Changing Tides

History runs deep in Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy. Our writer explores the area with the oldest dinosaur fossils and visits its remarkable communities.

The Cape d'Or

In Burncoat Head Park in the Bay of Fundy, it’s late afternoon in early June, the tide is out and I’m standing on the burnished beach, gazing at the sandstone cliffs towering in front of me. More specifically, I’m studying trees. One clings to the thin layer of soil now above it, trunk dangling downward, roots straining, branches so thick with leaves they seem to form a head 
of hair. The whole tree, I can’t help but think, looks like a child held upside down 
by a playful parent and can almost hear terrified shrieks of delight. I walk farther down the beach and spot yet more acrobatic trees: one leans over the cliff as if testing the wind, another sticks straight out into the sky like a diving board.

I’ve spent the past week on a road trip around the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy, visiting tiny communities from Parrsboro to Hants County, where I stand now, meeting people living in towns and villages a lot like these trees. Hanging on, surviving, despite a windstorm of change. There’s something inspiring about them, beautiful even, in the same way, perhaps, that the underdog is more compelling than 
the favourite.

I walk back to the steps that creep up the rocks, ready to return to the road. Miniature rivers and lakes carve hieroglyphics in the sand, patches of bright green seaweed sit baking in the setting sun. On the first step I pause and turn—the trees are still there, unmoved by the wind, clinging.

High and low tides at Horseshoe Cove

Those winds and the tides have made the Bay of Fundy famous, weathering the attitudes of its people and shaping a land that is so fossil-rich it’s considered palaeontologists’ pay dirt. I’ve come to Cumberland County on a hunt for fossils of its past, both ancient and more recent, all against the backdrop of the world’s highest tides. The figures they churn up are mind-boggling: every day, roughly 100 billion tonnes of seawater course in and out of the bay, more than the flow of all the world’s freshwater rivers combined. They can reach up to 16 metres, meaning landscapes change drastically between high and low tides, the time period between 
them around six hours and 13 minutes. (Later, I discover that Burncoat Head lays claim to one of the highest tide levels in the world—an average of 14.3 metres; its highest measured level was 16 metres.)

During my overnight stay in Parrsboro, I visit the town wharf at both tide times so I can see the transformation for myself. Fishing boats that bobbed contently at high tide now lie moored in the sand at 
low tide, reminding me of that riddle about the scuba diver flailing in the forest, 
all geared up with no ocean in sight. The beached boats paint a similar scene: with the water appearing as a silver bar on the horizon, seemingly immovable like a slab 
of concrete, there seems no plausible explanation for their presence.

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