Cleaning up McNabs Island – The Jewel of the Harbour

May 16, 2017

7:30 pm

McNabs Island, located at the entrance to Halifax Harbour, is a provincial park and national historic site. This 400ha harbour island is an oasis for wildlife. Over 250 species of birds including osprey and blue heron call the island home. The island boasts seven different terrestrial habitats from sandy beaches and marshes to forests and abandoned pasturelands.

Because of the island’s strategic location at the entrance to Halifax’s “big harbour”, the island is steeped in history.  It was an important fishing and hunting area for the Mi’kmaq First Nations people. Then when the French arrived in l’Acadie, they established a fishing station on McNabs and drafted up plans to build the great fortress of Louisbourg there. Later with the arrival of the British, Peter McNab bought the island and set up his farmstead. When the threat of war was on the horizon, the British built several fortifications on McNabs to guard the entrance to the harbour and the Port of Halifax.

During peacetime, the island became a popular recreational haven with thousands of people visiting the island for picnics and social gatherings. It was the home of midway king, Bill Lynch, who got his start in the fairground business working for one of the fairgrounds on McNabs Island.

Today, the island looks much like it did before the Europeans arrived. It’s a place where you can step back in time; hike the 18 km of trails and stumble upon history wherever you roam.  Sadly a stroll along the beaches and coastline of McNabs Island reveals a dark reality - ocean pollution and beach litter. The island acts like a sieve trapping flotsam and jetsam that wash into the harbour.

For the past 27 years, the Friends of McNabs Island has been cleaning up McNabs Island. Every year during Environment Week , we mobilize hundreds of volunteers to pick up garbage that litters the island’s shoreline.  Since 1991, we’ve picked up 12,500 bags of garbage and recyclables - enough to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools!

Over the years, the driving force behind the largest cleanup effort in the Maritimes is Catherine McCarthy, the Chair of the Friends of McNabs Island Society. Cathy discovered McNabs after visiting the island on a tour in the 1980s. When the Friends of McNabs was founded in 1990, Cathy got involved, chairing the Outdoor Education Committee and coordinating the beach cleanups. The community response to the beach cleanups has been phenomenal! Hundreds of volunteers want to help out each year. This beach cleanup is a perfect example of thinking globally (about ocean pollution) and acting locally (doing your part to clean it up).

Cathy, who holds a Master of Education and a Marketing degree from Mount Saint Vincent, also sits as the Friends of McNabs Island representative on the provincially-appointed McNabs and Lawlor Islands Provincial Park Advisory Committee.

Learn more about this Jewel in the Harbour and how a local community group cleans it up!

For additional information:
Richard MacMichael
902-424-8897
macmicrs@gov.ns.ca