Day 43 – Clarks Harbour to Pubnico
We rose early in order to ride the tide up to Pubnico. On account of the sputtering engine and animated throttle we opted for the route outside of both Stoddart Island and those off of Forbes Point. We stopped and shut the motor off (opposing winds again today) and jigged for Cod off Pubnico Peninsula.
The currents and wind made it difficult to keep our jigs near the bottom. We set off cod-less towards Pubnico, or Lower West Pubnico I should say, as there are nine different variations of Pubnico surrounding the harbor, specified by some permutation of lower, middle, center, east or west. The wind farm at the end of the peninsula watched over us as we pulled into the Dennis Point Wharf.
The wharf is home to around 100 fishing boats, lobster boats and trawlers mostly, and we picked an inactive looking lobster boat at the deeper end of the wharf to raft to. A local man was fishing for mackerel off the pier and confirmed, “That boat hasn’t moved in over a month I reckon, nobody will bother you.” He also explained there was a restaurant right up the street, and another further past that his mother owned.
We walked up to the first, the Dennis Point Cafe and ordered friend haddock. The staff was all female, which seemed a conscious decision, luring some of the hundreds of fishermen returning from sea across the street to buy a meal. We walked through the boat and commercial fishing supplies, the presumable owner offered us coffee on the house after chatting with us a few minutes, but we had left our poor beagle alone long enough already and we returned to Isla carrying (un)healthy portions of fish and potatoes.
The fish was fresh and excellent. I succumbed to a food induced nap, and then read in the v-berth for a while. Andrew had left, and he texted to let me know he was wandering among the wind turbines to the south. I walked to meet him and we stared up at the huge blades ripping through the air with rhythmic whooshes. We followed the road along the second row to a trail along the outer rim of the peninsula. It was the sort of walking trail the energy company might offer to build when proposing to erect seventeen enormous turbines near a small town.
From there we headed North to Middle West Pubnico, we stopped at the grocery store and noticed that one of the cashiers addressed an elderly gentleman in French, while ours addressed us in English. French was, in fact, the preferred language of Middle and Lower West Pubnico; the region had been settled by Acadians in the 19th century.
At Le Village historique acadien de la Nouvelle-Ècosse it became clear why everything in town had D’Entremont written on it too. D’Entremont was the first settler, and a rather prolific one at that, as there are now over 400 inhabitants with that surname in the area, about one in six of the total population.
Dark fell before we got back to Isla; I waved at a security guard watching the wharf, which was enough to convince him we belonged there after dusk.
