I wake early and leave soon after. The roads are quiet. I’m driving on the Trans-Canada, a divided highway which makes things safer. The scooter maxes out at 60 on a flat, 70 downhill, and 30-40 uphill depending on the incline. Before I left I checked to make sure it was legal to drive. In Quebec I couldn’t drive on roads with “limited access”, which leaves some room for interpretation. I couldn’t find anything in the Highway Code for New Brunswick, which means either there is no law against it, or I read through it too quickly.

The rain is sporadic, and light when it falls. The terrain is green and rocky. New Brunswick is shaped like a piece of toast, and I’m driving from the top left to the bottom right corner along the crust. Best personalized license plate so far: “4 REAL”. I get passed a lot.

I turn off the highway for gas. After a few wrong turns looking for a town deceptively named ‘Centre-Ville’ I am on a thin patch of backroad, surprisingly well maintained and somehow forbidding. I find another highway and then from behind the trees the St. John River emerges. Across a large iron bridge there are a few houses, tractor dealerships, and a factory the size of seven or eight hockey arenas. It smells like french fries.

I find a gas station next to a small, covered bridge. Before I enter I can sense that the people here speak English. I ask where to get coffee and they direct me to a Tim Horton’s down the road. I pass the factory. Multiple-storey glass windows look out onto the river over tidy, fenced gardens. A sign reads, ‘McCain Corporate Headquarters’.

New Brunswick has produced two incredibly wealthy, intensely secretive families of billionaires, the McCains and the Irvings, the former from frozen vegetables and the latter from oil. Maple Leaf Foods, which has its main slaughterhouse in Brandon, Manitoba, is also owned by a McCain.

At the Tim’s everyone is speaking English. They look English too; miserable expressions and worse haircuts. Denim is in. A flock of sheep pass in the field behind the parking lot, strangely appropriate. It starts to rain.

5:26

I’m in a motel by the river in a town called Lower Woodstock. After I filled up again it really started raining. It took all of five minutes for me to be soaked down to my underwear. I took the next exit. It’s still raining pretty hard. The lady at the counter said it’s supposed to be like this for the next four days.

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