Swallowtail Sailpast - August 7, 2010

After the weather delay in July, the Swallowtail 150th Anniversary Sail Past was held August 7. Eight boats from a herring carrier to fishing boats to sailboats to speedboats participated, plus a group of kayaks who waited at Swallowtail for the boat parade to arrive from Whale Cove. The Sail Past leader was the Fundy Gem with Burton Small aboard.  Burton was instrumental in getting the Seminole Florida Rotarians to Grand Manan in September 2009 to help paint the light keeper buildings.  A number of the Grand Manan Rotarians were next on the herring carrier Andrew and Deane.  The Grand Manan Rotarians are strong supporters of Swallowtail and orchestrated the painting of the lighthouse in 2005.  Many, many people watched from Swallowtail as the boats went by. A great tribute to a wonderful lighthouse.

Commemorative Canvas Bags

Commemorative canvas bags are being sold this summer to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Swallowtail Light and to raise funds for the restoration of the keepers buildings. Designed by Linda L'Aventure, the bags are going fast. Linda attends every Farmer's Market on Saturdays from 10 to 1 and bags can also be found at a number of locations on the island. At $12 they are a great price and heavy enough that they will last for years. The image is from a painting of Swallowtail that Linda has owned for many years.

We also have raffle tickets available for a silver lighthouse pendant designed by Pam Charters and matted photographs donated by Sara Wormell. Tickets are available from Linda, the Grand Manan Museum, Surfside Motel, and Pettes Cove Arts.

Happy Birthday Swallowtail - 150th anniversary

Swallowtail’s birthday July 7 started out with fog which is so typical for Grand Manan and one of the reasons the lighthouse was constructed. The fog was so thick that the fog horn had been active all night and the lighthouse was shrouded in fog. However, with sun in the forecast, the fog lifted around the lighthouse and on the Swallowtail peninsula as people headed out for the official flag raising and salute to this grand old lady who has seen so many storms and stood the task of defending the coastline for mariners. It was estimated that over 100 people either made the trek out to the lighthouse or remained at the top of the hill.

Burton Small, strong supporter of Swallowtail and instrumental in organizing the Seminole Florida Rotarian working visit in September 2009 when they helped paint the keepers buildings at Swallowtail

Although we had wanted to be able to give tours of the inside of the lighthouse, Canadian Coast Guard regulations prevented this from happening. People had to be content with walking around the structure with its now peeling paint and crumbling stone foundation, exposed after the soil remediation project to remove the lead paint that had accumulated in the soil after years of scraping and painting the lighthouse and keepers house. Despite the lack of maintenance by the Canadian Coast Guard - the Grand Manan Rotary Club raised the money to have the lighthouse painted in 2004 - the tower is still strong but will need work soon.

Theresa MacFarland and RCMP Constable St. Laurent.

Members of Fishermen's Friends preparing to sing O Canada

At the appointed hour (2 p.m.) members of the Grand Manan Choir, Fishermen's Friends, sang O Canada and the flag was broken by the RCMP Constable St. Laurent. The Honourable Fisheries Minister, Rick Doucet, and member of the legislature for Charlotte-The Isles which includes Grand Manan, and the Honourable Minister of Wellness, Culture and Sports, Hédard Albert represented the province. The Honourable Mayor Dennis Greene represented the Village of Grand Manan. Theresa MacFarland represented Swallowtail Keepers Society.

Crowd gathered for the breaking of the Canadian Flag at Swallowtail

The flag pole had been relocated to the boat house where it had been located when the keepers house was built in 1958, prior to the construction of the concrete and iron stand on a rocky knoll by light keeper Grimmer Ingersoll. Unfortunately, time had taken its toll on the ironworks and it had corroded to a point that it would no longer hold a flag pole upright and had broken off during the winter. The boat house location for the flag pole had been discovered in an old photograph and it was felt that this would be a good alternative. It also suddenly made sense why there was a cleat on the boat house - to tie off the lines on the flag pole.

Celebrations then moved to the Grand Manan Museum for the official opening of the “150 Views of Grand Manan” a pictorial retrospective of Swallowtail lighthouse. The display is absolutely amazing and was put together by the curator Anneke Gichuru through word of mouth. The display is composed of photographs, drawings, paintings, hooked rugs, china, beach glass art and a quilt made from the maple leaves from the Canadian flags that flew at Swallowtail. As Anneke noted, to find 150 different images of the same building that all invoke a different emotion or mood is highly exceptional. It is no wonder that Swallowtail is the one of the most well known and most reproduced icon for Grand Manan. The Museum offered free admittance for the afternoon and many took the opportunity to wander around and take in the other exhibits.


A wonderful cake, also decorated with an image of Swallowtail was cut and enjoyed by the approximately 65 people who attended the reception. A floral arrangement selected from Swallowtail added to the ambiance in the Elmer Wilcox Room. People were encouraged to reminisce about their memories of the lighthouse and enjoy the display. Marty Klinkenberg wrote about the day in the Telegraph Journal: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/1126430.

The Honourables Rick Doucet and Hédard Albert took the opportunity to announce funding for the restoration and improvement of the keepers buildings. The provincial Built Heritage awarded Swallowtail Keepers Society with up to $30,000 and Regional Development Corporation another $25,000. Swallowtail Keepers Society needs to raise $10,000. http://www.gnb.ca/cnb/news/wcs/2010e1151wc.htm

Honourable Hédard Albert, Theresa MacFarland (Swallowtail Keepers Society), Honourable Rick Doucet



Fundy Community Foundation



After the reception, the Annual General meeting of Swallowtail Keepers Society was held. A review of the last two years in a PowerPoint presentation was given by Kevin Sampson. A new co-vice chair was elected.

I regretfully could not attend but would like to thank everyone for their efforts to make the day a great success.  We would also like to thank the Fundy Community Foundation for their generous donation to make the Anniversary celebrations possible.



Ditch Cleanup

May Day, Saturday, May 1, saw 12 eager people busy cleaning the ditches in North Head. Two people who were going to be away had actually taken it upon themselves to clean a section before the May Day cleanup. This is becoming an annual event. After last year's thorough cleaning, the ditches were in much better shape and perhaps people aren't throwing as much stuff out their windows, heeding the mayor's advice to Keep Grand Manan Litter Free.

While one member was climbing down into a ditch to get some trash, the owner of the house beside the ditch asked him what he was doing. He explained and was asked to come in the house. The owner gave him a significant donation which more than doubled the money raised picking up the litter! All monies will go towards the 150th anniversary celebrations in early July.

Circle of Light. Researching Historical Information

It is unfortunate that a number of marine tragedies had to occur before lighthouses and fog horns were built around the Grand Manan archipelago. The treacherous ledges were the first to be protected with the building of Gannet Rock light and Machias Seal Island light in the 1830s. The wreck of the Lord Ashburton in 1857 in Whale Cove helped raise the priority of protecting the northern end of the archipelago. The construction of Swallowtail lighthouse and accompanying buildings began in the summer of 1859 with most of the work being completed by October. However, the lighthouse remained dark until the lantern was delivered from England the next year.

With the 150th anniversary of the first lighting of Swallowtail lighthouse this summer, Swallowtail Keepers Society has been gathering some of the historical information. From their family papers, Basil and Kaye Small gave me a copy of the sale of the right-of-way to Swallowtail light (Old Airport Road from Pettes Cove Road to Lighthouse Road and Lighthouse Road to the Saw Pit foot bridge) from James and Hadassa Small to the Canadian Government for $100, dated January 6, 1880. James had also formerly owned the “Swallow Tail” and had sold that for about $25 so the lighthouse could be built. It is a neat part of the lighthouse history but it also became more personal when I realized that one of the properties described in this paper was in all likelihood our own house. We had always wondered about the age of our house but the deed hadn’t been registered until 1930, which wasn’t unusual. Deeds were often signed when properties were sold and simply transferred without travelling to St. Andrews to have them registered.

We knew from the style and construction of our house with post and beam, hand forged nails, and wooden pegs that the house dated from the 1800s. The lumber used in our house came from many sources with some of the beams hand-hewn, others milled and others salvaged from other buildings and possibly ships. One wide plank (43cm or 17”) we uncovered had scorch marks on it but the marks did not make sense if the fire had occurred in this house. Most likely the lumber was salvaged from a building fire. Because of the numerous ship wrecks in the archipelago, timbers from ships were also a prized material and some of our beams have large iron spikes in them, possibly suggesting salvage from a ship.

So getting a piece of history about Swallowtail started me on a trail of discovery about the history of our own house. Armed with a name, John Dixon, I started looking at some of the censuses that are available online. The 1881 census had John and Elizabeth Dixon listed, as did the 1871 and 1861 and also later ones 1891, 1901, 1911, although there were variations in birth dates (remembering birth dates was not always precise) and spelling which often depended on the whim of the census taker asking people questions when not everyone could read or write. The data online has also been interpreted from handwritten documents that can be difficult to read. Neither John nor Elizabeth appear in the 1851 census for Grand Manan so working backwards from the 1861 census I made a number of assumptions including they were married on Grand Manan after 1851 and given that their oldest child was about 7 in 1861, that John and Elizabeth were married for about a year before her birth, that they built their house for their marriage and wasn’t built by someone else and people didn’t move very often then, our house could have been built as early as 1853 but probably not later than 1861 since the Dixon household was already existing as recorded in the census. Having only researched online so far, there are many other avenues that I can now explore such as the archives and church and cemetery records, for example, but it is a good beginning.

John & Elizabeth Dixon’s house, Circa 1900, as seen from the coastal foot trail to Swallowtail from Pettes Cove.Now, assuming our house was built in the 1850s, the Dixon’s would have heard the talk about needing a lighthouse on the northern end of Grand Manan, particularly after experiencing the Lord Ashburton tragedy and its significant loss of life. John Dixon being a fisherman may well have gone to Whale Cove to help search for survivors. He also may have been the Captain Dixon who in 1872 towed the damaged schooner Tempo to Flagg’s Cove from Spruce Island at the Wolves where she went aground, as described in Eric Allaby’s 2001 description from the Grand Manan Historian XXV1, “Shipwrecks of Grand Manan”, although Peter Dixon also lived on Grand Manan at that time. The Dixon’s and, of course, others living in view of “Swallow Tail”, would have watched the construction of the Swallowtail lighthouse and lightkeepers buildings in 1859 and then saw the light glow in Pettes Cove at dusk on July 7, 1860 when it was lit for the first time, using porpoise oil for fuel. They would have also become familiar with the fog bell as it was tolled in response to approaching vessels. The construction of Swallowtail light changed not only the course of marine navigation but also the perception of a rocky peninsula, turning it into a strong symbol or icon of Grand Manan for all who travel to and from these shores.