A friend and I joined a walk around Holman’s Island in Bedeque Bay that was sponsored by the Bedeque Area Historical Museum and led by the always-interesting and gracious Doug Sobey, who is president of the historical society that runs the museum.
About a dozen of us met at the museum last Tuesday and drove a few kilometres to a private driveway where the museum had permission of kind cottage owners for us to cross their yard to the shore. The walks are timed to coincide with the lowest tides, so we easily waded through ankle-deep water on a sandbar to the island. Doug gave a fantastic overview of the Mi’kmaq and settler history of Bedeque Bay and the city of Summerside, and then we started our circumnavigation.
Now owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Holman’s Island is most notable as the site of a 125-bed hotel that operated for five years in the 1870s and closed due to financial difficulties, the building burning in 1904. Doug said there are depressions in the ground where the hotel foundations were, but nothing else is left of the hotel and the island has reverted to forest.
We didn’t venture into the forest, but the beach walk was beautiful, though not really much different than any other PEI beach; the real delight was in finally being on this little island that had been pointed out to me since childhood but that I had never had the chance to visit.
The western and northern sides of the island have steep cliffs, while the east and south are much lower and it would be easy to walk from the beach into the forest. There were lots of empty oyster on the shore, possibly due to the die-off of oysters from two diseases, MSX and Dermo, that have crippled our oyster industry.
It has become more difficult over the years to find sea glass on PEI beaches, which, it is hoped, is mostly because we are better at recycling and properly disposing of waste, so it was fun to look for glass on this more inaccessible location. I found a few lovely bits and pieces on the east side of the island, all of it still pretty pointy as the wave action in sheltered Bedeque Bay isn’t as scouring as ocean waves.
And then, sitting on a pile of rocks high up on the beach, I spotted what is likely to be the best piece of sea glass I will ever find: a light-green bottle stopper. At first I thought it had to be plastic as it was so perfect, but it gave a satisfying little tink when I tapped it against some other glass and my beach combing heart soared.
Maybe it’s the stopper from a cruet tossed from the long-gone hotel, a medicine bottle top or, heaven forfend, the stopper of a little bottle of alcohol. Hard to say, but now it sits on the windowsill next to my desk, catching the sun as it did for decades in Bedeque Bay, same sun, different view. I finally made it to Holman’s Island, and it gave me a treasure.
