Last Christmas we visited Canada. It was not our first visit to Canada together or separately. We can hear everyone rolling your eyes knowing Ashley was born and raised in Canada. However, like so many countries around the world. Canada closed its borders in 2020. The United States of America, where we both reside, closed its borders. Even in extreme situations like a pandemic there are exceptions for citizens and for family. We elected not to take any of those routes. When, in 2021, borders between Canada and the United States were back open again we followed the litany of additional precautions now heaped on international travelers, in order to keep everybody safe and healthy, and got boarded the two planes it takes to get from LAX to YFC.
Fredericton, New Brunswick is the place Ashley’s family would visit on summer vacation growing up. For most of her childhood it was her favourite place in the whole world. To this day she has a number of relatives who still resides in “Freddy Beach” as it is affectionately dubbed by locals. Although she herself has never called Fredericton home.
In 2017 Ashley and Jason graced the cover the The Daily Gleaner, the city’s local newspaper, when we rolled through the city and the very first issue of Jupiter Jet had just hit comic book shoppes.
Our signing was hosted by the impeccable Strange Adventures Comic Bookshop. Jay and his crew hosted us on a snowy winter’s eve, we sold a bunch of our debut comic book, and we got to meet some Super Friends we had known via the internet and social media for years.
That signing from 2017 remains one of the best signing or meet up experiences we have had as comic book writers in our careers.
One of the coolest things about Strange Adventures Comic Bookshop is it’s a staple from Ashley’s childhood. She bought Neil Gaiman’s The Deadboy Detectives there as a child. She bought her first ever Thor graphic novel based on a staff suggestion. Despite not living in Fredericton we still give gift cards or money with express orders to be spent “at Strange Adventures” to the new generation of children in her family.
While we are sad to report we didn’t get to do as much patronizing of local businesses during our most recent trip, we want to highly encourage any Super Friend who finds themselves in Freddy Beach to hit up Strange Adventures Comic Bookshop.
We did spend a lot of time during our most recent trip reading while we were in Fredericton.
Can’t complain about the accommodations, but they are not open to the public. Suffice it to say, this is a corner of the building where we got most of our reading done!
Jason was reading Leviathan Falls by: James S.A. Corey (a.k.a. the final book in The Expanse series)
Ashley was reading The A.I. Who Loved Me by: Alyssa Cole
If either of these strike your fancy based on title alone - and what fabulous titles they are! - they both come with our heartiest recommendations. Both are science fiction adventures that will keep you entertained and on the edge of your seat when the subzero weather and falling snow outside will keep you curled up next to a heat source.
As you can probably imagine, traveling at the end of December means you spend much of your time engaging in your family’s holiday traditions. Both of our families celebrate Christmas. Turkeys. Stockings. French-Canadian Piege. And a lot of movies marked the passing of our days, particularly in the first half of the trip.
By the second half we had had enough of the warm homes, snowboarding socks, and neckerchiefs we depend on as a couple of delicate souls who live in the California warmth most of the rest of the year! Say what you want about where you come from or where you were raised, the human body acclimates quickly to a new ecosystem - especially when it’s easier to grapple with than Canadian winters or Kansas plains.
So, we put on more socks and headed out to Mactaquac Provincial Park.
Here we would like to take the time to acknowledge Fredericton and Mactaquac are on Wolastoqiyk and Mi’kmaq indigenous land. We encourage others to read the Wolastoqiyk and Mi’kmaq Grandmother’s - Land/Water Defenders Sharing Circle and to consult a list of Aboriginal Organizations in New Brunswick to donate your time or money to as a thank-you for their work as the custodians of the land we are enjoying.
The afternoon we spent hiking around Mactaquac was one of the highlights of the time we spent in Canada. Ashley had visited Mactaquac, even staying in the cabins for big family gatherings, many times over the course of her life. This was Jason’s first visit. The elements didn’t see fit to give us warm temperatures or keep the cold winds at bay which cut to the very bones of our bodies, but it was absolutely stunning. Mactaqauc is a Provincial Park noted as a site of Heritage and Culture by the provincial government of New Brunswick.
With an extensive array of coniferous trees still in full bloom despite the extreme weather Ashley enjoyed a lot of what she likes to call, “touching trees”. Even when it’s so cold outside the snot and hairs inside your nose freeze together you can still smell the crisp pines or marvel at the feminine juniper berries. We were even graced by the presence of wild deer who seemed to think the smoothed over golf course was the path of least resistance when crossing away from the visitors who had come to the park. The presence of fellow animals could also be noted in the tracks laid out in the crisp snow, although the deer and and the odd crow were our only familiars on this particular outing.
We capped off the end of our visit dipping into a local coffee shop Ashley’s mum loves to visit - Mill Town Roasters. If you caught our Geek History Lesson 400 Episode Livestream Ashley said she wants a coffee sponsor for Geek History Lesson this year. Over the years of podcasting you’ve heard us talk about the coffee and tea that fuels everything we do at GHL and at Jawiin. There was no way we were getting out of town without hitting up a coffee shop!
Mill Town is a fairly new addition - as far as we know! - to downtown Fredericton. It’s snug and personal and only serves a select menu. By our estimation: practically perfect in every way. What was particularly special about this first visit? Jason discovered his new favourite hot tea drink - The London Fog! Thanks, Mill Town Roasters, for this final holiday gift!
Before we send you off with these postcards from Fredericton, New Brunswick we want to send a special shout out to Unplugged Games Cafe. It’s another local fave we have hit up on several past family pilgrimages. It’s a board game cafe! What could be geekier or more fun? The menu is solid in terms of refreshments and snacks and you can even order a big ol’ bowl of candy to snack on while you play. We order it often! Unplugged Games Cafe holds a special place for being the place where we learned how to play Ticket to Ride - a game, in its mobile form, which remains a travel staple of ours to this day. Catch us playing in your international airport of choice.