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Damage Report

I've been watching the changed silhouette of McNabs Island from Halifax all week, and so I simply had to paddle out there today to see the changes caused by the recent Hurricane Juan storm surge and winds. I started out near Dooks Wharf in Shearwater, where the sailing vessel Marr II sits high and dry, and circumnavigated the inner two thirds of the island in clockwise direction.

The supposedly protected northeast shoreline of the island has suffered considerable erosion, as much as ten feet, judging by the newly exposed tree roots. Tree damage wasn't severe here, but many of the younger conifers are bent in the direction of the prevailing wind, and it's unclear whether they will survive. The exposed Farrell's Point was hit hard, with boulders deposited many feet into the forest.

The well-known osprey nest on a power pole at Back (Wreck) Cove was gone, as were all other osprey nests I knew about. Wambolt Trail, the portage to McNabs Pond, had already been cleared of fallen trees by the island's caretaker. The nearby McNabs Pond Trail is impassable due to broken and uprooted white spruces, and the pond itself was the lowest I'd ever seen it.

Yes, McNabs Pond has changed dramatically. After many decades it is tidal again. The storm surge filled it with seawater and breached the 1950's causeway, which had blocked its tidal outlet. So it's good-bye to breeding toads, cattails, and other essentially freshwater creatures. What's left of the pond is held back at low tide by a new sandbar near the outlet stream, and a miniature tidal rapid now exists at the location of the former bridge to Strawberry Battery.

Garrison Pier suffered only minor damage, but the nearby drumlin, near the former Detention Barracks site, suffered nearly 100 % blow-down, perhaps because this is the highest point of the island. I was unable to check the former Island Teahouse site, as there were too many windfalls blocking the way. Long sections of Garrison Road, the main communication along the axis of the island, are now a boulder beach.

The exposed shoreline between Hugonin Point and Ives Point also suffered significant erosion. Ives Point is full of washed-out dead trees, and the concrete sentry building, which had once guarded the military pier here, is gone. But the small causeway here seems to have held. Ives Cove, and the shipwrecks there, suffered only minimum damage.

Much of the island's shoreline is full of new plastic litter, the worst I've ever seen. I don't know how the old buildings and the old historical trees further inland fared......And, this year's blackberry crop is lost; I couldn't find a single ripe berry.

Dusan Soudek