| description | The Northumberland Strait has
been a curse and a blessing to Islanders:
it has helped us to define ourselves,
both geographically and culturally,
enhancing our feelings of identification
and place; yet, at the same
time, from the earliest settlement until
the beginning of the present century,
the mass of floating ice jamming the
Strait for almost five months of each
winter has virtually cut us off from the
Mainland, inducing in Islanders a sense
of claustrophobia, a feeling of being
isolated from the rest of the world. For
generations a tenuous link was maintained
by small ice boats, crossing at
more or less regular intervals between
Cape Traverse and Cape Tormentine.
These tough little crafts, and the men
who braved ice, water and weather
with them, are an integral part of the
Island story.
There is, perhaps, no more vivid or
interesting first-hand account of an ice
boat crossing than that contained in
Pine Forests and Hacmatack Clearings,
published in London in 1853, and
written by B.W.A. Sleigh.
The major portion of this article is
devoted to a lengthy verbatim extract
from the Sleigh description. But that
comes later — after a brief resume of
the remarkable career of the author, a
man whom it would not be inappropriate
to call the Malcolm Bricklin of
his day.
First of all, however, a look at
Sleigh's attitude to the Island and its
people may be of some interest. |  |
