Sherman Bleakney was one of a kind

A few years ago near New Minas looking at a possible aboiteau

(Sherman Bleakney chose to leave us on Oct. 25. To honour him it seemed appropriate to revive this article about an incredibly informative dyke walk he gave in 2012)

Sherman Bleakney looks at the Wolfville waterfront with the eye of a biologist and the heart of an archeologist.

Surveying the waterfront with a group of the town's historical society members, he said what was once the world's smallest registered harbour still has stories to tell.

Today, it is hard to believe the town once had a bustling port. Wolfville resident Dorothy Walker Robbins can recall seeing the lights of the MV Kipawo as it ferried people and cars between Wolfville, Kingsport and Parrsboro prior to World War Two.  

"You would see them morning and night depending on the tide," the 90-year-old recalled, but the days of travel primarily by water rather than roadways are almost beyond living memory.

The town's waterfront has changed dramatically since then and since Bleakney, now in his early 80s,  as a child caught minnows for fishing in a tidal Mud Creek where the tourist bureau is today.

There were once several wharves around the harbour. On the east side, rock fill lines the edge where there was once a wharf. Bleakney can also point out big stranded rocks that floated in on wintery ice blocks.

Strong posts drilled into the side of the channel pose a mystery. Bleakney wonders if they were used in a cross wind to tie ships to safety or as channel guides during high spring tides. Only vestiges remain.

He believes the harbour was served by two lighthouses over the years. The earliest was on the east side. The second to the west of the main channel was burned on purpose in 1971 or 1972.

There was an old roadway that led to a government wharf and lighthouse located out on the bank of the Cornwallis River for about 20 years after 1900. This straight gravel road is now buried under about three feet of marsh grass deposits. At the bottom of the riverbank, at low tide, there are still some timbers that once held up the wharf.

Bleakney also found down the bank a layer of clamshells almost 800 years old.

The dyke wall is like a road along the eastern side of the harbour entrance channel, but it was part of a tidal barrier from Wolfville to Grand Pre built in 1805-06 by Planter farmers. Many planks along the centre line of the dyke wall, which reinforced the sod walls, are poking up at the riverbank where the old wall can be seen in cross section.

After the barrier was breached in 1931, this tidal marshland was no longer protected and the original three-mile long dyke has mostly eroded away, except alongside Wolfville's harbour.

During the Depression, the municipality once ran a sewer line parallel to the dyke wall and into the Cornwallis River. Three or four deep pits, where the line has caved in, remain today along with brickwork and timbers. One must walk carefully.

From Bleakney's research in issues of The Acadian he learned that the sewage began backing up in 1937, so the line was abandoned.

The railway bed at Wolfville harbour forms a dyke wall to the south. Today the tides rise within three feet of the old rails. Last fall, there was a flood toward Main Street.

The railway began running through the Annapolis Valley in 1869 - the same year the Saxby Gale pushed the tides six to eight feet above any previous or subsequent records, he said. "(The railbed) would not have been constructed in the 1860s that near to high water, in anticipation of storms," said Bleakney. "Sea level has risen."

The former Windsor and Hantsport Rail line has been abandoned since 2007 and the beams supporting the rail bed at the harbour side are sagging.

 "Who owns it, who maintains it?" Bleakney asked aloud.

As the sea level rises, so does the surface of the adjacent salt marsh. The retired professor estimates there are six to eight additional feet of marsh turfon on top of the surface that existed 200 years ago.

"It doesn't seem to decompose," he said, easily poking his six-foot-long homemade measuring gauge into the soft marsh with just two fingers.

He can point out remnants of an Acadian running dyke near the Wickwire Dyke, built in 1960, but no amateur could locate it. He finds these relicts by touch. Using his gauge, he has learned the small cut sod pieces used to cover the old dykes harden over time like clay bricks and are less porous than undisturbed marsh turf.

Telltale plants grow in varied zones on this patch of dykeland, he said. Sea lavender, for example, tops the older Acadian dyke wall. Acadia University biology researchers have staked many of the places where this plant blooms. Marsh Elder bushes line the higher-level Planter dykes.

Both the Acadians and those later farmers of the tidal reaches harvested the marsh grass. Bleakney can point to clusters of posts called staddles that kept the hay aloft into frost season when it was hauled inland by horse. He has counted the remains of 24 staddles near Wolfville and calls these relics of earlier residents "clues to hidden treasures."

The clues are threatened by more than a metre of shoreline being lost to erosion each year, he said. Rocks brought in to brace the dykes are tumbled askew by the tides and transported about by winter ice blocks.

Looking across the river to Starr's Point, Bleakney said the worst erosion is taking place near the old cemetery there, while wave action is replanting soil at the mouth of the river. Another active erosion spot lies next to the town's sewage treatment lagoons.

 "It's all good archeological material," he said, "and it's all being washed away."

Ship skeleton

The remains of the wooden hull sticks out of the mud near the harbour's entrance. Bleakney who found the wreck in 2000, said six different kinds of wood were represented in the wreckage.

According to marine historian Dan Conlin, the vessel was probably a coastal schooner, more than 60 feet long, from the 19th century. He said a mortise or mast step in the keelson suggested a sailing vesse and the size suggests a vessel in the 70-ton range.

With Elizabeth Walter one Jan. 1

This wreck either sank or was sunk. A search of shipwreck records show Wolfville had at least eight recorded marine casualties, including two total losses, but no exact match of for this wreck.

Conlin said the wreck might have been burned to the water or mud line at low tide to reduce its profile.

According to Conlin, the wreck's location near the harbour entrance is unusual, as it would appear to present a hazard to navigation for a harbour that was once a busy port for tern schooners and coastal steamers.

However, there are dredging diagrams showing the main harbour channel used to be located slightly further west.

Strangely in the timbers of the wreckage, Bleakney discovered a deer antler. Jammed in there, he said, the antler became stained a bronze colour and polished by a fine grit.

Honoured for his attention to the waterfront

Sherman Bleakney returned to his alma mater in 1957 to teach zoology. Known for his research on sea slugs and leatherback turtles, he is also recognized as an expert on local dyked land since his book, Sods, Soil and Spades: The Acadians at Grand Pre and Their Dykeland Legacy, was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2004.

He calls the book a retirement hobby that took him 10 years to write. Bleakney looked at maps from the early 1800s and talked to 80-year-olds who still remembered the dyking methods of the Acadians. He still marvels at their skills and continues his documentation efforts.

In 2004, Bleakney was awarded a Gulf of Maine Visionary Award, which recognizes innovation, creativity, and a commitment to protecting the marine environment. He thoroughly deserved the recognition.

Originally published in The Kings County Advertiser

Sherman’s obituary:

https://serenityfuneralhome.ca/tribute/details/8145/John-Bleakney/obituary.html?fbclid=IwAR0HYwivRc0JW7cNOjdCydmMXc4W7iqkU7CfB7MJN1t3zk6yKI7HMuIko-g#content-start