drive along Grand Lake past his farm in Newcastle Centre, stopping to watch the herd graze the land his father and grandfather tended before him.
But that hasn’t happened since September, when the rickety bridge just up the road was suddenly closed by the province after an inspection deemed it unsafe.
What was once a quick crossing suddenly became a 12-kilometre detour around the bridge, just east of Minto.
Aside from an inconvenience for the farmer with his cows on one side and hay on the other, his social life has taken a hit too, and he even said his cows are depressed.
“No one travels here no more," Hoyt said. "Roger would go by, and Joe, and these people, they'd stop for a second if they had something, but no, nothing now.
“Now, you know, I'm just the old man at the end of the road.”
With the province’s recent decision not to replace the Newcastle Creek No. 1 bridge, residents on both sides of the bridge miss what used to be a neighbourly community spanning the creek.
Sue and Bruce Carr retired to their sprawling, lakeside property just on the other side of the bridge in 2020 and opened up a small farm, selling produce, fruit and plants.
But now the couple have decided to wind down the farm almost entirely, finding themselves on the wrong side of the closed bridge from most of their customers.
WATCH | 'It's a mining road':
“So we knew right away if it was closed, it was pretty much doomed for us,” she said.
Fresh egg sales over the winter have dropped by half because customers won’t drive the detour around, she said.
About 70 properties are cut off by the bridge closure, with a mix of permanent and seasonal residents. After the province closed the bridge, upgrades were made to Cedar Street — an old mining road — to create a detour, which is now the route connecting these properties to Route 10 and Minto.
Bruce Carr said the graded, dirt road was initially nice but soon deteriorated into a road with some sections of washboard with muddy potholes. He and many of his neighbours fear for the big spring melt.
“We love the place," Sue Carr said. "It's just we don't love getting here.
“We miss all the neighbors down the road … it’s going to be a really quiet summer for us.”
Province says decision comes down to cost
CBC News requested an interview with Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Chuck Chiasson or anyone from the department, but none was provided.
Spokesperson Jacob MacDonald said in an email statement that the department found the bridge replacement to be “cost prohibitive,” and that replacement options would be vulnerable to flooding.
When asked to specify, he said preliminary estimates that include the cost of demolishing the old bridge were about $8.9 million for a single-span panel bridge, or about $9.3 million for a two-span concrete beam bridge.
“The department has decided to move forward with decommissioning this structure for vehicle use and upgrading Cedar Street with chipseal on a new alignment, which is expected to cost approximately $5.8 million,” MacDonald wrote.
Mayor plans to contest closure
Grand Lake’s Progressive Conservative MLA Kris Austin said in an email statement that he was disappointed with the decision.
“I am convinced it would be a savings to the taxpayer and a relief to residents to have a new bridge installed,” Austin wrote, adding that cost analyses are “not factoring in what will now become a divided community.”
For Mayor Kevin Nicklin of Grand Lake, which includes Newcastle Centre, having no bridge is something he won’t accept.
He said he doesn’t believe the cost estimate numbers that DTI officials gave him, and he is consulting with contractors to get what he thinks would be a better estimate.
Nicklin said he wants to ensure officials are accounting for the costs to plow and maintain the detour route, which he said is built over abandoned, deep mining cuts filled with slag, a muddy byproduct that was simply thrown back into pits once coal was extracted.
Cedar Street meanders through and over these slag dumps, a hilly, forested landscape that doesn’t look like what the normal New Brunswick woods do.
“And so at the end of the day, the long-term benefit would be to replace the bridge as exactly as it is,” he said.
It’s the least the province can do, Nicklin said, after decades of mining “made a mess” of the area.
“We funded the entire province for those years. All we're asking for is a little bit back.”
At a now-rare neighbour meet up at Hoyt's farm, Sue Carr greeted him with a tupperware of fresh muffins, and in turn he ribbed Bruce Carr that he might even miss the noisy ATV and snowmobile traffic he used to complain about on their road.
Moments later, Hoyt’s granddaughter drove up to the house to check on her grandfather, leaning over her boyfriend in the passenger seat to say she missed him.
“I’ve missed you too!” Hoyt said.
“Did you hear the bridge is closed?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Farley is a Fredericton-based reporter at CBC New Brunswick. Originally from Boston, he is a journalism graduate of the University of King's College in Halifax. He can be reached at sam.farley@cbc.ca
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