My father was of New Brunswick stock. His ancestors were United Empire Loyalists who fled colonial America and settled in eastern Canada. His family became part of that North American historical network of mercantile traffic up and down the coast of the Atlantic Ocean which embraced even Dalhousie Law School where I later studied in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The insignificance of international boundaries is especially apparent if one drives as we did from Ottawa, Ontario to St. Andrews by the Sea, New Brunswick. Ottawa, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Bangor (Maine) and St. Andrews by the Sea are on roughly the same latitudinal parallel. And to capture the true backwoods flavour of the nexus, St. Andrews by the Sea is almost contiguous to Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge which is in Maine directly across a straight from St. Andrews by the Sea. If, as so many people appear to do, one wishes to travel as the crow flies, the direct route between Ottawa and St. Andrews by the Sea is across the vast northern tree-covered tip of Maine instead of the longer route to Quebec City along the St. Lawrence River.
