Grand Manan Island is a special place, not because of what it is but because of what it isn’t.

• It isn’t a big draw for tourists because it is relatively unknown

• It isn’t sexy, sultry beaches with nightclubs that rock until dawn

• It isn’t easy to get to

• It isn’t anywhere near the top 1,000 places to visit in your lifetime

• It isn’t  expensive one-of-a-kind designer Shoppe’s

• It isn’t an island full of excitement with a three-page list of things to do.

It is:

            A small island that is 6 miles off the coast of Maine but is a Canadian Provincial Island, like Prince Edward Island. It is a community of less than 2,500 people who make their living from the sea, in aquaculture, and to a lesser extent, tourism.  It sits in the Bay of Fundy, home of the highest and lowest tides in the World (often over 23 feet!)  It is only accessible by a ferry that operates out of Dark Harbor New Brunswick.  It is an island rich in history and relationships—relationship to each other and relationship to the sea.

It sits in the path of the major migratory path of whales, including the endangered Right Whale, and on the major migratory flyway of a tremendous variety of birds, such as the Loon, terns, Bald Eagles and the Atlantic Puffin. 

            Grand Manan Island is the world’s leading producer of Dark Harbour Dulce, prized edible dulce, as well as Nori, a prized seaweed used in Sushi. The craggy cliffs, strong tides and thick fog that surround the Island have caused many ships to crash into its rocks; thus the small Island has more lighthouses proportional to land size than anywhere else in the world. For a small Island, it certainly has its claims to fame.

Grand Manan caught my eye one night as I watch the local weather forecaster on the evening news. I wondered what that Island was off Lubec, so I went to my computer to do some research. I found it to be Grand Manan Island, and I have been passionately interested in a visit since.  How could it be that I have lived in Maine all my life, traveled extensively along the coast of Maine and had even visited Nova Scotia and had never heard of Grand Manan?  It beckoned me, so in July of 2009, I set off to get to know the real Grand Manan. Since there is only one way to get there, this doesn’t exactly set up just right for a “how-to-get-there” article. I set out to meet the people and learn about them and the loyalty that has kept generations of people staying here. What is its draw? What could possibly be so compelling about this Island that people would choose to stay?  I live in Maine and I can’t wait to retire someplace with shorter and warmer winters; how are the winters there?

We ferried to the Island on a Saturday and checked into the Manan Island Inn, a quaint inn directly across from the ferry gate.  It had taken over three hours to get here and I was glad to finally be on the island that had beckoned me for months.  The innkeepers, a young couple with three small children, were present and gave us plenty of information about the Island, including directions to a good restaurant.  Galloway’s was definitely a good choice. We had a window seat and watched the tide retreat, leaving a very deep stretch of beach. After dinner we drove over to “The Whistle” (Long Eddy Point) and viewed the automated lighthouse perched atop the cliffs over the rocky beach where two “Dulcers” were picking Dulce.  It looked like backbreaking work to me; their bodies hunched over in a permanent stoop, plucking the Nori and Dulce off the rocks and putting it in buckets or bags.  To our surprise and delight, we saw finback whales breaching just offshore, along with some harbour porpoise.

The following day I took the Whales ‘n’ Sails Whale watch excursion on a three-masted sailboat out of Pettes Cove. The captain was hopeful that the heavy fog would lift as she motored south to White Head Island. She put the boat into idle speed as they listened for whale’s exhalations, and before long two huge finback whales showed themselves to us not more than 20 yards off the port side. I hadn’t expected them to be so large and so beautifully graceful. Atlantic Puffin joined the party, but not too close. I had expected them to be much larger than they were, but their painted heads were as bright as the photos I had seen of them. In all, we saw a half dozen whales, some seals and some porpoise. It was well worth the money. I was so glad I had taken the advice in the brochure to dress warm and in layers. It was raw on the ocean and the fog left us all damp and cold. I was the only one who had thought to bring gloves and I think I could have made a tidy little profit had I decided to auction them off. Needless to say, I kept them.

My traveling companion and husband Jim went golfing in the fog while I was whale watching.  The course was in good shape and offered some challenge, multiplied by the fog factor. He also put his kayak in at Pettes Cove, but it was too foggy to see much of anything. Kayakers have to be constantly on guard here because of the fog and the very strong tides.

I usually avoid eating lobster in public place because it can be very messy, but I threw caution to the fog and had one for dinner. It was delicious and I could have indulged in another, but we invited the owner to sit with us and tell us about Island life.  She told us that the best thing about Grand Manan is that you don’t have to worry about what your kids are up to. There is little crime here and lots of community involvement, and a very large Church presence. The winters were brutal; not so much the snow as the almost ever-present winter winds and ice. I asked about real estate prices, since we had seen a decent home with a nice water view for $50,000, and she told us that $150,000 was an above average price for a home. I almost got out my checkbook! She told us that many people on the Island lived in homes passed down from generations; Island life was the only way of life known to many people. They just get used to dealing with the fact that the ferry runs late, or not at all, sometimes and they plan accordingly.

Monday morning we awoke to find the fog as thick as ever. We walked to The Compass Rose for breakfast (it is a lovely inn that offers breakfast and lunch) and were convinced we’d found the best breakfast on the Island. Coffee was served in a French Press, with instructions on how to use it, sugar cubes in an antique sugar bowl, and friendly and fast service. The food was perfectly prepared and presented. We had a window seat, but the fog was too thick to see even the boats that we tethered to the wharf onshore.

After breakfast we drove all the way to the southern tip of Grand Manan, stopping at points of interest along the way, like Deep Cove and the beautiful Anchorage Provincial Park, where we stood at the top of a cliff and couldn’t see the water but could hear it crashing below us. It was more than a little eerie.

The weather wasn’t predicted to improve any time soon so we decided to catch the afternoon ferry to mainland New Brunswick and head for home.  Before we left we shared a picnic at “The Whistle”; wouldn’t you know that the sun and blue sky magically appeared for a half an hour as we sat there, and just offshore a finback breached. As quickly as the weather and the whale turned, it was gone.

I don’t think I could live on the Island, but I sure could stay there for a month or so. I would rent a cottage on a beach, write, gather sea glass at low tide, watch sunsets at The Whistle, listen to the gulls overhead and fall asleep to the faint ringing of a buoy bell, the waves washing the shore and the ever-present foghorn in the distance. I believe that a month of that might just convince me that I could, indeed, live there.