The Corner At the Centre of Things
Canada's muscular new trade agenda is picking up speed; are the neighbourhoods in and around Simms Corner in West Saint John ready for what's coming down the track?
Hi Everyone! Welcome to our second of four stories about Saint John’s role in Canada’s new national east-west trade agenda, and an examination of how Saint John citizens, industry and City Hall reconcile long-simmering doubts about each other and make a singular national vision work in a city often at odds with itself. I hope you enjoy our reporting and news analysis. Please consider subscribing. We have both a free version, which includes one story/week, and a paid version, with the latter giving you access to all our stories. I’m keeping this story free to give all our new subscribers and readers a sample of the type of public service journalism we want to provide at Side Walks. If you want more of what we’re serving, please consider subscribing because, well, our mortgages don’t pay themselves.
In case you missed our first story, here it is – Will Saint John Get on Board? Talk of a possible $70-million overpass for Simms Corner brings Canada's newly assertive trade agenda home to New Brunswick's Port City
Simms Corner is one of those urban crossroads that are common in old industrial cities, with heavy industry, a commercial main street and tree-lined residential drives coming together via Lancaster Ave., Fairville Blvd., Main St. W. and Bridge St.
The train track that crosses Simms Corner adds to the oddity and complications of the intersection because it crosses both Main St and Fairville Blvd., before snaking its way behind Lancaster Plaza. From there, it travels over Hwy 1, through the lower west side neighbourhood of Duck Cove, past Bayshore Beach, before looping north, skirting the Digby ferry terminal and ending in Port Saint John’s west side yards.
It is that rail line and more specifically, the increased volume, frequency and variety of cargo that will travel this route that has made redesigning Simms Corner a provincial priority.
Simms Corner is key to this because all train traffic flowing in and out of Port Saint John crosses this intersection.
This is why city officials openly discuss the need to make Simms Corner part of a national trade corridor to connect Port Saint John with the rest of Canada, as part of our newly aggressive ‘Elbows Up’ economic agenda to diversify international trade.
The West Side’s Industrial Core
While Simms Corner may be named for the T.S. Simms paint brush company that occupied the northeast corner for just over a century, it's the Irving Pulp and Paper mill that exerts the greatest influence on the neighbourhood’s daily rhythm and flow.
The mill looms large over the scenery, culture and perception of Saint John, because of its longevity – the original mill was built in the early 1900s; KC Irving purchased it in 1946 – and its location, where the St. John River meets the Bay of Fundy to create the city’s famed Reversing Falls.
In 2024, JDI announced its NextGen project, a $1.1-billion upgrade, which will replace its oil-fired boiler with a 20-storey recovery boiler powered by biomass energy produced from recycled woodchips.
It will give the West Side a new notable landmark because, when complete, the new boiler will rival Saint John’s 19-storey Brunswick Square and Moncton’s 20-storey Assumpton Place, the two tallest buildings in New Brunswick, and place the NextGen centrepiece among the top 15 tallest buildings in Atlantic Canada.1
This will accomplish two things. First, it will reduce energy costs by eliminating the need to purchase fuel, and second, it will convert Irving Pulp and Paper into one of the world’s top producing kraft pulp mills by increasing pulp production by 66 per cent.
To produce the wood chips, JDI wants to convert its existing Bald Mountain Rock Quarry, located two kilometres west of the Reversing Falls mill, into a wood chip facility, with wood brought in from its other operations via NBM Railways.
This is an example of the vertical integration that the Irving Group of Companies is known for and through which their power and influence are exercised.
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Now back to the story…
JDI’s nine divisions oversee 36 companies related to forests, food, consumer goods, shipbuilding and transportation; 20 of these companies are headquartered in Saint John, and of those, five have operations near Simms Corner.
The mill may be the focal point, but JDI’s holdings extend over three kilometres from Reversing Falls to South Bay, the part of the St. John River bounded by the riverfront neighbourhoods of Acamac, Milford and Randolph Island, the latter home to the city’s Dominion Park.
In addition to the quarry, JDI’s west side industrial zone includes CFM Technical Services, Irving Equipment, and New Brunswick Southern Railway’s railyard – the last stop for containers bound for Port Saint John and the wider world.
That rail yard is part of the Lancaster Logistics Park, an intermodal terminal where containers are transferred between rail cars and tractor-trailers. During its rezoning hearings in 2021, residents raised concerns about increased noise from the railyard and increased truck traffic on Dever Road.
The Window for Change Is Open
A clear signal that significant change is upon Saint John can be read in the words of Rob Taylor, the deputy minister for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DTI), who, at the request of Minister Chuck Chiasson wrote Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon in early March “to confirm the commitment of DTI to the Simms Corner redesign.”2
“Simms Corner is a complex multi-year and multi-partner project,” he wrote in the closing lines of his letter to Reardon.
“It is a critical component to supporting and advancing the many Saint John businesses that help power the provincial economy. This is now more critical with the ongoing trade war imposed by President Trump.”
This is Saint John’s place in our new national narrative: to move goods in and out of Canada.
Our collective outrage at having our sovereignty threatened has opened what public administration experts call a policy window – that rare occurrence when significant change is possible.
Policy windows open when:
All parts of society – citizens, businesses, non-profits and government – agree on what the problem is;
A solution is understood, available, and everyone believes it can be achieved; and,
Politicians are willing to move quickly, by removing barriers and brokering solutions amongst competing interests, to produce results.
In other words, elbows up, let’s get ‘er done.
Saint John is arguably one of the places in Canada most in need of attention.
In February 2025, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, stated that Saint John is the city most vulnerable to U.S. tariffs. That’s largely because of the Irving Oil Refinery, with over 80 per cent of its exports U.S.-bound; seafood, mainly lobster, most of which is exported to Maine; and forest products, dominated by JDI.
If Saint John is the Canadian city most threatened by protectionist U.S. trade policies, it potentially could make the most gains.
How Saint John conducts itself in seeking to balance the national agenda with local needs will define the fortunes of both the city and New Brunswick well into the future.
Coming Up on Side Walks: So, What’s the Deal with the Parking Lot?
How a re-zoning request got conflated into a tempest of angry words, funding demands and defensive posturing, ending in a failed compromise – just as Simms Corner and the city’s West Side are poised to enter the national conversation.
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Wikipedia contributors, "List of Tallest Buildings in Atlantic Canada," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, last modified April 23, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Atlantic_Canada.
A copy of Rob Taylor’s letter can be found here. "Common Council Meeting Agenda," eSCRIBE, April 15, 2024, https://pub-saintjohn.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=21367.