| Maintenance
The warm dry weather of April and the availability
of sufficient funds enabled us to get a record early start on the annual
task of monitoring all our trails (well before the blackflies.) We were
also fortunate in getting, for the second year, Kirk Worthen to do the
main task of lugging tools and the chainsaw and dealing with winter blow
downs. We did not quite complete all of our programme before Kirk was wooed
away by a regular job on a salmon raising operation.
Tom Wetzel and his wife, Ann, son Tim and
friend David Small have maintained the trail from Dark Harbour Road to
Western Head and south to Little Dark Harbour again this year. If you wondered
how the new picnic table got up to Western Head—ask them! top
New Adopter
Over on White Head a new trail ‘adopter’
has come forward. Keith Mourik is walking around the island trail frequently
and carrying a tool or two when something needs to be done. top
Thanks Adopters
Our thanks go to all the stalwart ‘adopters’
who worked on their trails without any special recognition this summer.
They are our biggest single asset. top
You Reported
Thank you everyone who took the time to
note a trails condition and forward it directly (or indirectly) to the
trails Co-Ordinator. Knowing what needs to be done and where, allows us
to use our limited workforce to its best effect. top
Geology
of the Grand Manan walking trails Or Rock around the island
By Chuck Letourneau. June, 1999
Chuck Letourneau, his wife, Julia and son,
Geoffrey are regular visitors to Grand Manan for their summer holidays.
They are ‘Friends’ of trails and Chuck has written this account of the
island geology to be included in the next revision of The Heritage
Trails and Footpaths on Grand Manan.
“(The house) fell not; for it was founded
upon a rock.” The Gospel According to St. Matthew 7:25
The trails described in this guide will take you
from the top of magnificent cliffs to the amazingly changeable tidal shoreline,
giving you ample opportunity to look at the rocks and landforms along the
way. From the ancient to the (relatively) modern, the geology of Grand
Manan is an open book to be appreciated and interpreted by the observant
hiker. Here are just a few of the highlights.
As you hike the beautiful trail between southwest
Head towards Pats Head, pause for a rest in a field of large rounded boulders
that are of very different composition than the local bedrock. You are
in the midst of one of “The Flocks of Sheep.” These odd rocks are glacial
erratics: boulders that were picked up on the mainland by a glacier, tumbled
and smoothed as they were carried along in the ice, then deposited in a
pile when the glacier melted. Be aware that these boulders are relatively
recent immigrants to the island. The last glacier disappeared from this
area only ten to fifteen thousand years ago. That means “The Flock of Sheep”
are barely lambs on the Geological Time Scale, considering that the oldest
rock exposed on the island is around 640 million years old!
If you are on the trail near the wind-swept Ox
Head you may be clambering over some of that ancient sedimentary and metamorphic
rock. Most of the rock exposed on the eastern side of the island (from
Red Point to North Head) belongs to the Precambrian formations (even the
bedrock buried under the sand and cobble beaches of Castalia.) The jagged
teeth that are completely exposed at low tide and spike menacing above
the water at high tide are narrow ridges of tough, resistant volcanic rock
that was forced into cracks and joints in the softer (now eroded) bedrock.
The ancient sediments and volcanics of the eastern shore were squeezed
and deformed by a mountain-building event about 380 million years ago.
The incredible heat and pressure they endured changed them into a family
of rock types known as “metamorphic rocks.”
On the exciting hike from Whale cove to the Whistle,
seat yourself on a convenient block of darkish rock at the scenic lookout
on Ashburton Head. Your bottom is likely in close contact with part of
an ancient lava flow (well cooled by now!). The magnificent formation (lava
spewed from volcanoes formed a fine-dark rock called basalt, and molten
rock called diabase.) It took millions of years to build these layers,
beginning sometime between 208 and 217 million years ago, in the Triassic
Period. These volcanic rocks sometimes contain interesting minerals, with
small beautiful crystals lining the spaces left by gas bubbles that escaped
from the cooling molten rock.
If you are walking along the Dark Harbour Road
just before it dives down into the steep valley at Dark Harbour, stop to
examine what looks like a forest of six-sided pillars carved out of solid
rock by some hyperactive stone-mason. These are fine examples of “columnar
basalt”, their natural shape formed as slowly cooling lava shrank in volume.
You can see similar
formations, also of Triassic age, from the look-outs
on the cliffs at Southwest Head. A long geological fault– a great break
in the earth’s crust - runs from Whale Cove to Red Point, separating the
low eastern coastal plain from the high, sparsely populated centre and
western parts of the island. At Red Point - one end of the very accessible
and enjoyable walk from the Anchorage - you can clearly see where the fault
has brought the younger reddish sedimentary rocks of Triassic age in contact
with the ancient grey Precambrian rocks.
Don’t forget to check out the “Hole-in-the-Wall”
visible from the trail between Fish Head and Whale Cove. This is an example
of what time and erosion can do to shape the landscape.
Other exciting exposures of rock include the gleaming
white quartz cliff on White Head Island (from which the island takes its
name) and the shattered headland at Swallowtail light where a big chunk
of the island has tilted away from the rest (as can be seen from the footbridge
just down from the parking area.)
So, don’t curse that rock you just stumbled over
… take the opportunity to learn from it. A new and fascinating aspect of
the Grand Manan experience will be revealed. top
Friends’
keep us in operation
We remain firmly indebted to those ‘friends’
who support us financially, sometimes on an annual basis. Other sources
have been tapped in the past but again this year the sum total of the private
donations has become our best, most reliable source of income. Our
biggest single source of funds comes from the sale of our crests. Nine
members of the Grand Manan Tourism Assoc. offered them for sale without
profit this year. In sales, Island Arts again led the field with the Museum,
Shorecrest Lodge, Cow-Mon-In and Harrington Cove Cottages as the other
front runners. Can you help in 2000? Cecilia would love to hear from you.
She is also looking into the production of a pin in the same distinctive
design for sale next year. top
More sketches
donated
In August John Belyea and his wife, Ellen
from Saint John came to Grand Manan once again to watch the whales and
deliver a second great batch of his black and white sketches of the island.
We have decided to use his work exclusively in this years newsletter in
order to give you a foretaste of his impressive talents. (Note if you
wish to see these sketches, please contact the Trails
Committee for a copy of the newsletter). Plans are afoot for a
showing of his work on the island next year. Paula and George Marcus
from Connecticut also dropped by in August. Regular trail users in recent
years and working from their R. V. they continued exploring our trails.
Paula donated a nice sketch of the shoreline from Red Point. Also
in August Ada Rosenberry from Arizona was here as part of a ‘Travel Learn’
group. She donated a fine sketch of The Swallowtail. top
Our trails
challenge
On many sections of our trails you must
watch where you put your feet. Small children will need to be given a hand.
If you are recommending a hike to a newcomer it is well to remember how
casual our trails are. Compared to what they might encounter in a State
of Provincial Park, they will find our unimproved trails more challenging.
The excellent trails (including the boardwalk) from Red Point east through
the Anchorage Provincial Park with its several spurs are the only groomed
trails on the island. top
Memoir
The following memoir was received this summer
from Sergeant Chris Ingersoll, Canadian Armed Forces, serving in Macedonia.
His late father, Frederick Ingersoll of Seal Cove recorded his youthful
memories in longhand and his daughter, Claudia, is presently typing them
up.
From: Chris Ingersoll
To: gmtouris@nbnet.nb.ca
I am Chris Ingersoll and originally
from Seal Cove, Grand Manan. I found your site (a great one) from a cousin
and thought I could submit the following story written by my Dad, Fred
Ingersoll of Seal Cove. He passed away in 1990 but before he died he wrote
his autobiography for his grandchildren and this story, plus many others,
was one my children heard when they were little and still remember. I have
permission from Mom to submit this article. The story has a background
the trails of Grand Manan and one particular camp which some of your senior
readers might remember. The camp was called Kamp Kumfort and used by many
Scouts at that time for an overnight location while they traveled through
the backwoods and trails.
Let me introduce my Dad, Frederick Ingersoll
of Seal Cove. Dad lived his life on Grand Manan except for the years of
World War II. Before he left home for the war he grew up and was active
with his many good friends around Seal Cove. He knew of the many trails
at that time which led out to the back of the island from Seal Cove and
Southern Head. When he told us stories such as this, his recollections
were clear and gave us many good times as he remembered his youth and the
many friends he grew up with.
He starts with: “I feel that in those days, we
boys and girls were very privileged and fortunate to be able to hike all
around the wooded part of the island between the Village and the back part
of the Island with no one to bother us. There were no drugs, no crime,
not even any smoking amongst the group. We enjoyed many of these hikes
together and later on when I was a member of the Boy Scouts, these
areas were visited many times by our Scout Patrol or the Troop complete."
"One day, Colin Harvey, and I went to Kamp Kumfort
in January to stay all night. (this was located at Sloop Cove on the
back of the island.) After we had our supper, we read and talked, then
went to bed. After we had been asleep for a while, we woke up after hearing
a noise. We laid there listening, it was very quiet. There was a frost
on the ground and we could hear someone walking down the trail from the
pulp camps toward our camp. We kept very still and just listened. We had
left the oil lamp on the table which was in the front of the window on
the side of the camp. We had known that a pulp cutter, one of the Finns,
had been found dead and under strange circumstances, so we were rather
apprehensive as to what was going on. We heard the steps approaching the
window and stopped. While we watched, the front end of a rifle was placed
against the window. It tapped the glass. We held our breath. The steps
moved away toward the end where the door was. The rifle tapped on the door.
We expected that the person would open the door and just walk in. We did
not know what to expect. The person stepped down off the steps and we heard
him walk away."
"The next morning after breakfast, Colin and I
walked down to Sloop Cove to go down to the beach to watch the S.S. Saint
John, a passenger ship from Saint John to Boston, go down by the Grand
Manan Channel. When we got down to the beach, we found a fire burning in
against the bank. It was sheltered by a hugh rock and a paper bag was on
the ground where our night visitor had spend the rest of the night and
had his lunch, then just disappeared. It was one of those experiences that
boys have. We never did find out who it was and we used to talk about the
scary feeling we had that night in old Kamp Kumfort." top
Tabled at
G. M. Tourism Assoc/Chamber of Commerce joint meeting, October 18th.’99
Re: Present Trails Committee Organization
This outline of our organization and activities
details how we function and breaks down our workload into specific tasks.
These jobs can be accomplished individually or by a number of committee
members. Volunteers who are presently accomplishing a job are named. The
remaining tasks have been done by Don and Maureen Baldwin.
1999 will be the last year in which Don acts as
co-ordinator of the Trails Committee. He and Maureen plan to do some
summer traveling. Don no longer enjoys robust health.
If the existing format is to be continued members
of the association will need to pick up several jobs outlined here. These
can be done by volunteers or persons financed by the association.
Activities:
-
Trails Committee Co-Ordinator. Oversees
the recruitment of committee members, hosts their meetings and seeks to
encourage a consensus amongst the individual members in planning future
activities including -
-
Finances. Collecting and disbursing
donations. Keeping accounts of all receipts and expenditures. Corresponding
with donors and fund granting bodies, acknowledging donations on behalf
of the trails committee. We have been self sustaining for the last two
years, thanks largely to the generosity of ‘Friends’.
-
Hiring occasional laborers. Supervising
and equipping them. Establishing priorities.
-
Producing and distributing the Annual Newsletter.
This
is distributed to all members of G.M. Tourism Ass., Chamber of Commerce
members, ‘Friends of Grand Manan Trails’ and Trails Adoptors. Maude Hunter
has taken an active role in circulation and at her own expense. Presently
there are 21 couples or individuals upkeeping a trail or portion thereof.
The newsletter is the only source of information many ‘Friends’ get.
-
Maintaining the card index of ‘Friends of
Grand Manan Trails (presently 132 names not otherwise known to G.M.T.A.
Maude Hunter has been very active in this role.
-
Revising the “Heritage Trails and Footpaths”
guidebook. A new revision is now overdue.
-
Collecting archival materials. Maps, early
guides and articles shedding light on our historic trails.
-
Production and Sale of our distinctive crest.
Cecilia Bowden has ably handled this task for several years. Proceeds constitute
our biggest single source of income in some years.
-
Housing and Maintaining our simple inventory of
tools, paints, etc. John Cunningham has voluntarily serviced our chainsaw
in recent years.
-
Monitoring the activities of the New Brunswick
Trails Council Inc. We have a token membership in this organization
in order to be aware of their activities on the mainland. Tom and Ann Wetzell
receive and monitor their literature for items of interest to us.
Should the existing format of organization
be retained (it has worked well enough over the years) Don and Maureen
will be happy to retain the following tasks.
-
Storing and maintaining equipment.
-
Making signs and markers.
-
Adopting a trail.
-
Contributing to the Newsletter. top
Trails
Committee - Fall, 1999
Don Baldwin—Co-Ordinator
Cecilia Bowden
John and Dianne Cunningham
Billy Daggett
Eugene Gillies
Sidney and Barbara Guptill
Maude Hunter
September 17, 1999
Newsletters
on the Web
Laurie Murison has put all of the past newsletters
on website. top |
