Where land meets sea, these shorelines are full of secrets for the restlessly intrepid

 

Half-buried in the sand at Port Shoreham beach, in northeastern Nova Scotia, it resembled the tip of a carving fork or, maybe, a disembodied insect head from one of those old-time creature features at the drive-in. I was nine, newly arrived from Toronto, and the two things I knew most about beaches was that they were crowded and boring. But here? Well, this one was empty and interesting.

I promptly dug up something about the size of a brick of soap; bulbous in the middle, tapered along the edges, black, satiny to the touch, with pointy bits on the ends. I showed it to my mom. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “Throw it away.” I stuck it in my pocket and decided it was dried bear poop. Later, I discovered it was actually a skate egg case, also known as a mermaid’s purse, which was, of course, even cooler.

From Sandbank’s Provincial Park in Burgeo, NL, to Crystal Crescent outside Halifax, I love Atlantic Canada’s beaches. But not any beaches; at least, not the parts we want visitors to plant their bums on for the one month we pretend to be the Bahamas. The ones I’m talking about are just around the bend or down the shore a piece from their better-known brand names—the out-of-the-way stretches that nobody bothers about, the ones that give up their secrets only when we’re paying close attention.

Port Shoreham is located between two rocky points on the North Shore of Guysborough County’s mighty Chedabucto Bay. The provincial government’s website describes a “cobbled” and pleasant public beach. But beneath the surface lies evidence of how worlds collide; it’s the very spot where Europe and Africa slammed into each another 290 million years ago to create the Appalachians and Nova Scotia itself. While others in my periodic, mid-summer beach parties are frolicking in the North Atlantic, I’m finding fingerlings of gold-bearing quartz above the high-tide mark. I’m uncovering fossilized palm fronds wedged between the layers of ancient sedimentary rock that line the bed of nearby Ragged Pond.

The boardwalk at The Dune/La Dune at Bouctouche. There are seemingly endless shorelines to explore.

No trip to this shore is complete without a cookout. I build mine with rocks worn smooth by the sea. In 1970, the Liberian-registered oil tanker S.S. Arrow ran aground at the mouth of the bay. If I squint, I can just make out the shadow of bunker crude on beach stones formed in the Triassic that line the fire pit.

Not far northeast from Moncton, NB, where I spent a good deal of my adult life, lies The Dune at Bouctouche: 12 kilometres of stunningly beautiful beach. Thanks to the Irving family of industrialists, it boasts an Eco-Centre and a boardwalk with information kiosks. “Because of nesting birds and fragile plants, dogs are not allowed on the site,” the sign at one kiosk says. What’s more, because the “mission” is to protect the dune, not more than 2,000 people at a time are allowed down by the water between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm in the summer. But before and after, and in the off season, the place begs to take you off beaten, well-intentioned paths.

I always set my sites on Bouctouche Bar Lighthouse, as far away from the Eco-Centre as a beachcomber can get on foot. If you talk to the locals, they can tell you all about this sentinel, which has stood since the turn of the 20th century, and about its keepers, from Jadus P. Cormier (1902-1916) to Edmond F. Maillet (1933-1957). What they can’t tell you is why, one fine day in December 2019, the Canadian Coast Guard saw fit to replace it plank by plank—new foundation, walls and roof, all flown in by helicopter, all tenderly assembled—and, just as quickly, vanish like cobblers’ elves at sunrise. It remains an inscrutable beachy mystery. 

Across the Northumberland Strait and up through Anne of Green Gables country, there lies mighty Brackley Beach, PEI. It needs no introduction to seashore-farers. But that doesn’t stop the publishers of Imageworks Communications Group in Charlottetown from doing their best.

“Located within the PEI National Park, six beach areas dot this coastline with Brackley the largest and most popular among them,” it tells us. “The Gulfshore Parkway runs 10 kilometres along the coast parallel to the beach and it meanders over salt marshes and alongside sand dunes. An ambitious beachgoer could spend the morning at Brackley before cycling, running or rollerblading along the multi-use trail, stopping along the way for a swim at the next three beaches before returning to Brackley for sunset. Just like all beaches within PEI National Park, this is a protected area.”

So it should be. But somewhere along this magnificent expanse of red clay sand and sea foam is the spot where, on a fine mid-October day when no one was looking, my eldest grandson built his first sandcastle. We piled it high with kelp and crab shells and then we danced around it like castaways on a desert island.

That was 12 years ago, and it’s long gone now. But, in his mind, he knows exactly where it is. And it’s a secret.