Some 23 or so years ago I was lucky enough to meet a family from Canada who arrived in Ballarat so hubby could work at McCain’s. They stayed for a couple of years and then returned to the land of maple syrup, the expression ‘Eh?’ and ice hockey.

As my friend Jan has always said…..well you know what Jan says about real friends. 

So, even though I’ve only seen Sue briefly once in the last 23 years, yesterday we picked up where we left off.

In Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada.

Sue forewarned me. There isn’t much in Florenceville. 

I disagree. 

Florenceville is a town in the northwest of New Brunswick and is located on the banks of the Saint John River.  A town where for McCains, it all began. 

In 1956, the McCain brothers Harrison, Wallace, Robert and Andrew founded one of the first factories producing french fries, laying the groundwork for the current McCain Foods Limited.  Under the leadership of Wallace and Harrison, McCains now operates 53 sites across 6 continents and has become the world’s largest manufacturer of frozen french fries and potato specialities. 

Florenceville of course is the headquarters for McCains, there is a french fries factory, a research facility and the McCain’s Global Information Technology Centre. Given the population of the town proper is about 1650, one would expect many are employed by McCains.

McCains also operates the Florenceville Airport with a single paved runway sitting right up behind Sue and Rod’s home. There are six pilots on staff. 

Regardless of the fact ‘there isn’t much in Florenceville’, Sue took us on a tour of the town starting with the free public art gallery, currently showing a pretty cool Cuba art exhibition. Then we headed out to Potato World. Yes, it’s a thing, and was very interesting. Florenceville is predominantly potato farming although they do rotate the crops with corn or grain to ensure high quality soil. 

Next it was a look at a replica of Noah’s arc. A 2/3 scale model built by a local church group and turned into a private Bible school, accommodation and a cafe. Without soy latte. 😩😪

There were two covered bridges to photograph and cross. The first one is right in town and barely wide enough for the two lanes it pretends to accommodate. Locals have all clipped their cars trying to get through. The second one, located at Hartland just up the road, is the longest covered bridge in the world at 1282 feet. 

Then it was off to Hunters Brothers farm where the corn is picked by hand. It is then brought into the packing shed, hand graded, bagged and then hydrocooled in their spring-fed pond. Hunters Brothers have made this place famous with their farmers market produce store and their annual corn maze designs. You can get lost in the maze and if that doesn’t appeal (which it didn’t, think snakes), you can view aerial pictures of all of their designs over the years. 

To conclude our tour, a visit to possibly one of the best gift shops I have been to for some time -there may be some family members benefitting from that, and then a food break at Gramma’s where we chose lunch with a side of McCains’ fries. Of course. 

What a beautiful place to live.