Sable Island connects son with father.
Visit to Sable Island brings father, son full circle
Walking alone along North Beach, I startle a couple of hundred grey seals into the ocean. They’re part of a 300,000 strong breeding colony, the largest in the world. Curious, they bob along beside me to my left.
Terns fly overhead, small fish tweezed in their beaks for chicks in the noisy colony beyond the dunes to my right.
It’s a blazing hot day on Sable Island, the sun magnified by the endless turquoise sea and the white sand curving ahead of me as far as I can see.
I’m searching for a suitable place to return the 50-year-old bottle of sand in my backpack to its source. My father collected it here in the early 1970s while on a fishing trip. He died in an accident a year or two after. I’ve held onto the bottle ever since.
I select a dune where I can duck out of the constant wind. My plan is to make a little ritual of pouring the sand out as if it were an hourglass marking time. I retrieve the tall, green bottle, maybe a two-litre size, with a metal screw cap. On the bottom, there’s a piece of masking tape where my father wrote, “Sable Island sand.”
My family tells me that my father, and maybe another crew member or two, rowed from their fishing boat to some lonesome spot on this 42-kilometre-narrow crescent that rises improbably out of the Atlantic Ocean, 161 kms off Canso, N.S. — the nearest land — and 290 kms from Halifax.
I imagine my father jumping at his one chance to step foot onto this storied, almost mythical Nova Scotia island.
My one chance came in a very different way, in a package from Fox Harb’r Resort near Wallace, N.S. that includes two night’s accommodation, a luxurious 90-minute spa treatment, a wagyu steak dinner and a helicopter flight to the island.
DELICATE ECOSYSTEM
Like me, my father knew about the 500 wild horses living here for the past 250 years and the historical tragedy of the 350 shipwrecks that gave Sable the nickname ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic.’ I know these curious facts only made the island more compelling for him — because they did the same for me.
The moment I learned about this trip, I retrieved the bottle from storage, intending to spread the sand on a Sable
Island beach as if it were his ashes. I imagined it would be a moment charged with emotion, a way to make a connection with my father.
After 50 years, connections like this are getting harder to make.
But even before takeoff from Fox Harb’r, I started to doubt my plan. Six fellow adventurers and our veteran guide, Fred Stillman, owner of Kattuk Expeditions, rendezvoused at the resort. Stillman gave us an overview of the trip and took our shoes away to sterilize them.
The island is as remarkable for what it lacks as for what it offers. There’s not a single rock. One lone pine, barely a metre high, is the only tree. The island has no mosquitoes, blackflies or ticks.
The horses have never suffered from a disease like strangles, the highly contagious equine respiratory illness. I was happy to give up my shoes and to abide by the Parks Canada
policy of removing nothing from the island, not even a single grain of sand.
FIRST SIGHT
Flying low over the ocean, we spotted whales and sharks. Soon after landing, Stillman led us to a pond where horses were drinking, feeding, resting and socializing.
We walked through the dunes inhaling the sweet, herbal aromas, careful not to trample orchids, marram grasses, beach peas and wild roses.
Around midday, Stillman introduced us to Zoe Lucas. She led us on an interpretive walk through the dunes, out onto the sand flats to the water’s edge. This is Lucas’ 50th year coming to the island, mostly as a researcher. This year, she arrived in May, staying until late summer.
As we walked, Lucas described how, within her time here, she’s watched an area near the main station transform from dunes and ponds into vast sand flats. The island is slowly shifting, eroding in the west and building in the east. Sable Island might be on a slow walk across the ocean floor — or it could disappear entirely.
The island’s 10 endemic species include the Ipswich sparrow that nests at the crowns of dunes and a tiny insect called a sweat bee, its Latin name a nod to its island home — Lasioglossum sablense. Stillman and Lucas caution us away from their habitat, including a small patch of grass at the main station.
When we reached the water, sunbathing seals tumbled into the waves. Poking among the debris at the tide’s edge, Lucas picked up a tiny, perfect shell and said, “This bay scallop could be a thousand years old.”
The species no longer lives in these waters, but constant wave and wind action erodes thousand-year-old caches of their remains.
Even in the presence of these powerful natural processes constantly remaking Sable Island, there’s a vulnerability. The bands of horses could be decimated by bacteria catching a ride with visitors like me. Bird nests and orchids could be trampled.
DEBATING A DECISION
Sable Island was designated a national park reserve in 2013 to protect this delicate, unique ecosystem that’s teeming with life.
Why did I think I had the right to return sand taken 50 years before? It could literally be contaminated with grains of destruction.
Kneeling at the foot of the dune with my father’s bottle of sand, I face an additional dilemma, a personal one. Only a few close friends know my intentions. I wonder what my family would think — aunts and uncles, my mother, my sister, my own kids — if I dump the sand without their knowledge. It may never mean anything to anyone else, but I don’t know because I didn’t ask.
What hope do I really have that this act will bring me closer to a man who now exists only in objects and memories? And if that is my goal, wouldn’t I be pouring part of that memory away?
I zip the unopened bottle of sand into my backpack and head for the helicopter, where Stillman pops a bottle of bubbly. We each toast what is likely our only visit to Sable.
Silently, I toast my father and our shared fondness for adventure and wild places.
Airborne, we pass one last time over the shimmering crescent, its dunes crowned with green vegetation. I resign myself to returning home with my father’s bottle of sand. It occurs to me that the bottle now belongs equally to both of us, a souvenir of improbable trips to an improbable island.
“What hope do I really have that this act will bring me closer to a man who now exists only in objects and memories? And if that is my goal, wouldn’t I be pouring part of that memory away?”