FUNDY ISLES, NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada -- It was a place where a kid could be a kid. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island, where breezes sweep through large, unpretentious rooms, must have been a little bit of heaven for his five children. Filled with wicker furniture, photographs, and the detritus of everyday family life, the roomy cottage looks ready to welcome them back from the beach at any minute.

FDR, the 32nd president of the United States, spent his boyhood summers at his parents' house on Campobello Island, one of the Fundy Isles of New Brunswick, Canada.

In 1964, the United States and Canada established Roosevelt Campobello International Park as a memorial to him. While the island itself is owned by Canada, the park is jointly owned and funded by the United States and Canada with staffing from both countries.

In addition to the Roosevelt Cottage, there are other late 19th-century summer homes in the park, plus visitors can hike, cool off in a rustic swimming hole and picnic at Friar's Head (named for a large rock formation). Scenic roads wind through the woods, meadows and bogs that form a protected site, called the "Natural Area," around the Roosevelt home. Birders flock to the 2,800-acre Natural Area from May through October, enjoying the large number of species that breed on Campobello or pass through on their migratory routes.

Although Roosevelt Campobello International Park is the island's big draw, the hiking and swimming are excellent and there's a nine-hole golf course at nearby Herring Cove Provincial Park. Hikers trek the Rock of Gibraltar Trail to see massive, 10,000-year-old boulders left behind by melting glaciers.

At the tip of Campobello is Canada's most photographed lighthouse, Head Harbour Lightstation, also known as East Quoddy Head Lighthouse. It is an excellent vantage point for viewing whales and porpoises.

As it has been for generations, fishing is still a way of life for many residents of the Fundy Isles, which include Deer Island and the archipelago of Grand Manan in addition to Campobello.

Just 10 miles long and three miles wide, Deer Island is home to about 1,000 people -- and lots of deer. Legend has it that Glooscap, an Algonquin leader, was paddling his canoe through the islands when he was awed by the unusual sight of a moose watching a pack of wolves chasing a deer. Using his powers as a shaman, he transformed the animals into islands -- Deer Island, The Wolves -- a group of islands just offshore from Deer Island-- and Moose Island near what is now Eastport, Maine.

Deer Island is noted for deep sea diving and whale watching, but many visitors come to marvel at a swirling vortex between Deer and Moose islands known as Old Sow. At 250 feet wide, Old Sow is the Western Hemisphere's largest whirlpool and the second largest in the world (the largest is in Norway).

The name comes from the grunting, snorting sound of the funneling water; the little whirlpools that spin off from, and surround, the large whirlpool are known as "piglets." The Old Sow puts on her most spectacular performance about three hours before high tide and is especially dramatic during times of high winds. (Note: Watch Old Sow safely from the shore; boaters should avoid the area.)

Largest of the Fundy Isles is Grand Manan (population about 2,700), reached via ferry from Black's Harbour, New Brunswick. Just before arriving at the terminal in North Head Harbour, the ferry glides past Swallowtail Light, one of Canada's few remaining wooden light towers. First-time visitors are often too dazzled to decide what to photograph first.

Besides the picturesque lighthouse, the nearby commercial fishing wharf is filled with boats of all kinds, ranging from rough 'n' ready gill netters, draggers and herring carriers (often captained by old salts looking bemused while tourists toting cell phone cameras zap photos of them) to exotic pleasure craft.

Whale-watching boats make frequent trips around Grand Manan, where the waters teem with minke, fin, and humpback whales, and even an occasional rare right whale.

Eighteen miles of well-maintained roads lined with lupines, rosa rugosa, and other wildflowers, make Grand Manan a joy to explore by car, bike or on foot. Birders love it here as well, and have identified 360 species of birds on Grand Manan, including 131 breeding species.

John James Audubon, completed paintings of the herring gull on nearby White Head Island, the only other inhabited island in the Grand Manan archipelago, during an 1833 visit.

White Head -- named for its abundance of white quartzite rocks -- with its tiny community of fishing families, can be reached by a small ferry from Ingalls Head on Grand Manan.

Here and there on the Fundy Isles, travelers will find a restaurant serving French or continental cuisine.

Most restaurant menus, however, run to hearty chowders, lobster, crab, salmon and other fresh seafood, and Acadian dishes like tourtiere, a spiced meat pie. In spring, fiddleheads -- the first tightly coiled fronds of the ostrich fern -- are a sauteed delicacy, and by late summer, blueberries are on every menu.

Comfort food seems entirely appropriate in these quiet, laid-back islands. It's a place where a kid can still be a kid, swimming, biking and fishing away the endless days of summer -- and an adult can remember when life was as predictable as the ferries sailing to and fro across peaceful waters.