Squat rows of abandoned apartments circle an empty children's playground, buried by snow. These buildings have seen better days. Their dull brown, yellow, grey and dishwater green paint is fading. Most windows are shattered or boarded up, while metal fencing and a dozen 'No Trespassing' signs surround them. If you look into the horizon, you can see candy cane striped smoke stacks belching smoke and the outline of the A. Murray MacKay Bridge. Shannon Park, a dilapidated former military barracks, is one of the first things people ...

MONCTON - While driving towards Salisbury along the Riverview side of the Petitcodiac River I noticed some peculiar sign-age under the acronym LAPPA, imploring all who cared to read it to keep the causeway connecting Moncton with Riverview closed. Having become familiar with the plight of the river myself over the years, the sign struck me as odd. It was my understanding that the general consensus amongst concerned citizens was that the gates should be opened in an effort to restore the river.  So, as with anything of particular interest to my life, I Googled it. Before we get to my findings, a little background information if you will. The causeway was constructed as a means of connecting Moncton with the quickly expanding town of Riverview and, as is the case with many NB municipalities, foresight was a word not found in the City of Moncton’s dictionary. The causeway essentially pinched off the river, causing a massive buildup of silty sediment directly downstream. The river's tidal bore, once world renowned and allegedly surf-able, was reduced to little more than the trickle of an 80 year man with kidney stones. As can be imagined the local ecosystem was affected and the fauna — fish in particular — that had once flourished soon vanished. A new ecosystem has since grown in its place, namely that of Lake Petitcodiac, a fresh water headpond that amasses upriver of the causeway.

Cross-posted from Spacing Ottawa, by Michael Frojmovic OUTER SPACE - For those not familiar with local fare in Trinidad & Tobago, a mix of dried channa (chickpea), roasted peanuts and splitpeas is certainly one of the world’s great beer snacks. Accompanied by a cold Carib beer and a demi-caraffe of water served up in the air-conditioned lounge of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, they help nurse a tired pedestrian through the 15 minutes it takes to recover from an 30-minute evening walk through Port of Spain. Walking in Trinidad after sunset is not a common practice. If you travel on foot from New Town, through Woodbrook, to the Hyatt, you'll face long stretches of empty streets, punctuated by the odd vagrant, without even a single honk from taxi drivers. Even as the sun sets, the humidity remains oppressive. My own destination was Port of Spain’s newest waterfront development; specifically, the publicly accessible waterfront promenade.  A waterfront city, Port of Spain was designed – much as numerous Canadian and American cities – with its back turned to the water. From a pedestrian’s point of view, the waterfront was separated by walled-in port facilities, and a major 6-lane arterial roadway (Wrightson Road) which functions as a highway.