World’s Biggest Tides: Burntcoat Head Nova Scotia

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

 

Burntcoat Head Park. Burntcoat Head Park is on the coast of the Bay of Fundy in Mi’Kmaq territory and the District of Sipekne’katik, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. It is always important to recognize such facts and the park did exactly that.

 

It also claims to be the exact site of the highest tides in the world. The Bay of Fundy of which it is a part claims to have the highest tides and it is because of this area. And it was also home to a lovely islet just a short walk away down to the beach.

The Guinness Book of World Records (1975) declared that Burntcoat had the highest tides in the world: “The greatest tides in the world occur in the Bay of Fundy…. Burntcoat Head in the Minas Basin, Nova Scotia, has the greatest mean spring range with 14.5 metres (47.5 feet) and an extreme range of 16.3 metres (53.5 feet).” That is good enough for me, though I admit there is some controversy about which tides are actually the biggest. The National Geographic made a similar claim in its August 1957 magazine: “The famous tides of the Bay of Fundy move with deceptive quiet. Sheltered from the open sea, they ebb and flood to a recorded range unequal in the rest of the world.”

Twice each day the tides rise and fall in the Bay of Fundy and cause  60 billion tonnes of water to flow in and out of the Bay of Fundy each day!  That is incredible when you stop to think about it. The average tide in the bay is 47.5 ft high and the highest is 53.6 ft.

Like most coastal tides, Burntcoat Head experiences two high tides and two low tides each day. The Bay of Fundy fills and empties with approximately 160 billion tonnes of water twice a day. On average it takes 6 hours and 13 minutes between high and low tide. As soon as the tide has reached its lowest or highest point, it will change directions, and either begin to come to shore or flow back out. The timing of the tides changes by approximately by one hour daily. Spring tides happen twice per month when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are aligned. During this alignment, the tides raise higher than average. Neap tides occur during the first and third quarter moon. During this time the high tide heights are lower than average.

 

There was also a lighthouse here but it was a bit of a dud though it had an interesting history. The first lighthouse was built in 1858, before Confederation on land that later was transformed into an island. The lighthouse had 5 oil lamps with reflectors that the keepers had to clean every day!  The narrow “neck” of land on which it was built connected it to the mainland until that neck was eroded into oblivion.  The power of the sea, unlike the power of men and women, is relentless.  After that the people who worked on the lighthouse had to climb up bank of the beach by means of a ladder.

 

In 1979 a man and his son, George and Sandy Hyrnewich, searching the beach found a fossil of a creature that had never been discovered or identified before. It was the skull of a reptile that was 20 cm long and came from the late Triassic period more than 220 million years ago. That was before there were any dinosaurs on the planet. It is now called, appropriately, Teraterpeton Hyrnewich. The first part of the name means “wonderful creeping thing” in Latin and the second part is of course their name. As erosion in the Bay of Fundy continues, other strange fossils may be found.

 

The Bay of Fundy originated when the world’s continents were all joined as one in what scientists now called the supercontinent Pangaea, which means one earth,  230 million years ago, about the time the wonderful creeping thing was creeping. Pangaea started to break apart. At that time a very large rift valley started to form, where the Bay of Fundy is now found. Braided rivers probably blown through the region and hot dry winds blew sand into dunes that today form the red sandstone that is so visible today in Burntcoat and other places in Nova Scotia.

 

Mi’kmaq Religion and Spirituality

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

 

Mi’kmaq spirituality, like so much of various First Nations’ spirituality,  is deeply  influenced by and closely connected to the natural world. In fact, that connection to the natural world is the fundamental basis of their spirituality. The Mi’kmaq believe that living a good, balanced life means respecting and protecting the environment and living in harmony with the people and creatures that live on the earth.

 

Mi’kmaq culture and traditional religion is based on legendary figures like Glooscap who is said to have created the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia where we travelled by sleeping on the land and using the island of what we now call Prince Edward Island as a pillow. The Great Spirit is the creator of the world and all its creatures and they never lost that spirituality when Eastern Canada, as we now call it was not lost when Catholic priests and settlers arrived and often did their level best to destroy everything in their spirituality. Of course, the ideas of Creator and God are very similar.  Christians though often resist the similarities. They want to be different, because they expect to be superior. Sometimes the new adherents to the new religion managed to nearly wipe out the ancient spirituality of the so-called new world. Often it kept bubbling up again, sometimes in hybridized ways.

 

The spirituality of the Mi’kmaq people is often communicated by stories. Not really unlike the Christian stories told in the Bible. One of the Mi’kmaq origin stories told about how the world was created in 7 stage including the sky, the sun, Mother Earth and humans. I’m not sure who or what fell into the remaining stages. There are many other origin stories that describe how things came to be and how to live a good life.

As Olive Patricia Dickason and William Newbigging, explained in their book A Concise History of Canada First Nation, among the Mi’kmaq, a chief could attract followers, but the people were not subordinated to their leader’s will, except perhaps in time of war or emergencies. Even in warfare however, among many groups each individual was essentially his or her own leader. Perhaps most important of all, chiefs were expected to set an example for their people, in particular by being generous. Instead of gaining wealth through their positions, they could end up the poorest of the group because of the continual demands made upon their resources. This also happened among First Nations on the west coast as well, particularly during a Potlach.

Clearly a leader like Donald Trump would have had no interest in being a leader under such circumstances. He would not have been viewed as leadership material. I keep asking this question: who is civilized again?  Tell me again why I should think Europeans were less savage, more civilized, or more superior! It makes no sense to me.

Spiritual Colonialism

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

As we were driving through eastern Canada on this trip, I kept thinking about the original human inhabitants of this wonderful country. The Indigenous people of what we now call Eastern Canada. I kept thinking about a television series I saw on CBC Gem, called Telling Our Story. 

For over 500 years the lives of the people who occupied Eastern Canada, particularly in what we now call Quebec, were disrupted, but they survived. As the narrator of The CBC series Telling Our Story said, “History with a capital “H” was told from a single point of view, but those days are over.” Thank goodness for that. The European/Canadian point of view has been dominant too long. It’s time for a fresh look.

I know some of my friends are tired of hearing indigenous stories. They’ve heard enough they say. But those stories from an indigenous perspective are only very recently been available to us. The story of white settlers have been around for hundreds of years while the indigenous stories were not listened to. I think it is time for a change and we can hear these stories for a few years more.

Spiritual colonialism of Indigenous people was as disruptive as the political kind. Until deep into the 20th century and even beyond, Canada has tried to impose its religion on the Indigenous People of North America.  The indigenous people of Eastern Canada want to speak out and tell their story. This time, we really should listen to it. We could learn something.

As one of the Indigenous artists said on the show, “People don’t even know us.”  That is true. What a pity.

So, I am trying to tell their story to my friends. I am not appropriating their story. But as Niigaan Sinclair once told me what I could do to assist reconciliation, was to talk to my friends. So that is what I do. Many of them, no doubt, are sick of hearing me. But as Sinclair said, “they won’t listen to me, but maybe a few will listen to you.” Probably not very many but I think he has a point.

As one of the young Indigenous girls on the series said, “spirituality for me is a sense of connection to the land which makes me feel whole.”  I think I could stop right there. She summed it up. And amazingly, these words echoed ancient words of a culture from the other side of the world, India. The word “religion” is derived from an ancient Indo-European word religio, which means connection or linkage.  And that is what she was saying. It is a powerful message. It doesn’t need any supernatural beings either. Though it does not deny the possibility of the supernatural. Religion is about connection. The connection of people to each other and to the land.

Another man on the show, much older, said, “spirituality is totally different from religion.” I think he meant religion of the western colonial kind. There is another way and we can learn from it. This is not a call for anyone to abandon their own spirituality or religion. It is merely a call to open eyes.

As Alexandre Bacon, an Innu from Mashteuiatsh, said,

 “If you read the Book of Genesis it says that God created man to rule over everything that flies, that crawls, that swims. Man stands above all other animals. He is meant to dominate nature, to control it. Whereas from an Indigenous point of standpoint, we are an integral part of nature. There is no hierarchy. The bear is our brother, the moose is our brother. And when an animal  gives its life it deserves our gratitude.”

 

 

No part of the land rules any other part.  Humans are not put on this earth to rule it. They are put on earth to be a part of it. That is the indigenous perspective.  Not the indigenous perspective. One of perspectives.

A Weird Day

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Lighthouses

 

 

Today was weird. Really weird.  We were heading on from our stay in Prince Edward Island. As we drove across Confederation Bridge on the way back to New Brunswick, just across the bridge I noticed a lighthouse in the distance. A lovely bridge and a lighthouse, those are 2 things I could not resist. Christiane  was not so keen, so she stayed in the car. Imagine that!  She left me to go on a frolic of my own.

 

As soon as I got through the entrance building to the Jourimain Nature Centre in New Brunswick right beside Confederation Bridge,  I noticed the beautiful view of the bridge. We had seen the bridge before, but this view of it was special. I quickly phoned her in the hopes of rousting her from her doldrum. I told her I would proceed because it was about a 15-minute walk to the lighthouse. I would meet her on the way back I said.

 

After that, I continued up a wide trail through the woods to the lighthouse where, of course I took a number of photographs.

The Cape Jourimain Lighthouse is a tapered, octagonal wood-frame tower that was built in 1869 and it measures 15.5 metres (51 feet) and is located at the narrowest section of the Northumberland Strait. That’s why the bridge was built there. The lighthouse sits within the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre on the New Brunswick side of the Northumberland Strait.

Shortly after Confederation, the new Canadian government decided, wisely no doubt, that it should build a line of lighthouses and light stations along the coasts of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to assist those mariners to navigate the coasts. Shipwrecks had been rising in the area, which was not good for shipping in the area. As a result, they built a lighthouse at Cape Jourimain. One was built here because the surrounding water are shallow and contain rocky shoals.

None of this was weird. Weird came when I returned to the viewpoint for the bridge.  I went off the trail to see if I could find Chris.  As I was looking for her, she spotting me chatting with 2 women who were most enamoured of me.  Hardly surprising.  Actually, they liked my cap made by my daughter-in-law.  She always gives me chick magnets. After a couple of minutes of chatting we returned to the main path to go back to the car parked in the parking lot, when we heard the cry: “Auntie Chris! Auntie Chris!” It turned out that Chris’ niece Margot, who lives in Gatineau Quebec, across the river from Ottawa, was also walking through the small park and recognized her. She was walking with her parents, Chris’s sister Monique and her partner Norm.  Needless to say, we were all surprised to meet each other thousands of miles from our homes. It was truly a weird coincidence. So we stopped there and had a nice short visit far from our homes.

Confederation Bridge

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

 

When Prince Edward Island joined the Dominion of Canada in 1873, they secured promises in that agreement which required the Canadian government to provide passenger service between the island and New Brunswick year-round. At first, they used a steamship that was unable to break the winter the ice. That did not really comply with the contract Canada had signed with the new province.

 

During much of the 19th century winter crossings were made by ice boats. These are boats that look like dorys but have runners on the bottom.  The boats carried from 6-10 people but often the ice was too thick and the men passengers had to get out of the boat to tow the boat across the ice with straps. Can you imagine this?

 

On the other hand, in some places the ice was not thick enough to hold up the boat and the people, and then one of the men had to walk in front of the boat and grab hold of the bow just in case the ice broke through and he fell into the icy waters.

 

Some men would stay in the boat and use grappling hooks to pull the boat. Meanwhile, the other men would remain in the boat and use grappling hooks to pull the boat along. This process could take about 4 hours in the chilly winter. They even used hot bricks to keep the passengers warm for the 4 hours it might take.

 

These ice boats were used until 1915 when they started using ferries that could break the ice. Over the years the federal government had to pay a lot of money to subsidize the ferries, paying as much as $44 million in the 1990s. More and more it seemed to the federal government that they would be better off helping to finance a bridge. And that is what they did.

 

The Confederation Bridge carries the Trans-Canada Highway across the Northumberland Strait connecting Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick. It is 12.9 km (8 miles) long the longest bridge in Canada and the longest bridge in the world over ice-covered water.  It took nearly 4 years to construct. The bridge is curved and most of it is 40 metres (131 ft.) above the water. The highway is 2 lanes.

 

The engineering of the Confederation Bridge was complicated by the fact that the water there freezes in winter.  As well, in summer ice bergs could ram into the bridge at up to 4 knots causing severe damage. The ice bergs could come from either direction Therefore, measures had to be taken to protect the piers that held up the bridge.

 

Each component of the bridge was constructed in a specially designed fabrication facility. Once the component was built, a specialized trawler had to be used to move it from that facility to a pier.  Then once it was placed on the pier the section was lifted and placed in position by a Dutch-built heavy lift catamaran. This vessel was huge. In fact, at the time it was probably the highest human made structure on P.E.I. at 100 m. (328 ft.). It could lift 3,000 tons.

 

To deflect icebergs from the bridge, steel-reinforced concrete deflection “cones” were built and strategically placed around each of the supports. Of course, they had to consider that most an ice berg was below the water surface.

 

The bridge was paid for by private developers and cost about $1.3 billion and the Canadian government agreed to pay them $44 million per year for 33 years, which was the same amount they had been paying to subsidize the ferries.  That seems like a pretty good deal for Canada, but no one knows how much profit the developers made.  They were private companies and did not have to tell. The developers collect the tolls until the contract expires, but have had large maintenance expenses. I remember that when we first crossed the bridge many years ago, not long after the bridge had been built, we noticed that it was already necessary to reapply asphalt which had difficulty sticking to the bridge on account of all of the salt water and ice on the bridge.

 

To me the most important part was the beauty of the bridge. Almost as beautiful as lighthouses!

Mennonites Lead the Charge Against Health Protections

Death of Truth, Health, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Vaccines

 

I used to joke that Mennonites are taking over the world. It’s actually true. And its not a good thing. It’s actually very dangerous. But it is preventable by vaccines. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. And we have not been taking it seriously, because we have been so effective at combating it. And that is all thanks to vaccines for measles.

 

The United States has just experienced a measles outbreak in the American southwest, particularly in Texas. On February 26, 2025 for the first time in 20 years a child died of Measles in Texas. It was also the first time in nearly a decade in the US. Texas confirmed it had 124 cases mostly in Gaines County and 9 cases in Lea County New Mexico.

 

Here’s the shocking part:

“Most of the cases are occurring in a Mennonite community that largely homeschools, so there would not be school vaccine mandates,” explains Bill Moss, MD, MPH, a professor in Epidemiology and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center.”

 

You see most schools in the US mandate that children enrolled in the school must be vaccinated against measles. Mennonites in these communities mainly homeschool. And these homes don’t get their children vaccinated.  As Mennonites sometimes say, “We trust in God. We don’t need vaccines.” They think God is stronger than any disease and all they need to do is appeal to God. Sadly, that’s not working so well.

 

As Aliza Rosen of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said,

 

“At a time of rampant mis- and disinformation about vaccines, public health experts worry outbreaks like this may only become more common in a time of rampant mis- and disinformation about vaccines, public health experts worry outbreaks like this may only become more common.”

 

As Dr. Ron Cook, of Texas Tech University said on PBS News Hour,

 

“If you walk into a room and you have measles, 80 to 90 percent of those individuals within a week will come down with measles. All you have to do is go in that room, breathe, cough a couple of times, but 80 to 90 percent of those individuals in that room will become infected with measles if they’re not vaccinated.”

 

Even though the vast majority of Americans and Canadians believe in the safety and effectiveness and safety of vaccines, there are growing numbers of people who are skeptical about vaccines, unvaccinated people account for the almost all the new cases of measles. And sadly, those numbers include children.

 

As Caitlan Rivers, Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, pointed out,

“In fact, 93 percent of people are vaccinated against measles. That is an enormous congruency in a population that otherwise can’t agree on a whole lot.”

 

Rivers also said she was troubled by misinformation coming from the newly Trump appointed secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has made it clear that he questions vaccines.  All of us should question vaccines, but when we get clear answers from a wide majority of scientists and researchers, we should believe them until we learn for some reason they can’t be trusted. Unfortunately, many Mennonites in some communities don’t trust in the science. They do their own research on line or have faith.

 

Dr. Paul Offit, an expert on vaccines and one of the  committee advisers and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said,

 

“I just fear that we are slowly sort of tearing apart the public health process that has basically served us well. I mean, we live 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago, primarily because of vaccines. And I just think vaccines have become, I think, following this pandemic, to some, a dirty word.”

 

Dr. Offit, like Caitlan Rivers lays a lot of blame at the feet of people like Robert F. Kennedy for spreading misinformation about vaccines that has influenced people like the home-schooling Mennonites. This is what he said:

 

“So, if you look at that Mennonite community, about 80 percent of those children were vaccinated. That’s not enough. It has to be in the mid-95 percent range to protect against this disease, measles, which is the most contagious infectious disease, more contagious than any other infectious disease.”

 

And so it will find those people who are unvaccinated and cause an infection. I think this was a line that was crossed. This is the first measles death in a child in almost 20 years. That’s a tragedy because, one, any death in the child is a tragedy.

 

This was a preventable death. We basically eliminated measles from this country by the year 2000. It’s come back largely because people have chosen not to vaccinate their children, in part because they’re scared of the vaccine, scared that it has safety issues like autism, something that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been promoting loudly and to many people for the last 20 years. And I think this is the result of that.

 

As a result Mennonites are bringing death to their communities—particularly children—because they are listening to misinformation rather than scientists. As a result children are at risk or even dying from a preventable disease. That’s bad.

 

Mundane Matters

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Fat Opinions

 

After lunch it was still raining so we returned to our hotel room. We spent the day on mundane matters. Once in a while that is good. Just don’t make a habit of it. These matters included reading, blogging, some history by Barbara Huck on the fur trade, the Winnipeg Free Press and New York Times on line. And above all laundry. Even on vacation laundry needs to be done. A dreary task that needs to be done.

In our hotel we had a TV with 5,818 channels. Unbelievable. Yet we could not get our TV with 5,818 channels to work. We called for the Hotel Teckie. He fared no better than us Luddites. The television is so complicated no one can understand it. We are OK with that. We have watched hardly any TV in 2 weeks on the road. Why start now? We are travelling for 6 weeks and can’t take excitement every day.

Sometimes mundane is good.

Starlite Diner Summerside P.E.I.

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

For lunch we dined at the Starlite Diner in Summerside P.E.I.  This is an old-fashioned traditional diner. A classic diner in other words. The table tops were red and white. There was a juke box. That excited me a lot, until I realized it was for display only. Fake in other words. The songs we heard in the diner were classics but they did not come from the juke box. We did not choose them. An algorithm chose them. Yet it was pleasant to listen to the Beachboys. The music was adequate compensation for the loss of authenticity.

The glasses for water or pop were large and RED!  There was a Texaco Fire Chief sign. Americana paraphernalia. Various coke paraphernalia.  Milk shakes were delicious in metal containers. I enjoyed Chilli and a vanilla shake. Chris had a jumbo hot dog and fries. This was diner food. The best food. Well maybe not the best, but pretty darn good.

The glasses for water or pop were large and RED!  There was a Texaco Fire Chief sign. Americana paraphernalia. Various coke paraphernalia.  Milk shakes were delicious in metal containers. I enjoyed Chilli and a vanilla shake. Chris had a jumbo hot dog and fries. This was diner food. The best food. Well maybe not the best, but pretty darn good.

I “borrowed” these photos from their website, thinking they would not mind since I was being highly complementary.