"We went because they needed answers"

On February 17, 2013, the fishing boat Miss Ally, with five men aboard, was lost in a storm off the South Shore of Nova Scotia. The hull of the craft was sighted, but searchers chose not to examine it right away. At the request of the families of those on board, a full day before "official" crews examined the hull of the Miss Ally, four divers from Shelburne County had been to the hull to provide answers for those grieving families. Please follow this link to look into the faces of these true heroes of the community. Their heartfelt gift was to help in the only way they could.

Waiting for the Sunrise -- Doctor's Cove, NS

Just a few kilometres down the road (toward Barrington Passage, not up the road toward Shag Harbour), the road bends wide around a broad cove that makes a perfect reflective surface for some pretty dramatic sunrises. The community is Doctor's Cove, and of course so is the body of water. The causeway to Cape Sable Island lies to the east just below the horizon, and provides definition for it. The land that encircles the cove almost completely helps to shelter it from the breeze, so the water is often glassy calm, and there are ledges of rock in the cove that make it difficult to

navigate in anything other than a very small boat, but certainly make interesting accents against the reflected colours of the sky. There's a nice, wide shoulder on the road through Doctor's Cove and a couple of places to park; all these factors add up to a great place to wait for the sunrise, and to enjoy its full scope over the water. Cold mornings even have the added attraction of mist or "seasmoke" rising from the still water.

In 2009, my sister Sally Van Natta rented a cottage in Doctor's Cove -- check out her image of the village with morning sun peeping through the fog here, and while you're at it, stay around long enough to explore her wonderful photos.

This morning was exceptionally mild for March, the second day in a row when southwestern Nova Scotia awoke to clear skies and temperatures well above freezing, a combination not usually seen until sometime in May. The air was filled with birdsong, and light clouds formed a delicate tracery in the eastern sky.

As the light intensified they began to glow orange; I waited in a likely spot overlooking the cove and the sunrise began to shape up into an especially nice one. The trees on a small point of land jutting out into the cove were perfectly reflected in the still water, and the sun burnished its calm surface. With a beautiful spring day on its way, I'm off to explore more of the South Shore and enjoy this wonderful weather!

Cape Sable Island webcam

Check out the new webcam on the block -- showing the Cape Sable Island causeway. The name's a bit misleading, since the webcam is located in Barrington Passage, on Nova Scotia's mainland, but view is of the causeway and the island itself.

Speaking of misleading names, there's a certain tendency on the part of people not familiar with Nova Scotia's geography to confuse Cape Sable Island with Sable Island, that magical, drifting crescent of sand famous for wild ponies and breeding seals. It's understandable that the

names are so similar, since the word sable is French for "sand" and both island are notable for their dunes and beaches. To add another layer of confusion, just to the south of Cape Sable Island is another island known simply as Cape Sable, where a lighthouse warns mariners off the constantly shifting undersea sandbars.

Cape Sable Island is connected to the mainland of Nova Scotia by a causeway that's roughly three-quarters of a mile long, built of stone from a nearby quarry. The causeway was completed in 1949 and replaced a coastal ferry service that linked North East Point, on the island, with the mainland

community of Barrington Passage. The ferry had run, in one form or another, since the closing years of the 17th Century. Interestingly, one of the later ferry boats employed on the run, the Edgar N. Rhodes ended out its days plying Bonne Bay, Newfoundland, between the ports of Woody Point and Norris Point; this was the principal route to the Great Northern Peninsula prior to the construction of a road along the north side of Bonne Bay.