| Tire-Free Rivers |
| Saint John River, New Brunswick |
Saint John River, #s 51 to 72, September 3, 2007
Jamie and Ian Campbell
Jamie poses with a boatload of tires recovered from a riverside pile. |
Here's Ian preparing to load the second boatload. |
This is the back of Ian's truck, stuffed with his haul. I wonder how many trips he had to make to get them all. Ian took them to a local body shop, so they could be collected and trucked to Minto for recycling. |
Wolastook Cataract, now known as Grand Falls on the Saint John (Wolastook) River, New Brunswick. The ancient Maliseet village of Meductic lies one day's paddle downstream.
Photo by Matt Hopkinson |
Ian tells the story:
We found a goldmine of tires from a previous expedition and were just waiting for a return date to come back and get them.
From the previous expedition with the dogs in the boat, we’d counted 26 more tires other than the ones we already had loaded. These were tires that were within sight of the canoe, without much searching. And they were within an overall estimated distance 300 m of each other. We knew we had to come back, and without the dogs which took up valuable room in the boat!
About 75% of the tires were in the water but the ones that remained on shore or close to shore were the hardest to remove. Years of silt deposits combined with vegetation taking root within made them difficult to excavate.
One particular tire took me 20 minutes to clean with a stick as a pry bar and a rock as a sledge hammer. One tire, you’ll notice by the boat with 6 others, will have to be removed at a later date with the aid of a full size spade shovel, pry bar and muscle.
Jaime was right with me until close to the end when a couple hungry leaches reared their ugly head. From that moment on, I had to finish the last few tires myself.
Total on the day was 22! It started to get windy so the visibility in the water was difficult as we wound down for the day.
Jamie poses with tire number you-guessed-it: 9!
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As of September 3, 2007, this is the largest haul under the Tire-Free Rivers initiative. Well done, Ian and Jamie!
Tire-Free Rivers is a non-profit volunteer crusade. Tire-Free Rivers is not affiliated with anything else. Nobody makes any money doing this.
