Carleton North High School students protest the closure of Old Florenceville Bridge
Chants echoed throughout downtown Florenceville-Bristol as a small group protested the closure of the Old Florenceville Bridge.
The June 2 protest was organized by the class of Carleton North High School teacher Patti Jurczak. The event was a final project for her civics class. The students were joined by a small crowd of area residents.
“We chose the bridge because we just feel that this small town doesn’t feel the same with the highway extension as it does with the covered bridge extension,” said Jurczak. “It’s just such an important part of our history [as well],” she added
She said the project also serves as a great way for students to learn about parts of their local community they hadn’t been exposed to before.
“I learned a lot about how useful the bridge was when it first opened and [how] it was revolutionary once it came to form,” said Britanny Gallea, one of Jurczak’s students.
The project took about a month from inception to the final protest, with students divided into teams, or “departments,” to work on various aspects of it.
“We had a speeches team and they worked on writing the speeches, we had a sign team that had to come up with slogans, and we had a media and publicity team that reached out to local newspapers, and let the local businesses around know that we would be doing this, [lastly] we had a code of conduct team that had to come up with research of what goes into a protest” said Jurczak.
Various community leaders came out in support of the students, including Carleton North Mayor Andrew Harvey, local historian Gordon Hunter, who attended the protest, and Carleton-Victoria MLA Margaret Johnston, who spoke to students in class before the protest.
“Margaret was really great at explaining what she has tried to do to reopen the bridge,” said Jurczak. “She explained what her role was in government, what the process has been on her end and her frustrations… of only being able to go so far,” Jurczak concluded.
The protest was about raising awareness of the bridge itself, and the importance of preserving the character and heritage of Florenceville, best shown in one of the group’s slogans: “If we restore the bridge, then we will restore our history.”
The bridge’s history is long and eventful, even predating the famous Hartland Covered Bridge by more than ten years.
“The first indications of looking at building a bridge here… was in about 1880,” Hunter explained.
The original purpose of the bridge was to connect the towns of east and west Florenceville together. It was officially opened on June 5, 1886, according to Hunter.
“I believe that it is the oldest [standing] crossing of the St. John River in existence today,” Hunter said, emphasizing the bridge’s historic importance.
