Visiting FDR's tranquil home in Canada

CAMPOBELLO ISLAND, New Brunswick — Long before Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States out of economic collapse and through World War II, he traveled to Canada's Campobello Island to sail, hike and swim.

The 2,800-acre island, once a playground for the rich and still home to about 1,200 residents who depend on tourism and fishing, also was Roosevelt's earliest crucible. The future president was stricken with polio at Campobello in 1921 and was carried helplessly off the island to a waiting boat and medical treatment in New York.

Campobello, which Eleanor Roosevelt called "this quietest of places," remains a remote and tranquil spot in the Bay of Fundy where even the water — hemmed in by inlets, bays and coves — noiselessly pushes against the island's rocky coast.

"Even at the height of the tourism season, we're pretty quiet," said Harry Newman, 59, a resident of the island in Canada's New Brunswick province for most of his life. "There are no whistles and bells."

Campobello Island

Where

Campobello Island is about a six-hour drive from Boston, reached by crossing the Roosevelt International Bridge from Lubec, Maine. During summer, visitors can also reach Campobello by car ferry from Eastport, Maine, or by the Deer Island ferry. For details, visit www.eastcoastferries.nb.ca/ or call 506-747-2159.

Hours

The Roosevelt home is open to the public from the Saturday before Memorial Day through Columbus Day, seven days a week. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT. The grounds and park are open daily year-round, a half-hour before sunrise to a half-hour after sunset. Admission is free.

More information

506-752-2922 or www.campobello.com

For the Roosevelts and other wealthy families of the 19th and early 20th centuries, vacationing on the island provided an alternative to the social whirl of places like Newport, R.I. But while the appeal of Campobello's scenic bogs, beaches and woods is timeless, the main draw for the 150,000 tourists who come here each year is the Roosevelt home.

The 34-room cottage (so-called because of its rustic style, not its size) was built more than a century ago in the Arts and Crafts style. It offers vistas of coastlines and harbors, and it provides a glimpse into the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt before the two scions of privilege became engines of social change on the national stage.

FDR, who was born to wealth at his parents' estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., was brought to Campobello for summer vacations beginning when he was a year old. It was where he wooed Eleanor and where later the young parents brought their growing family for long summer vacations.

And it was at Campobello that Roosevelt in 1910 first decided to seek public office, a New York state Senate seat that ultimately led to the most significant U.S. political career in the 20th century.

FDR's visits tapered off after he left the island paralyzed by polio. He returned only three times during his 12-year presidency, the final trip in 1939. Eleanor's last visit was in summer 1962, a few months before her death.

The cottage — which did not get electric power until 1952, seven years after FDR's death and 10 years before Eleanor died — contrasts sharply with the opulence of the Hyde Park estate that was furnished over several decades by Roosevelt's mother, Sarah.

"Neither FDR nor Eleanor cared very much about wealth," said Skip Cole, superintendent and executive secretary of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park, the U.S.-Canadian agency that operates the home.

But the house is no shack. It boasts 18 bedrooms — six for family members, six for guests and six for servants — as well as a kitchen with a wood- and coal-burning stove and a porch that offers sweeping views of the grounds and coastline beyond.

The Roosevelt home and four neighboring turn-of-the-century cottages are the island's manmade attractions. Adjacent bogs, beaches and hiking paths were purchased by the Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission to protect the area from development.

The island's shoreline is rugged and rocky, and its beaches are covered with stones, not sand. Heath, leatherleaf, sheep laurel, Labrador tea, winterberry and cranberries grow in the bogs. In Campobello's waters are harbor seals, whales, porpoises and dolphins.

Although the passage of time has thinned the ranks of Americans who remember FDR's years in power firsthand, visitors keep coming.