Well dam, that was a good day!

After 24 hours of record rainfall in Fredericton we woke up to clouds but no rain so decided to head out to Mactaquak Provincial Park.  We weren't sure what the trails would be like but we had been encouraged to see the beaver ponds and this was our chance.

The park was designed to help soften the blow of the flooding of the valley and displacement of several thousand residents with the building of the Mactaquak Dam in 1968. We crossed the dam which provides 20% of New Brunswick's power and only read later that there is a problem with "expanding concrete" and the original 100-year life of the dam has been downgraded by 40 years. (So, 68+60=...) Politicians are currently having to make an unhappy choice: replacement, repairing while downgrading the power component, or returning the river to pre-dam state. Each of the three will cost a minimum of $2 billion.

So, we went to the experts. The original beaver pond had also run into issues. The pesky little rodents had eaten the bark off all their favourite poplar and beech trees in the area so abandoned the dam in 1985 and moved upstream. We ran into a local (human!) just after arriving and were told that the newer dam is the biggest in the world (Not!) I think he said that one of the beavers was too (possibly?) He gave us valuable advice about how to navigate the pathways - much damage and flooding of trails has happened in the last 24 hours. This along with horrible damage inflicted by Hurricane Arthur in 2012 that they are still trying to repair must be so discouraging.
But we had the most heavenly walk - went about 5K as we sought out the BBDITW. We eventually found the larger ponds with a giant beaver house in the middle. No sign of tail smackers but some clear evidence of their chewing. It was great.

Mactaquak Dam on the Saint John River

The biggest? What do you think?  We didn't actually see this guy but figure if the NB's can brag about the biggest, best, highest,  etc, we can fudge our story too!