Landscape


The Location of the House

The house and the mottos have always been intimately connected to each other and to the landscapes and seascapes that surround them.

Physically and culturally, Caribou Habour is a fragile ecosystem in constant transition. The Harbour had two entrances until 1979 when a winter of bad storms exacerbated decades of sediment change. "Little Entrance," closed leaving fishers with one way in and out. 


Throughout the 1800's and the first half of the 1900's, the Harbour was home to a complex of lobster factories and layers of intersecting jobs. Now only Logan’s remains in business. 34 private condominiums replaced the Maritime Packers Plant at Little Entrance. Eight local fishers continue to dock at the public wharf where Maritime Packers once flourished.

After the Second World War, trains connecting Halifax and Pictou were discontinued and the number of weekend visitors to the Pictou Lodge and Caribou Harbour diminished. In the early 60’s the Simpson family sold land to the Province creating Caribou Munroe Island Provincial Park. The beach remains a beloved destination and Pictou Lodge has embraced revitalization under new management.

In 1833, naturalistic John James Audubon visited Pictou educator and ornithologist Thomas McCulloch. In 1980, concerned citizens lobbied successfully for a bird sanctuary next to the Provincal Park. Caribou's beach and Munroe's Island is home to bald eagles, osprey, great blue herons, gulls, terns, mergansers, black ducks and teals.

Historically, the channel was marked with a dramatic series of bell and sled buoys. In 2003 the maintenance contract was privatized and most of the massive buoys went to their graveyard replaced by non descript electronic markers.