The place file / Atlantic Canada
St. Andrews,
New Brunswick
Twice a day the road to the island is under the Bay of Fundy.
The town plans around it.
Salty Seniors place guide
Could I live here?The draw
A road that floods on schedule
The catch
Half of it closes in October
The question
What you’d do in January
They brought their houses with them
St. Andrews was founded in 1783 by Loyalists from Castine, Maine, who had just learned the new border was on the wrong side of them. They took their houses apart, loaded the pieces onto ships and put them back together here. Some are still standing. The rafters are numbered.
There is one main street, along the water. A resort hotel from 1889 on the hill. A 27-acre garden. A wharf where the whale boats go out. About 2,000 people live here, along with an estimated 200 deer, who have eaten most of the hedges and been made the subject of a bow hunt inside town limits.
At low tide you can drive across the sea floor to Ministers Island, where the man who ran the Canadian Pacific Railway kept a 50-room summer house. At high tide the road is under several metres of water. The tide times are posted at the end of it. They are not a suggestion.
The tide table is the one schedule in town that everybody keeps.
What stays open year-round?
Less than you’d like. Kingsbrae Garden opens in mid-May and closes in October, the whale boats stop in the fall, and a good part of Water Street goes with them. The Algonquin has stayed open through the winter since 1997, and the everyday places carry on. You won’t starve. You may run out of new restaurants.
What will winter ask of you?
Patience. The bay keeps it a little milder than inland New Brunswick, but it is still five months of wind, grey water and a town running at a fraction of its summer volume. The people who stay tend to like that about it. Visit in February before you decide anything.
How close is the care you need?
The nearest hospital is in St. Stephen, about 30 km up the road, and it has an emergency department. Anything complicated goes to Saint John, an hour east. If you see specialists regularly, count the drives before you count the bedrooms.
Could you live without a car?
Inside town, nearly. You can walk it end to end in twenty minutes. Leaving is the problem. There is no bus worth planning around, and the hospital, the bigger grocery run and the airport are all somewhere else.
What does a house cost?
The median was in the mid-$500,000s in 2026, and a good deal more on the water. About 2,000 people live here all year. A marine science centre, a federal research station and a community college campus keep it from being only a resort.
How do you get there?
You drive. Saint John and its airport are about an hour east. The U.S. border at St. Stephen is 30 km the other way, with Bangor, Maine, two hours past it. There is no train.
