Atlantis

"I was a child before the flood..."

With this arresting line, George Peabody begins the long poem that looks back at the life of a great river before it was damaged by a headpond. 

When the Wolastoq (St. John River) was dammed at Mactaquac, western New Brunswick lost the heart of its great natural abundance-the annual migration of Atlantic salmon and a large swath of the best agricultural land in the province.

Remembering well a way of life along the natural river, the author deftly puts the reader in the picture. He draws the thread of memory to the building of the dam. With precise images he recounts the consequences of such ecological thoughtlessness.

George Peabody has created a classic elegy for a circumstance of great loss. However, with the passage of time and end of the dam's working life in view,Atlantis also evokes the awareness that Wolastoq will outlast this unwise human interdiction.