Bringing them in by the bucket
Digging for clams an enduring occupation
At 17, Larry Ward looked around Bass River and didn’t see much for a young man to do.
So at low tide he put on his rubber boots, grabbed a bucket and headed for the beach.
That was 36 years ago. “What do I think about?” Ward repeated a question.
“Just the clams I suppose.” Along this shore of noble captains’ houses settling back into the earth, shuttered gas stations and home renovations half completed and half abandoned, it’s some of the oldest ways of life
that endure. Between Great Village and Parrsboro, most human economic activity remains largely dictated by season and tide.
“There’s not a lot of other work around,” said Ward.
So for 36 seasons, which run from May 1 to the end of October, Ward has dug clams, his only tool a short-handled fork called a hack.
He wears one of them down each season, hacking into and prying open the sand flats around Bass River to reveal the clams he tosses into a bucket.
The commercial harvester gets $20 a bucket.
A good day will see him out for seven hours between two low tides and bringing 10 buckets ashore.
“I don’t have to listen to anybody out here,” said Ward. “And I’m my own boss.” While the proud wooden ships once erected along this shore to connect its people socially and economically with the world are long rotten, the clams the Mi’kmaq taught Nova Scotia’s first European settlers to dig are still here.
Summer evenings you’ll find a full parking lot up the road at Diane’s Restaurant in Five Islands as tourists and locals mow down on this gift of the shore.
Monday evening, Ward was bent over a hole, filling his bucket and not having to listen to anyone he didn’t care to.