Between the River and the Pine

A legacy of family and heritage of community…

Between the River and the Pine is a history and memoir. It interweaves the story of the community that once existed on the “big bend” of the Saint John River in western New Brunswick, and a memoir of the author who lived there on her family’s ancestral farm until the age of 12.

Lois Palmer Thornton’s, thorough research springs to life in this history of the settlements on the “big bend”—Hawkshaw, Pokiok, and The Barony. Multiple generations of her Palmer ancestors play a prominent role in this story. Childhood memories preface each chapter and occur throughout the book, portraying a deeply rooted way of life and a strong sense of place.

In the early years of settlement, a large tannery was established at Hawkshaw, which is described in detail. This business provided a major source of employment on site and in supplying the enormous quantity of hemlock tree bark required in the leather tanning process.

Through the lens of the Palmer family’s dairy farm and garden produce business an account is provided of the local, community-provisioning food system. Activities of church and school contributed to the sense of community identity.

With the coming of the motor car, the waterfalls on the Pokiok River, as it empties into the Saint John, became a regional tourist destination. Business facilities were built and operated to accommodate the attraction and became another focus of community life.

The narrative thread of the book, starting the author’s great grandfather, comes back again and again to the history of the Palmer family as exemplary of the values that make rural cultures successful and, on their own terms, enduring.

And then, when the author was 12, the dictates of urban and industrial “progress” seized the land along the “big bend” and forced the community to disperse. The building of a hydro-electric dam downstream at Mactaquac and its headpond were presented to the residents of Hawkshaw, Pokiok, and The Barony in the guise of a progressive social and economic development program from which they would benefit. Instead, it delivered a “progress” that uprooted the neighbourhoods and village settlements that ended their social life and small businesses; it flooded some of the most economically productive farmland in the province; it put an end salmon fishing.

Now, looking back at the disaster that befell her community and displaced her family, the author thoughtfully weighs what was lost against what was gained by damming the river. She finds the outcome depends on what is valued as a way of life.

The government decision makers who were determined to build the dam placed a low value on rural life. Consequently, they regarded the land on which rural families and communities lived along the Saint John River as a legitimate sacrifice zone. The families that were losing their farms and small businesses felt differently. They placed a high value of their way of life.

This conflict of values in New Brunswick is ongoing. Between the River and the Pine serves as a reminder of what is lost when an inequity in political power forces an urban, industrial agenda on a rural and small village way of life.

Lois Thornton grew up in the small farming community of Hawkshaw, New Brunswick in the central Saint John River valley until the building of the Mactaquac Dam caused her family to move to a farm in Lower Woodstock, NB. She holds a Bachelor of Nursing from the University of Manitoba and a Master of Adult Education from the University of New Brunswick, and has worked in clinical nursing and nursing education in Canada, Qatar, and New Zealand.

Lois has previously authored several short stories, and a book of essays, Thirty-Two Prayers from the Camino de Santiago. She lives along the shore of Oromocto Lake in New Brunswick with her husband David, two intrepid eagles and a gaggle of Canada geese.