Page 5 - A Visit with Frank Landry, 91. of Isle Madame

ISSUE : Issue 70

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1996/6/1

the boom and floated away! There was such a strong tide. (What did you mean by "they had to raise the roads"?) No, that was another time. After they built the (Canso) Causeway in Hawkesbury? Well, when the Causeway was built--I used to travel through there with a car; I used to take passengers across there sometimes. Well, there was such a tide going through (the Strait of Canso). Anyway, there was such a tide there that after the Causeway was built (after the passage to the Northumberland Strait was closed) we had a six-foot tide instead of a four! And two feet, in storms--it washed away the lighthouse island where I was. And not only that, it washed away all the land around here! Two feet higher with waves, it washed the land out. At the lighthouse where I was--the island was about a hundred feet long by fifty feet wide. I used to plant potatoes there and everything. Now there's nothing at all left. (Your lighthouse is gone.) Oh yeah, that's well gone. There's no more island where that lighthouse was. No, there's just a spar there now. That's all. Just a spar. (The island itself is worn down since the Canso Causeway?) Yes. You see, most of the islands (around here) are smaller than they used to be on account of the tide that went up two feet higher, af? ter the Causeway was built. That's what took it out. You know, for 20 years that I was in the lighthouse, I don't think that island de? cayed any more than--well, it might have decayed 6 or 8 feet. And then after the tide, you know, two feet higher with high winds--how much it would wash, eh? Then the rocks would fall and the ice on the shore-- rocks'11 freeze in the ice. The clampers'11 carry the rocks away. It's frozen in the clampers. (And all this is reducing the island.) That's right. You'd be sur? prised in 20 years how much will decay.... They went there with a dozer and they just broke the lighthouse, and they've got (a light on a pole) now, that's it. The island's gone! (Was there ever a shipwreck at the Hawk Island Light?) Oh, no. Oh, no. You know, we haven't got the ocean swell here in the passage that there is outside. (And your job on it was simply to light the light.) That's all. You know, when I was appointed there in 1922, the fellow from Halifax came over and he says I was supposed to stay there. Because, you know, the house was made for a family and they wanted you to stay there. Now, how on earth could you make a living?... (So) I was fishing, I was farming, and everything.... I was fishing lobsters in 1922 when my father died. I had about 40 traps or so, that's all. You know how much I was getting for my lobsters at that time? Four cents a pound! And I had to take that to Cap La Ronde where they had a factory. Well, two years after, they char? tered a boat to go to Boston, and we were shipping lobster (alive) to Boston--we ''?;'''>T 5 flights to Toronto. Count fern. 9:15am ugh Halifax • Five fligt 12:15pm AIR CANADA ? alrNoVQ

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