Mount Carleton — The wise prophet and former New Brunswick premier Shawn Graham has been out of the spotlight for quite some time. After having served as premier from 2006-2010, Graham continued as a member of the legislative committee until stepping down in 2013; he has scarcely been heard of since, which has led many to wonder what became of him.
A team of Manatee sleuths were able, after tremendous effort, to track down the meditating hermit deep within a hidden cave system atop Mount Carleton. The former premier’s hair and beard were long, matted and unkempt, his legs crossed and his eyes closed tightly as he ritualistically hummed. Graham instructed our investigative team to gather around him and wash his feet before allowing us to speak.
At long last, we were able to aid him in deciphering an ancient prophecy that Graham himself had a hand in forming: the fabled and mysterious “Be…in this place.”
“I am New Brunswick,” he muttered indistinctly, his eyes still shut tight. “When this province had me, they didn’t want me. Now, when they need me most, I am here. In this place. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. Now the day of reckoning is here at last.”
It was a clear, sunny day, but suddenly, lightning snapped in the background, and thunder roared all around us.
“I’ve known those words for a long, long time,” he continued, his voice pensive and distant, his eyes now open and focused on a nonspecific distant mark. “But their meaning was never clear to me.”
For many years, New Brunswickers scratched their heads and asked, “Why? Why would you ever want to be in this place?” But in light of the coronavirus and New Brunswick’s perplexingly apt control of it, many believe that it is actually the ancient prophecy coming true. The slogan itself graced the face of New Brunswick licence plates from 2008 to 2011, and though it allegedly stemmed from the marketing group Branding Merchants — then led by Stuart Baker — many believe Graham had a lot to do with it.
“Stuart who?” angrily questioned Raymond Stevens, founder of the NostraGrahamus Facebook group. “Shawn is a sage, man. A cleric. A visionary. The guy is frigging psychic, man. He saw this coming years before anyone else. I would’ve left for Alberta a decade ago, but I knew [because of the prophecy] that New Brunswick was the place where I should be…in this place.”
When asked about the prophecy, Graham told The Manatee that the words came to him in a dream. “At first, I thought it was referring to bumblebees. Bee…in this place.
“I spent countless taxpayer dollars buying hive after hive, producing as much honey as I possibly could, but after I got bored of that, I sold them all to Quebec. Then I thought: be…in this place? What, New Brunswick itself? It didn’t make any sense. Why would anyone in their right mind want to do that?
“But I knew, something, someday, would happen, and that the safest place to be would be the only place that no one truly wanted to be. Be…in this place.”