The Contrast of the Dunes

Developed and natural dunes on the Acadian Shore

Moncton lies at what you might call the juncture between two distinctly different landforms. Actually, they're probably better called sea forms.

To the North, we have the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, shallow, with a slight tidal range, and protected from the open ocean by Prince Edward Island, which, by the way, did not become an island until just a few thousand years ago, very recently in geological terms. To the South, we have the Bay of Fundy, where conditions are quite different. Here, the tides rise and fall 40 to 50 feet twice a day.

On each tide, a 100 cubic kilometres of water flow in and out of the Bay, which is more than the combined daily discharge of all the rivers in the word. Under such powerful erosive action, the Bay of Fundy is a seascape of cliffs, while the Gulf of Saint Lawrence is characterized by vast stretches of sand beaches and dunes.

The Bouctouche Dune is one such dune system. It is made somewhat unique by the intervention of man; a dune which, as you might say, has been "discovered." Twelve kilometres long, it stretches like a giant claw of sand and dune grass in a southerly direction into the mouth of Bouctouche Bay. This shape indicates that the prevailing current here runs from the north, carrying sand with it in a process called "longshore drift." The tip of the dune curls inward where the current eddies into the Bay.

Fifteen years ago, the dune was simply there, immense and mysterious. You parked your car at an access spot a bit off the road and that was that. But the presence of a rare species there, the piping plover, brought the dune into wider notice; now, there's an interpretive centre and boardwalks snake along the sand. At the centre you can learn all about dune ecology. There's even a live video feed (in season, and depending upon the availability of the performers) into a bank swallow nest. By now, some 1000 people visit the dune daily in the summers, a figure which doubles and triples on weekends, a far cry from the unfrequented natural attraction of years past. Yet still, despite boardwalks and development, a dune is a living, ever changing thing, created by wind and waves, and constantly modified by them. A recent winter storm, for instance, took a considerable amount of the boardwalk with it and transported that elsewhere. The man and nature interface can be an uncomfortable one.

To get to the dune, take either NB Rt. 134 "the old road" north from Moncton, or highway 11, the "new highway." Bouctouche and the dune lie some 45 km from Moncton. If you're exploring, go off the highway entirely and follow the shore roads which snake along the coast through a multitude of fishing villages like Grand Digue, Caissie Cape, Cormierville and Cocagne whose names read like an Acadian litany.

This is Acadian country, peopled by the descendants of the French Acadian settlers who were expelled from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 1755, and little by little drifted back. Their odyssey, and traditional Acadian life, is celebrated in the "Pays de La Saguine" theme park in Bouctouche. For those who don't know, "La Saguine" is the Acadian cleaning lady character in Antonine Maillet's celebrated book/play of the same name, who, with trenchant and folksy wit, gives observations on her own life and that of her neighbours in the close-to-the-soil Acadian dialect. The theme park offers insights into that traditional Acadian life of fishing, farming and work in the woods, as well as Acadian music, plays, and re-enactments.

And now for the contrast. If you continue along the shore roads (Routes 475 and 505) for approximately another 20 kilometres past Bouctouche you'll come to Cap Lumiere dune. This stands in dramatic contrast to the boardwalks of Bouctouche. Here, you'll see almost no one. You might call it the Bouctouche Dune "au naturel." You can also take exit 42, Saint Anne de Kent, off Route 11, the "new highway", from which Cap Lumiere lies another 17 km ahead along Route 505. Continue past the lighthouse and the wharf to where the pavement ends and the road becomes a sandy track.

What seems like an eternity of sand and silence of stretches before you as you walk the shore. Black ducks paddle about, seagulls patrol the shoreline and terns dive for prey in the shallow water. You'll hear only the sound of the waves and an occasional fishing boat. Behind the dune lies the intriguingly named "La Mocaque du Cap" "The Muskeg of the Cape", a bog area which probably has helped preserve the Cap Lumiere dune from cottage construction.

It's not that the beach is never used. It is. Footprints, charred wood and occasional debris testify to that. It's just that its use has never been defined. No one imposes a conception of what it should be, nor tries to teach you anything. It's just simply and beautifully and silently there, the way many beaches once were, but few remain.