This is a tale that’s best told over the guttering coals of a campfire, when the night sounds are creeping closer to you and the moon is haunting high overhead. I shouldn’t have to remind you not to forget your marshmallows. Between the winding tracks of the Bartholomew and the Renous rivers snakes the Dungarvon, as it flows down into the salmon-heavy stretches of the Miramichi River. According to famed Canadian botanist, historian, and car–tographer William Francis Ganong, a local boy, Michael Murphy, who hailed from Dungarvan, Ireland, named the Dungarvon River. Murphy swore that when he danced in Dungarvon, New Brunswick, Ireland shook. No one has yet explained how an a became an o between Ireland and New Brunswick. Still, no matter how you spell it, there’s an awful lot of beauty hanging breathless in Dungarvon’s neck of the woods. In the mid-1800s, the life of a lumberjack was as hard as any life could be. Lumberjacks headed out into the woods in early fall and didn’t set back until spring came rising up from the southland.
