A Photographer’s Summer Getaway

Photographer Susan Lapides, in her four-decade career, has shot subjects as varied as Khmer Rouge survivors, Connecticut tobacco field workers and ox drovers for publications like Time, Forbes and the New York Times. She’s also photographed political icons on the cusp of fame, like George H.W. Bush when he won the New Hampshire primary in 1988 and a young Barack Obama when he made history as the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review.

In 1998, Lapides and her husband, Peter Wilson, were looking for a summer rental away from their Boston home. A newspaper ad led them to a wooded property in St. George, a small town in New Brunswick near the American border. The lot was close to the Bay of Fundy, whose 16-metre tides are some of the highest in the world, and the property had apple trees and an open area ready for a new build. They fell in love with the place and surrounding community and bought it. “St. George is not a typical summer destination,” says Lapides. “One guy runs tennis lessons, but that’s about it for activities.”

The town has a rich maritime history: it thrived on shipbuilding and granite quarrying in the 19th century. During the Second World War, it was home to two military bases. Today, St. George has around 1,500 residents, fewer than 10 restaurants, no traffic lights and a wharf bustling with fishing lines, working boats and ropes. Lapides, Wilson and their two daughters return year after year: they canoe on the river near their house, swim under waterfalls, play by the beach and host picnics. One of their daughters even worked the cash registers at the country market one summer.

One night in 2006, a storm front rolled through town, sending a mass of clouds across the vast sky over the Bay of Fundy. The family, including their dog, Daisy, rushed out to chase the thick, low-hanging fog. Lapides climbed a nearby hill and took a photo of the scene. This signalled the start of her project documenting her family’s summers in St. George. “My goal was to create a picture book that grandparents could use to relive memories and pass on the history of this place to future generations,” says Lapides. Over the next 17 years, she photographed kids enjoying the icy beach, fishermen out in the Bay of Fundy and workers at a sardine factory and salmon hatcheries. She visited restaurants, a blueberry farm and neighbouring islands. 

The biggest change Lapides has witnessed since she began photographing the town is the transformation of New Brunswick’s fishing industry. Salmon farming has taken off, with more than 90 aquaculture sites now operating in the province. Companies like Cooke Aquaculture have expanded their operations in St. George. And fishermen have adopted more sustainable methods such as weirs, or walls built in the water that trap catches as the tide recedes and allow smaller fish to escape. While warming ocean waters have caused herring populations to dwindle, lobster populations have shot up. “The need for wharf space has grown,” says Lapides. “They even built a concrete wharf so that 18-wheeler trucks can pick up crates of catches.” 

Lapides’s first book, St. George: Ebb and Flow, is out now. Its tie-in exhibit at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton runs until November 17. Amid all of the changes in her summer town, Lapides found one welcome improvement: the arrival of high-speed internet, courtesy of Elon Musk’s Starlink, in 2021. “I used to send tiny image files to galleries and clients overnight,” she says. Below, she shares the stories behind some photos from the book.

“I took this photo at the Cooke Aquaculture fish hatchery. The first floor was full of blue pens that were 20 feet in diameter, filled with fish swimming around in circles. Fish are organized into different bins according to their age. This baby salmon here is a smolt.”

“This was the first photo I took for my book. A storm front swept through Passamaquoddy Bay down into the Bay of Fundy and caused clouds to move very fast. My family rushed to the point. I grabbed my Mamiya film camera and took just this one shot. I watched the storm surge ahead. Seconds later, it was gone.”

“The Bay of Fundy’s waters are a chilly 10° C even at the height of summer, but we’ve found a clever way to enjoy swimming there. In this photo, as the tide rolls in, the daughters of a friend stand by a campfire. Once they’re warm, they dash into the water, falling in and screaming because the water’s freezing. Then they run back to the fire to warm up again.”

“My family and I rarely have dinner out, since my husband loves to cook. But we’ve eaten once or twice at this place called Birch Grove. Just two nights ago, I drove past it and noticed it’s still there, but now it has two air conditioning units on the wall and the bench out front is gone.”

“Some friends and I built this bonfire on the beach near my house. Someone grabbed wood from a nearby brush pile and tossed it into the fire like a javelin. Unlike in cities, where people leave branches and twigs on the curb for collection, we put them to good use here.”

“One day, while my husband and I went mountain biking on an overgrown trail, we came across a baseball diamond in an isolated part of town. Out of nowhere, a dog bolted down a path through the trees. I followed it and soon heard kids laughing and screaming by a pool. I saw the dog waiting for the girls to throw its ball. Then, one of the girls brought her Barbies into the water; she was having a blast.”

“I’m aboard Warrick’s fishing boat in this photo. My daughter, in her rubber boots, and his daughter, dressed in red pants and polka-dotted sneakers, are perched on the roof of the cockpit, chatting away. Inside, I’m surrounded by a mishmash of gear: old lighting fixtures, pliers, a Lipton bottle and wires scattered everywhere. This isn’t a vessel that shuttles tourists on whale-watching trips. It’s a working boat, so it isn’t exactly shipshape.”

“Junior is a minister who grew up in nearby Back Bay. Behind him is a painting of the Green’s Point Lighthouse, a structure built in 1903 that once guided ships entering Back Bay Harbour. It was decommissioned in 1999 and now operates as a museum. In the painting, the turbulent waters around the lighthouse surge through a narrow, rocky passage, illustrating the powerful tides in St. George.”

“Here, my friend Warrick uses a weir to fish. In this method, fish swim into the circular net trap but struggle to find their way out. When Warrick spots fish inside, he closes the entrance and traps the catches. Then he pulls the nets of the weir tighter to concentrate the fish into a smaller area. Once the fish are gathered, a sardine carrier arrives to vacuum them up. Weirs are one of the most sustainable ways to fish because they only trap adult catches; First Nations in the Pacific Northwest used this method for thousands of years to selectively harvest salmon.”

This story appears in the October issue of Maclean’s. You can buy the issue here, subscribe to the magazine here or send a gift subscription here.