North End Saint John - are these its last days?

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Last week we took a five day road trip down to Astoria and Portland. I enjoy Oregon and its welcoming spirit, and I am drawn to the coastal city of Astoria in particular. I've been there before and I do know why I returned. The old port city at the mouth of the Columbia River has preserved enough of its original architecture - private homes, tenements and public buildings, that any nostalgic visitor will feel an instant connection to the past. I am one who appreciates the authentic when I find it. I have at hand the brochure of a preservation society which recently conducted a survey and discovered "that at least 500 homes built in Astoria before 1900 are still in use as residences". Indeed, as we threaded our way through a century old neighborhood one evening last week, we could marvel at entire streets which are still largely intact. Some residences are carefully tended while others are needing repair... but all homes co-exist, just as the working poor co-exist with the affluent. There was no litter, abandoned cars or any overt evidence of crime. As I turned to look down at the commercial waterfront, I felt a very tangible sense of place - a deeply satisfying feeling which I have rarely had since leaving the North End for good in 1981.

The Telegraph Journal in Saint John has just completed a series of reports on the sustained erosion of living conditions in the North End. I knew there wasn't much left to lose, but I had hoped that standards had stabilized. Incredible as it may seem, there are now only about 1,800 people in what is termed "the Old North End". Proof positive that the wholesale demolition of neighborhoods in the 1970s, which extended from Main Street eastward, triggered a process from which Saint John has never recovered. "Creative destruction" is a dangerous gambit, and most cities prefer to allow the inner core to evolve through periodic infill, rather than opting for "Urban Renewal" demolitions which drive out all the small proprietorships contributing to the fabric of any downtown.

The residents of this old house on the corner of Albert and Victoria Streets in Saint John, has been giving the police headaches. Should Prince William and his lovely Kate ever accept an invitation to visit Canada oldest incorporated city, I doubt they will be taken to this street corner, named for Queen Victoria and her husband Albert.

In the North End many of the older properties would not yield sufficient rent to cover the cost of maintaining them, and dozens were boarded up by their owners. This created opportunity for a new generation of arsonists. Saint John has always been a city of "firebugs" but the figures reported in the paper are nothing short of tragic. From 2006 to date, there have been 117 acts of arson in North End buildings, which are not described as homes but as "housing stock". [Jargon hurts. It never helps.] A frustrated Staff Sergeant with 40 years on the S.J. Police Force, says that crime in the "old" North End is the worst he's ever seen it. "It's related to drugs. Plain and simple." Crack cocaine is now "the drug of choice" in Saint John and in spite of record levels of poverty, record volumes of drugs do flow. It was reported, for example, that "$400.000" worth of cocaine was seized in a raid this past March.

The principal of Lorne Middle School, one of the few schools still running in the depopulated North End, deals with drugs on a daily basis, noting: "... it's normal for Grade 6, 7 and 8 students to start the school days high on marijuana". His working reality contradicts the opinion of a North End community activist who claims that of the 1,800 remaining residents there are "probably fewer than a dozen people who cause all the trouble". Well NO. The evidence paints a dismal portrait of a community where there are hundreds of people causing trouble. The North End always had its aches and pains, but in my day the chief concern for boys and girls was avoiding getting beaten up by the Black kids. Drugs were almost non-existent in the schools and we never gave a thought to bullets coming through the window or the house next door being lit up by an arsonist. At the current rate of attrition the remaining heritage properties in the North End will be disposed of by fire before the decade is out, and the term "Old North End" will drop out of use.


All may not be lost. Clearly there are residents in the "Old North End" who still maintain their properties, and a few more willing to give the neighborhood a chance. This four bedroom house at 64 Albert Street sold on June 3oth for $73,500. Annual municipal taxes $1,393.