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Driving through town, Canada's first baby boomer, Nicole Cyr-Mazerolle, ignores the lush greenery of the Saint John River Valley for more personal topography.

“Schoolteacher,” the 59-year-old says, pointing to modest houses on the left and right. “Schoolteacher. Schoolteacher.”

Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle, a wide-eyed blonde in a snappy, boot-cut brown suit, is a former teacher herself. She points out two more teachers' homes and throws in a retired school principal for good measure before pulling into the carport of the red-brick bungalow she and her husband, Bertrand, have shared for 30 years.

Here, they raised three children: Eric, 33, Luke, 30, and Christine, 26. Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle is a few years short the first time she tries to rhyme off their ages. “God,” she says, “time goes so fast.”

As in many boomer families, two of the kids still live at home. Their graduation photos fill the wall beside the hutch.

Above the white-brick mantel in the living room are huge blowups of Luke and his girlfriend's two children, 18-month-old Mariève and six-year-old Rémi, at their baptisms.

Becoming a teacher in 1966 was the defining moment of Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle's life. She is keenly aware that being part of her generation, with ample demand for teachers and other professionals, meant that she had the opportunity to escape her mother's more confined life.

She left for teachers' college right after high school, and got her first job when she was 19. She retired in 2001 after 35 years of teaching and now works with Bertrand on their 550-acre potato farm.

“My life is much better [than my mother's]. I have a lot more control, because I earned my money,” she says, sitting at the dining table she has owned since before her marriage in 1972.

“My mother was always doing dishes, washing clothes and taking care of 12 kids. She even churned the butter.”

Baby Nicole Cyr, the 11th child in her French-Canadian farming family, was born 45 seconds after midnight on Jan. 1, 1947, in nearby Saint-François. It was a moment of national optimism: She was the first citizen born under the new Canadian Citizenship Act, which declared that Canadians were no longer British subjects. She visited Parliament on her and the act's 50th birthday, and has official letters from the likes of Jean Chrétien and Roméo LeBlanc.

This seems to have infused her politics; she says she can find something good to say about every prime minister she has lived under. Health care is at the top her list of issues. But she adds, “I don't think I'm a feminist. I'm a little bit traditional. But I'm a little bit liberal too. I think I'm balanced.”

It has been a full life. The couple just returned from a two-month sojourn in Florida in her new luxury RV. A tour through their photo albums reveals a woman who visits many of her remaining nine siblings, line-dances, snowmobiles, skis downhill, skis cross-country and snowshoes in the winter, and rides motorcycles and plays tennis and shuffleboard in the summer. Three of her own oil paintings grace the walls, completed in recent painting courses.

The trip to Florida wasn't all Strawberry Festivals and barbecues. They let their work ethic out for a whirl when they came upon rows of orange trees the owner wasn't picking. They recruited friends there to help them pick 30 bags a week and drop them off at charities: “When it's not potatoes, it's oranges!”

The group also planned to sew 15 quilts for nearby old folks' homes and veterans. They sewed 50. “I guess we're good workers.”

Feminist or not, she always knew being a housewife would not make her happy, let alone financially secure.

And when you ask what she's most proud of in her kids, it's that they all found good careers: Luke is a welder, now on contract in Alberta; Eric is a forestry engineer; and Christine followed her mother into teaching.

The first step on their mother's own career path was to a basement apartment in 1964 in Fredericton with eight fellow female students in teachers college — “What a party!”

In one photo, she sits on a single bed, with an Elvis poster on the wall above her well-coiffed brown hair. “I like Elvis. My friend Agathe liked the Beatles — they were on the opposite wall.”

Then there's a picture of Bertrand's graduation from the École d'agriculture, Saint-Basile, in 1966. He looks like a movie star. “He's bald now,” she says, relishing the one-liner.

They met in 1968 in nearby Saint Anne, where Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle taught for two years after graduation. Asked the secret to their 34-year marriage, she quips: “Stop the fight. Go out.”

Before they could marry, Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle had to deal with a familiar boomer reality: She moved to a teaching job back in Saint-François to help her ailing mother, who died in 1970 of kidney disease. She stayed for six years before returning with Bertrand to Siegas in 1974. (Her father lived until 1986, dying of cancer at 88.)

The only photo of all the siblings together was taken at her mother's funeral. The 10 girls are all in black minis, the two boys doing their best to bookend them.

“That was a sad day,” Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle says quietly.

She also points to the two older sisters who have died — Marianna of a heart attack at 56 and Louise of cancer at 59.

Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle jumps back into the black Toyota Matrix that doubles as a potato-delivery truck and travels a quarter-mile down the road to visit the farm Bertrand has run throughout their marriage. Most days now, she's there by 8 a.m.

There's a calendar at the farm that she made with a photo of grandson Rémi. He's the only one interested in the potato business, but sadly he can't grow up fast enough to inherit it.

“We have a good business, but our children don't like it. I don't blame them. They have jobs and make good money.”

Inside one of the enormous metal barns on the property, we watch Bertrand sort and fellow farmer Zoël Thériault fill red plastic 15-pound bags that will be delivered to grocery stores in various nearby communities.

After a look at the massive French-fry-making machinery nearby and the walk-in fridge filled with the chunky final product, we leave to visit one of the local eateries that serves them.

On the wall of the Econo resto-bar is a poster of Elvis and a poster of the Beatles, just as in Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle's college days. The fries are buried in dark gravy and stringy cheese in poutine, but they are solid and crispy.

In her annual teaching portraits, Ms. Cyr-Mazerolle always looked serious, with darker hair and blouses done right up to her neck. She looks younger today.

“It's a pretty happy life,” she says. “I've always done what I wanted to do.”