"Grand Manan V"

With the ferry "Grand Manan V" resuming summer duties starting tomorrow, this seems like a good time to introduce my painting of this ferry just completed recently

Every ship has some special characteristics that you associate only with that ship.  For me, the most striking feature of the "Grand Manan V" is how little fuss she makes powering through the water.  If you ever watch her sail by, she slides throught the water making hardly any wake at all.  The designers at Knud E. Hansen sure did a great jobs with the hull lines under water to get the hull to part the water so effortlessly.  Accordingly, I painted the ship in very calm water, trying to convey that very smooth and minimal wake.

When she was designed in Denmark and built in the Netherlands and delivered to commence service to Grand Manan in August, 1990, the designers provided an attractive rendering on the funnel of the provincial galleon logo on blue waves, that was copied on the new "Grand Manan Adventure".

And, of course, to give it a universally understood Grand Manan context, I have depicted the ferry sliding smoothly past Swallowtail Light.

I will have prints of this painting at markets this summer, if anyone is interested in seeing them, or perhaps purchasing one as a gift for someone who might have fond memories of the 20+ years this ship has given us.

Merganser and Ducklings

This is the time of year we find mother ducks showing their little ducklings how to forage for food in the tidal shallows of our Fundy coves. 

Here is a print of my painting of a Merganser with her little ducklings.

The female Common Merganser looks like she is having a "bad hair day", with the tuft on the back of her head.

What a steep learning curve for the tiny ducklings to try to learn to feed and fend for themselves in so short a time.

Yellowlegs

Some yellowlegs arrived in Our Cove a few days ago, as they do every spring.  This year they seem to be running a few days late.  We make a note when they arrive each year, and it usually ranges from the last few days in April to the first few days in May.  We enjoy their distinctive call as they scurry about, foraging along the intertidal shore.

So it seems like a good time to feature my "Yellowlegs" print in the shop:

This fellow is depicted standing on a rock in the early mornig sun, with the tide up, waiting for it to ebb and expose the seaweed which hosts all sorts of interesting things a shorebird loves to eat.

The rocks present interesting lighting in sun and shade:

Of course, that makes for interesting reflections to paint in the water:

The early morning sun on the water teases the colour palate choices, which makes for fun in painting:

Our yellowlegs will soon be heading further north for the summer, but we look forward to seeing them in late August on their southerly migration.

The old "Grand Manan III"

Old pictures of the ferry "Grand Manan III" have been posted on Facebook recently, with lots of comments of people's memories of the old vessel.  So it seems like a good time to bring up a picture of a painting I did of the old ship several years ago.

The "Grand Manan III" was never built to be a ferry.  Originally a yacht, she was pressed into service in World War II in North Atlantic patrol.  Right after the War, she was purchased in Sydney, Cape Breton, from War Assets, refitted as a ferry in Saint John, able to carry six cars.

The cars were hoisted aboard the stern deck with metal slings on each wheel, with a pole slid through eyes in slings on each side to keep the slings lined up.  In the mid 1950's, her deck accommodations were modified to increase the capacity from 6 cars to 9 cars.

The ferry carried the Island's freight in the fore hold, which required time both on mainland and on Grand Manan for loading and unloading freight in slings lifted by the winch and forward boom.

In the 1960's, before being replaced in 1965, the ferry made five round trips to the mainland each week.  On Monday, she went to St. Andrews and back, stopping at Wilsons Beach.  On Tuesday, she went to Saint John (I think she stopped at Wilsons Beach).  Staying in Saint John on Tuesday night, she returned to Grand Manan on Wednesday, carrying much of the Island's freight.  On Thursday it was St. Andrews and back.  Friday was a long day, going directly to Saint John, and returning the same day.  And Saturday was St. Andrews and back.

(When the "Grand Manan" arrived in 1965, with her 25 car capacity, one old timer remarked "she'll never be full"!)

Gulls on the Open Sea

The summer gulls have been back with us at Our Cove for a couple of weeks now.  In fact we have a pair of gulls who stay here, right in the cove, all summer long.  Oh, they come and go, and fly off at high tide to do whatever gulls do, but they spend most of their time right here.

All this reminded me to feature a print of seagulls over the open sea; so I put up an 8 x 10 framed print on the Etsy shop.

This print features herring gulls, the most common kind in the waters off Grand Manan. 

They are graceful in flight, social and yet very competitive.  And it is a delight to watch gulls soar in gale force winds, winds that ground lesser birds.

At home in the air and comfortable on the surface of the ocean, gulls are admirably adapted for life on the Bay of Fundy

And of course a painting of the sea in the Bay of Fundy would be lacking something if we didn't add a lobster buoy to give it a real Maritime flavour.

Seagulls at home on the open Bay of Fundy

"Choosers"

It's no secret that Grand Manan is a tad isolated; that's what happens when geography plops you out in the middle of the Bay of Fundy.  This led to a simple classification system for the entire population of the world: those who were born and brought up on Grand Manan, and those who weren't.

Sometimes the Grand Manan attitude toward others hasn't really been as warm as it should: while non-Islanders might be the finest kind of people, they just didn't have that Grand Manan pedigree.  Hopefully that sort of thinking is becoming a thing of the past, and if a recent thread of comments on Facebook is any indication, I think it is.

While conversation was positive, a term was still used that doesn't really help:  "CFA's" or "Come From Aways".  With comments going back and forth, a recent enthusiast for our Island community talked about choosing to live here, and a term was coined: "Chooser".  At that point a Grand Mananer said he "chooses" to live here too.  So there you have it.

The neat thing about the word "chooser" is that it is deliberately positive.  It doesn't matter where you were born and brought up, if you are here because you deliberately want to be; you are a "Chooser".

So, take that, Wikipedia, you heard it in a Grand Manan Facebook converstion first:  "Chooser - someone who deliberately chooses a particular community to call home."

Remembering the "Lord Ashburton"

Fifty-five years ago today, the 1,009-ton barque Lord Ashburton, under command of Captain Evan Clarke Crerar, of Pictou, while bound from Toulon, France, for Saint John in ballast, ran ashore and was totally wrecked at the north end of Grand Manan in a northeast snowstorm at 2 a.m. on January 19. 

Eight men were saved, twenty-one men, including all the officers, perished.  Most of the bodies were so badly mutilated that they could not be identified. 

The headland where she struck is now known as "Ashburton Head".  She was built at Brandy Cove, St. Andrews in 1843 by Joshua Briggs for Nehemiah Marks.  One of the survivors, James Lawson, originally from Denmark, following his convalescence, returned to Grand Manan and settled there.  His oft retelling of the story of the wreck of the Lord Ashburton etched the story indelibly in Island lore.