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See, the tidal bore had become a total bore, even among locals, ever since a causeway was built across the Petitcodiac in the 1960s. The causeway essentially dammed the river, transforming what had been a spectacle of nature — caused by Fundy’s world-beating high tides — into a leaky tap. A few years back, to revive the river, the gates in the causeway were opened and the bore reborn.

JJ Wessels, one of the Californians, has already made two trips to surf the bore this summer and is planning a third in October. He has surfed it for the cameras, surfed it for the Moncton crowds — and even surfed it incognito with his wife, Natalie.

“For me, as a surfer, we travel a lot but we don’t, for the most part, talk about where we travel to, just because you expose these places and they change,” Mr. Wessels says from his home in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. “I used to go to a spot in Mexico, and the first couple times I went it was the people that lived there and a few surfers, and then they had a big competition and it changed the place forever.

“But for a place like Moncton, it could actually handle that kind of change because the river isn’t just one wave — it is 20 miles of a wave — and for any surfer to hear that, it is the craziest thing they’ll have ever heard. A typical wave last 30 seconds, max, not two hours.”

Mr. Ouhilal is a surfer, professional surf photographer and a filmmaker. He documented the Moncton trip for an upcoming issue of The Surfer’s Journal, which is like National Geographic for surfing nuts. ABC’s Nightline has been talking to the Californians. Big things are in the works.

But will surfing boost Moncton’s cool factor, make it a happening place among the kids who know what is happening?

“It sure can’t hurt,” Mr. Hicks says. “Those surfers were certainly on the younger side.”

National Post

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