MAIN DUCK ISLAND TOURS BEING REVIVED   

Thursday, June 09, 2011

One of the first things you see upon arriving at Main Duck Island is a water snake. While the island certainly does not “seethe” with water snakes as popular legend purports, if you are looking for a water snake, it isn’t long before you can find one. Most are fatter, longer and darker than those found on the mainland. Years of isolation have created a sub-species of sorts, and it takes no more than a short walk along the limestone ledges of shoreline rock before one is seen, basking in the sun. For us last week, higher than normal water levels had ushered many of them onto the walking trail.

We also found several garter snakes and a milk snake, and in years past, I have added a smooth green snake to the list of herptiles that call this remote island, located some 17 km off Prince Edward Point, home. Fortunately none of the volunteer crew who accompanied me had an aversion toward the foul and the loathsome, and simply stepped over any they encountered.

We were on a work detail, preparing almost four kilometres of trails in preparation for a series of Main Duck Island boat tours that we are hoping to offer, through Sandbanks Vacations. David Bussell of Sandbanks Vacations was with us and he is eager to see these trips work this time, and we are formulating a backup plan for those visits when access to the island’s only dock is not possible, due to heavy boat presence. When the successful trips were cancelled some years ago, there was still a waiting list of close to 140 who had hopes of seeing the island. We are hoping to recapture that interest, perhaps as early as this month.

It is the island’s colourful history that is the magnet. This almost 1,000-acre island within a good stone’s throw of the American border has seen it all – rumrunners, its ownership in the 1940s by Claude (King) Cole, and in later years, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State under Eisenhower. We spent some time on our visit removing branches and cutting brush that have threatened to swallow up what remains of the Dulles cabin site. We point out the beach where Queen Elizabeth enjoyed a private picnic in 1984, and we recount the days when lighthouse keepers maintained the lighthouse before automation in 1985. The light keeper’s house is still there, a stack of firewood in the porch and a bar of soap on the sink where it has been, untouched, for the past two and a half decades. The sidewalk that stretched from the residence to the lighthouse is still there, now encroached at one end by tangles of wild raspberries and red osier dogwood. Our 12 volunteers, pruners clacking, cleared much of that away in an effort to provide better access to the lighthouse site for visitors. Earlier photos show this area in 1983 well groomed, the house occupied, utility poles standing proudly that once carried electricity from the generators to the house, and beyond.

A woodcock sprang from in front of one volunteer, and a bittern took flight from the harbour’s marshy corner.
For the red-eyed vireos and half dozen warblers we saw, we were surprise guests as few people walk the two km distance to the lighthouse, but enough do, to leave behind a well worn path. The trail is actually the remains of a roadway that once carried utility vehicles from the harbour to the lighthouse. It was a busy spot in its day, with numerous commercial fishermen using the harbour as a home base, and spending the season in a row of shanties.

For the most part, the land is shallow here and the oaks and ironwoods are gnarled, after years of trying to eke out a meagre living. Although now owned by Parks Canada, the land mass is considered part of Prince Edward County. In fact, the island resembles the county so closely, it is as though someone has taken a giant piece of it and dropped it into Lake Ontario. Like Prince Edward County, the north shore is accented by high cliff edges, scarred by the relentless pounding of waves, its south shore sloping to the lake edge, the water dotted by numerous erratics, and beach gravel piled high with drifts of zebra mussel shells. The roadway/trail skirts around several wetlands and ponds as it makes its way to the west end of the island and, from one, a few bullfrogs were starting to call.

As we work toward reviving these once popular boat trips to Main Duck Island, we would be interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to put their name on a tentative waiting list. We almost have a boat load already, just through word of mouth! The waiting list does not commit persons in any way; it is simply a list of names and e-mail addresses of those who we can contact when we are ready to offer the first trip to provide them with more information. When doing so, please leave your phone number so we can get back to you, and if you have and e-mail address, please provide that as well. I expect to have a page on my website shortly describing these trips in greater detail.

Plan to join us this summer as we once again regale you with tales of rumrunners Gentleman Charlie Mills, Ben Kerr and Wild Bill Sheldon, and stories about Main Duck owners Claude Cole and John Foster Dulles. And if you have no particular interest in water snakes, well, on most trips they are seldom seen since I am at the lead and the snakes most always slither into the water before anyone has a chance to spot them. However, if you wish to see one, well – I can arrange that, too!