Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Life-Long Love of a New Brunswick Island
There’s a tiny island on the east coast of Canada. It’s just four miles wide and ten miles long, and only about 8oo people live there year-round. It’s a sleepy, windswept place, where things run on island time, and recreational activities are mostly ambling walks through the woods, lazing on the beach, an afternoon sail, or staring into a backyard bonfire.
Yet for several decades, this tiny, seemingly insignificant speck of Canadian land shaped the character and destiny of one of America’s most towering figures. And in turn, FDR left his indelible mark.
As our feature contributor today Suzanne Rent reports:
I’m from Halifax, Nova Scotia, about a six-hour car trip away. After driving across the southern part of New Brunswick, I take a car ferry from the mainland to Deer Island. Then I take a second ferry to Campobello.
This is how Canadians get to the island — by boat. For Americans, it’s a lot easier. There’s a bridge from Lubec, Maine. So, even though the island is Canadian territory, Canadians have to take a ferry from the New Brunswick mainland to get there, while Americans just have to drive across Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge. The island is so close to the U.S. border – about 300 yards --- that a strong swimmer could easily swim across. That is if they wanted to navigate the chilly waters of the Lubec Narrows… That swimmer won’t be me.
