The solitary sandstone stack, standing fast against the sea and sporting a crest of trees, once drew tourists down to its little beach near St. Martins, N.B., by the thousands. Then, one stormy night in February 2022, the iconic Flowerpot Rock fell to the ground in pieces, as if dashed by an angry giant.

“I think, when it happened, I was shocked,” says James Donald, who was the president of the Fundy Trail Development Authority at the time. “What now?”

But more than two years later, he and other local tourism operators say they haven’t noticed a discernable downturn in their visitor traffic. The provincial government even decided last year to take over from the privately run Development Authority to “continue the work of transforming the Fundy Trail Parkway into a world-class destination.”

In a July 2023 press release, New Brunswick Tourism, Heritage and Culture Minister Tammy Scott-Wallace even suggested that “From a tourism perspective, the Fundy Trail Parkway has become one of the province’s crown jewels in recent years, providing residents and visitors with incredible views and limitless potential for memorable experiences.”

That raises an intriguing question. In the age of climate change, is the possibility of a millions-year-old geological oddity splintering in an instant before our very eyes is New Brunswick Tourism’s new marketing mantra?

Donald, who operates a thriving business showing visitors around the Fundy Trail Parkway, wouldn’t go that far. Still, “since the flowerpot bit kind of slid off, the thing’s been a good lesson on erosion to talk about. I mean, this is the Bay of Fundy, right? The whole coastline is incredibly dynamic ... constantly churning.”

Jordan Jamison, co-owner of Bay of Fundy Adventures in St. Martins, which offers outdoor adventures, leadership programs, and culinary excursions, concurs. He points out that the area has plenty of “flowerpots” left, including a collection at Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park up the coast. But the fact that something that appears so formidable one day, can suddenly vanish the next, is weirdly good for business.

“I have pictures of our kayaks next to the Fundy Trail Parkway flowerpot, and I’d always tell people that these sorts of places have a lifespan,” he says. “With 320 billion tonnes of water coming in and out of the Bay every day, these formations are getting their shins chopped out.”

There’s no doubt the Fundy Trail Parkway, a 2,559-hectare natural wonderland, that hugs the coast, boasts many other attractions. There are beautiful beaches, 35 kilometres of rugged hiking and biking trails, more than 20 spots with awe-inspiring views, a 15-metre waterfall, a 60-metre suspension bridge, a canyon. But the flowerpots have always been the crowd pleasers.

Says Catrina Russell, who runs the public education program at the sprawling 2,500-square-kilometre Stonehammer UNESCO Global Geopark that encompasses the parkway, “There are a few other similar structures in the Geopark region, but nothing quite like these. We’re talking about sedimentary sandstone formed about 200 million years ago in an ancient river bed. Now, they’re sitting on the coast of an ocean, where the highest tides in the world make them so spectacular.”

That said, she adds: “Erosion may be a totally natural process, but with climate change, and those different things that are happening in the world, the weather seems to be getting worse and worse. So, savour the time we have with (the flowerpots).”

Certainly, Russell wouldn’t be the first educator to allude to the new tourism potential in the fragility of the world’s natural wonders — once thought unvanquishable — in the face of an increasingly annoyed Mother Nature.

“Rapid environmental change in vulnerable destinations has stimulated a new form of travel termed ‘last chance tourism’,” wrote a team of researchers from Canadian universities, led by Christopher Lemieux from Wilfred Laurier University’s Department of Geography, in the scientific journal Environmental Communication, in 2018. Among other things, they concluded that this type of tourism (they dubbed it LCT) could be the next wave, as people are increasingly “motivated” to see places that others say are about to perish. Indeed, they said, why shouldn’t educators jump on the bandwagon?

On the other hand, others wondered, does anybody see a problem here?

In a 2016 piece for the Sierra Club’s member magazine, writer Katie O’Reilly cited a study by a couple of Australian researchers at the time who explained the “troubling catch-22 factor” of LCT at the Great Barrier Reef. “While those (tourists) seeking a ‘last chance experience’ were more likely to be concerned about the reef’s health as it relates to climate change and coral bleaching, survey answers reveal only moderate to low concern about the impact of the tourism on the reef itself,” she reported.

In fact, according to market and consumer research firm Statista, “ecotourists” spent, globally, US$172 billion in 2022. That’s expected to double by 2028, as people around the world venture over hills, dales, forests, and beaches to see what, shortly, they could be missing forever; or what they never really noticed in the first place.

Meanwhile, the online travel hub Roughguides.com boldly promotes, “20 destinations to see before they disappear,” including Montana’s Glacier National Park (which is melting), Africa’s Congo Basin (which is losing its forests), and the Salar de Uyuni of Bolivia (the world’s largest salt flats).

Is Fundy Trail Parkway in danger of runaway LCT anytime soon? According to New Brunswick 2022 tourism numbers, the Upper Bay of Fundy region got roughly 250,000 visitors during the summer peak. Year over year, that was about average; neither down, nor up much. The province also didn’t seem especially anxious to double-down on the catastrophe approach to tourism marketing. And yet ...

“There’s a little bit of everything on the Fundy Trail Parkway,” Donald says. “The storied salmon fishing Hearst Lodge is there. There are probably 15 different lookouts that are all spectacular. You don’t want to see something bad happening to any part of it ... It’s now kind of an up-and-comer.” Jamison adds, “Now, I tell people that they should go and see the flowerpots while they are still here.”

Says Russell: “What I try to stress in our geology programming is that we’re just experiencing the Bay of Fundy at this brief moment in geologic time … Look at the way the tides work. They are going to get lower and lower over the next 1,000 years. The future is going to be completely different.”

Maybe sooner than anyone accustomed to minding the flowerpots along the Bay of Fundy thinks. To paraphrase singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, herself an avowed environmentalist, do people really know what they’ve got till it’s gone?