New bridge between New Brunswick and Maine may not revive battered cross-border bonds
CBC
Every day, a handful of curious Edmundston retirees gather near the Canada Border Services Agency building on the St. John River.
They've been watching with fascination as a new international bridge has taken shape over the last three years.
Now that the bridge is finished and open — mostly — they're waiting to see the old bridge, opened in 1921, dismantled this summer.
The project has been the talk of this northwest New Brunswick city and of the American town of Madawaska, Maine, across the river — two communities that have shared a bond for almost two and a half centuries.
"It's pretty much my whole life. I spent my life spanning the bridge," says Don Levesque, an American and the retired publisher of a weekly newspaper on the U.S. side who lives in Edmundston.
Locals on both sides tell stories of frequent trips across the border to shop, to go to movies, to play baseball or basketball, or to visit relatives or go on dates.
"I remember crossing the old bridge on my bike with three T-shirts and a couple of coats, because we were smuggling," says Nicole Lang, a retired professor of history at the Université de Moncton campus in Edmundston.
Concealing a few purchases from the U.S. side was common practice for Canadians looking to avoid paying duty — and they usually got away with it.
"We stopped at the customs, but they saw us on bikes and [said] 'You go ahead,'" says Lang. "And we didn't need a passport back then."
Between 2,200 and 2,500 cars per day used the old bridge to cross the border here in the years before COVID-19 shutdowns, according to both the Maine and New Brunswick governments.
But the old steel-truss bridge was deteriorating. In 2017 the two governments imposed weight restrictions that forced trucks to detour to other international bridges 25 minutes upriver or 35 minutes downriver.
The new bridge cost about $135-million Cdn and features two lanes for vehicle traffic and room for ATVs and snowmobiles.
A U.S. federal infrastructure fund covered a large portion of the expense, with the Maine and New Brunswick governments splitting the rest.
New Brunswick's share was about $35 million, according to spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane.
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