Mon Voyage À L'Acadie: Part 10: Bouctouche & the Birthplace of JC Irving

Well now. How does one come down from the excitement of le grand tintamarre? I asked my cousin if he had gotten it all out of his system and could spend the oncoming year being contained and sensible without any outbursts of the sort I had witnessed the day before. He gave a wry chuckle and disagreed.

"No, I am charged up for the oncoming year," he exclaimed. "It filled me with the energy to go on in my life as an Acadian! That is how I feel. That is until the next tintamarre."

And so I bid my cousins sweet farewell until I could return... who knows when?

My mother and I hit the road bound for Moncton and our English cousins.

On our way we stopped for lunch at Bouctouche, New Brunswick. This marsh was behind the visitor center. If you enlarge it, you will see the heron in the middle.


The real reason we stopped there, though, was to see the Irving Memorial Chapel and the koi pond. This Scottish Kirk is constructed of stone with an open timber post and beam roof that is exteriorly covered by slates.


Here is the interior view:


Here is a photo of the window over the altar:


But here is my real draw; the koi pond! Here are two fellows working on it when we drove up. Fortunately, the younger one is in charge of keeping it! How lucky to come upon him!


Aren't the plantings divine? Look at the size of it! The fish must be huge! It is many times the size of my koi pond.


Finally I got his attention and we got to talking about koi, and he told me that the fish are only 3 years old. So, not so big yet. But he fed them and they are gorgeous!




You can see his hand throwing the food. He said that the fish hide from herons under the netted grill and that in the winter, there is a deep area under there where it doesn't freeze. So, they winter over right here in the pond.


These last two images are from my mom's iPhone.


Here I am contemplating how great it would be to have a job as a koi keeper here!