'Drive-through province' a thing of past, some say even if drive is easier than ever

Take a drive through New Brunswick a few decades ago, and the Trans-Canada Highway unwinds as a ribbon along the shores of the St. John River, through rolling hills and quaint villages.

But as the province caught up with modernity and twinned major highways, travellers were moved away from scenic views and into the woods.

Itcan feel like endless kilometres of featureless roadsides offering no hint of what else might make New Brunswick special.

Now, the St. John River is rarely visible from north to south along the Trans-Canada.

With the widened, higher-speed highways, did New Brunswick reinforce its unflattering reputation as Canada's drive-through province?

Although the label is still voiced online, tourism officials sayNew Brunswick has essentially shakenthat image.

The days before the Trans-Canada

In the 1940s, just before the Trans-Canada Highway was fully developed, tourism booklets espoused the beauty of the province's highways.

"The motorist today will find happy, carefree wheeling in New Brunswick," declared one brochure.

"Drives through dense forest are enchanted with the magic perfumery of pine and spruce and fir; while around the next turn there may unfold a vista of infinite blue where the good earth runs down to the great salt sea and the air becomes pungent with a tang of the briny."

But would anyone write such prose about the New Brunswick highways of today?

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Newer highways have made it easier to drive through New Brunswick without seeing much. But the tourism minister says the old label of 'drive-through province' no longer applies.

Joanne Brub-Gagnmight.

As executive of the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick, she said the province has a strategy of trying to intercept tourists who might not have been planning to stop by enticing them with restaurants, breweries and unique attractions.

"People will stop for a reason, and you have to give them a reason to stop,"Brub-Gagn said.

She disagrees with the drive-through label but said New Brunswick can "can take advantage of being on the way to somewhere else," she said.

From her experience in industry trade shows,people from outside New Brunswick don't view it as the 'drive-through province,'but instead as a place they look forward to stopping or even as a destination.

"Most of the people that are driving, they're not driving through, they're driving around the Maritimes."

Tourism minister says numbers are up

Tourism Minister Tammy Scott-Wallace agrees.

"You know, I don't often hear of New Brunswick being the 'drive-through province' anymore," she said, calling it an "old reputation."

But how does the province track whether visitors are coming here or just staying over as they head to the next province.

"We don't have trackers in peoples' cars," Scott-Wallace said, but thedepartment tracks visitors through spending, hotel stays, and provincial park visit numbers.

The numbers are up "across the board," she said.

The province only has year-to-date data available as of June, which compared with year-to-date June numbers from 2023, does show increases in some areas. Spending is up 15 per cent, attractions visits are up 16 per cent.

Year-to-date spending for 2024 is $997 million, compared with $721 million for the same metric in 2019, before the COVID pandemic.

"We still have people who come to our province that may just be travelling through, no question about that," Scott-Wallace said.

"But we're seeing a billion dollars spent, and that's just to date this season."

Some other "tourism indicators," as the province calls them, are less clear-cut. Total Canada and U.S. visitor estimates are down 0.6 per cent from the year-to-date 2023 figures and the June 2024 year-to-date figures.

Room occupancy rates from 2023 and 2019 are tied at 57 per cent.

Trying to reach visitors before they arrive

"We ensure that with our marketing campaigns that we intercept at the planning stages with them before they're coming to New Brunswick to ensure they're not just driving through," Scott-Wallace said.

Visitors driving through the province to reach Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island are not the only visitors anyway,Scott-Wallace said. New Brunswick is a goal by itself.

"We hear more and more every day that people are coming to New Brunswick, and they're not necessarily visiting all of the Maritime provinces together," she said. "They're coming here as the destination."

When questioned further about strategies to draw tourists who had no intention of stopping, Scott-Wallace paused and did not have an immediate answer.

Then she said her department has to work with Transportation and Infrastructure to make sure signage entices travellers off the highways. Tourism also supports events and festivals promoted online, she added.

Tourists need to get off highways, podcaster says

Meggan Mullock, a Halifax travel podcaster, said she and her co-host decided to visit New Brunswick during COVID.

Even living near New Brunswick, Mullock said, she had never been tempted to get off the highway in the province.

"Prior to 2020, I really just wanted to get through New Brunswick or go to New Brunswick for the purpose of visiting friends or work, but never for leisure or a vacation," Mullock said.

While the province may have a reputation as"the drive-through province" or "No Funswick," she said, that opinionrecedes once you turn onto back roads.

People who travel in New Brunswick need tomake a conscious decision to explore it, she said.

"Someone has to put New Brunswick on their list and make a conscious effort to get off the highway and visit those really great smaller towns."

How highways got to this point

But how did highways getto a point where efficiency and tourism almost seem to be at cross purposes?

"I think that remains one of the challenges facing our communities in some ways is how do we get people who come through New Brunswick to see the beauty of New Brunswick," said Trevor Hanson, a civil engineering professor at the University of New Brunswick.

The Trans-Canada Highway was developed in the late 1940s into the 1950s, he said, and was built using a network of existing local roads through the province.

"And I don't think anyone foresaw at that particular time the modern highway system that we have today," Hanson said.

Small roads through farmland and with driveways and villages along them suddenly became a national link, soon bringing increased freight and long-distance traffic.

"So you can think what kind of pressure that would put onto a network like this," Hanson said.

Engineers and others started talking about the need forsafer highways in the 1970s into the 1980s, when twinning began.

As highways were upgraded, often the only choice was to build them far away from narrow roads along rivers or through towns because there was no space for four lanes.

"It was about prioritizing and making sure that people could more safely travel than what they were doing before," Hanson said.

While roads are safer, what are we left with?

Brub-Gagn said she mostly hears the "drive-through" moniker from New Brunswickers disparaging their own province.

"I think it's not paying justice when we hear our own people saying that," she said.

"I think we need to get our own people to be ambassadors of this province."