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Issue (Archive) Walking the red pavement of Harbour Passage around the harbour and up Bentley Street, takes the walker to Douglas Avenue. One of the magnificent old streets in Saint John, Douglas Avenue is a peninsula which sits on the high ground between Saint John Harbour and the St. John River and gives a view of both. At the top of Bentley Street sits the original building of the New Brunswick Museum and next to it is Riverview Memorial Park which gives a view of the St. John River as it wends its way to the Reversing Falls.
People of any city, town or village can make a difference in their community. Margaret Baizley is an impressive example of an ordinary citizen who was determined to leave a lasting legacy to her community. Riverview Memorial Park was an idea conceived in her imagination and eventually came into being through her hard work. Although this was her biggest and most beloved project, Mrs. Baizley was a born leader and made several contributions to her community. She was not a rich woman, her own financial means were limited but Margaret was gifted with the ability to interest others to work and to give what they could towards her undertakings. She was born on May 24, 1820 in Saint John. Her father, Edward Walker owned a shipyard and they lived in the York Point District at the foot of Union Street. On November 18, 1841, she married Simon Baizley. They had four children and eventually moved to 114 Douglas Avenue where they lived until their deaths. The house is still standing. In the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth century, women were not considered capable of thinking nor planning constructively so Mrs. Baizley put together a committee of influential and wealthy men who acted as figureheads for the Memorial Park project. The first requirement was to get the necessary land. Mrs. Baizley, with the assistance of her friends, held large and innovative bazaars in the Union Hall on Main Street which were successful in getting some money for the park but most of the land was given as grants and some on long-term leases. The name Riverview Memorial Park was decided upon by a vote. This piece of land was not then what it is now, the ground was uneven and rocky. Near the centre there was a hollow and after rains and during the spring, it became a small pond. In the winter, it froze and became a place for children to skate. At the rear sat a slight hill, called Lazy Brae. It required considerable labour to level the ground, remove rock, have quantities of earth hauled, prepare paths, etc. and only limited funds were available because it was maintained and managed by the residents of Douglas Avenue. At one time the Chain gang from the city jail, did considerable work levelling some of the rocky formation. Mr. J. Fraser Gregory, had quantities of waste wood hauled from his lumber mill, which was used to level the area and enable them to grow grass. Later, the committee arranged to have a bandstand and a skating rink put in this park. As well, Mrs. Baizley had arranged with the City to place a large drinking fountain there to “slake the thirst of man and beast”. Following the South African or Boer War, the survivors and families of those who died in this conflict, decided to have a monument placed in the park, inscribed with the names of the men who perished there. Captain Rawlings, whose son fought and died in this war, was the gentleman who headed up this project. He wrote to England, for designs and prices for a bronze statue. Eventually, it was made by Elkington Ltd., Founders, London, England at a final cost of $1562.67. The monument is still there and is the only memorial in the City commemorating the dead from this war. In 1902 or 1903, Captain Rawlings planted two trees in Riverview Memorial Park - one in memory of his son, and the other to honour Margaret Baizley. She died in 1919. Today, no records exist to indicate which are the trees he planted but in a 1913 postcard of the Park two trees are shown in back of the South African monument. According to Randy Nelson, Recreation and Parks Commission, City of Saint John, those trees in the postcard, would be about ten years old making it possible that they were the trees planted by Captain Rawlings. In 1940, the City took over the responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of Riverview Memorial Park. It is well maintained by the City and is used as a showcase for less common trees - Weeping Beech, Golden Chain Tree, Black Walnut, Kentucky Coffee Tree, Ginkgo, Honey Locust and Camperdown Elm with its distinctive umbrella shape. Margaret Baizley was probably considered a nuisance and possibly an “old fuddy-duddy” by the Mayor and councillors of her time but she recognized that Douglas Avenue was a unique and lovely area and did what she could to enhance it. Although her many accomplishments are now largely forgotten, a part of her will always be alive as long as Riverview Park continues to exist and, surely, that would please her more than anything. |
The Micmac and Maliseet Indians, the original inhabitants of this Province, brought their canoes down the river and left them at an encampment in Marble Cove, below Douglas Avenue. There, they unloaded their river canoes and portaged over the cliff and down what is now Bentley Street to the Harbour, where they stored ocean-going canoes for travel across the Bay of Fundy. There was a reason for doing this, just around the bend were the wild waters of the Reversing Falls. 
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