Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: Tantramar

High Marsh Road

April 29, 2022 /

A little cellphone photo tour of a detour down High Marsh Road on my return from New Brunswick last weekend.

The 1916 Wheaton Covered Bridge near Sackville, NB, over the Tantramar River near Sackville, NB, April 2022. Behind it, transmission lines head toward Amherst, NS.

Those transmission lines are visible below across a wet spring dykeland, heading toward the Sprott wind farm near Amherst, just visible on the horizon.

Looking back toward Sackville, past haybales on dykeland, we can see a new piece of utilitarian infrastructure, the 14-storey berry freezer that I hear is locally called ‘the cube’.

Finally leaving High Marsh Road and climbing up to Point de Bute there is an amazing look-off down toward dykelands and an old hay barn, one of many that once dotted this landscape when horsepower was king.

The Tantramar/Chignecto landscape is clearly a practical, working landscape, where new uses are layered when needed. But it is also a beautiful one.

Congratulations, Ellen!

June 21, 2019 /
Ellen Chappell with me after her successful defense Monday, June 17, 2019.

Ellen Chappell with me after her successful defense Monday, June 17, 2019.

Congratulations to Ellen Chappell, who was first in her cohort to defend her MES this past Monday: she set a high bar indeed. The defense was well-timed to come after she presented the work at the Energy Research & Social Science conference at the end of May in Tempe, Arizona, and immediately before a Dal-based Clean Tech Research event. Thanks to committee member John Parkins and examiner Heather Braiden for engaging richly in Ellen’s work, despite calling in, and chair Peter Tyedmers and the sizable and engaged audience for managing to make it an event despite having so few committee members present in the flesh.

Ellen’s work explores the connections people have to landscape features that were created for specific uses, even when those uses fade, and what those kinds of connections mean for new landscape additions, specifically wind turbines. She made the first tests of climax thinking in her Chignecto Isthmus case study, and provided some encouraging results. We’ll be expanding on those results next week, when first-year MES Krysta Sutton and I start running our focus groups with coastal residents around Nova Scotia about climate adaptation options.

Weekend wetlands

February 15, 2017 /
Thaddeus Holownia's series of a small wetland near his home, with my girl near her favourite.

A subset of Thaddeus Holownia’s series of a small wetland near his home.

In between storms, my family and I got out on the weekend for some wetland adventures. The Shubenacadie Wildlife Park is always popular with our small ones, though the wind chill sped it up more than usual. It was great to see the new(ish) developments and interpretations that connect the park more closely with the Greenwing Wetland Centre. They had snowshoes available to borrow, and we all gave them a go, though the smallest member of the family struggled at their size. In the afternoon, after a warm-up, came a visit to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, for their excellent show of Thaddeus Holownia‘s photography. Holownia is based around the Tantramar marsh, and while his photographs vary more widely in their geography, it was the local stuff I loved most. For instance, particularly intimate and moving was the above longitudinal series of photographs of a little manmade pond on his property near Jolicure, NB, over time and in different conditions. It was also wonderful to see his series on the erstwhile Radio Canada International shortwave towers near Sackville, NB, a missed landmark for me. My cellphone reproductions do not do the work justice: AGNS says on their website that there is an “attendant publication” for this show, but it was not available in the shop. Hopefully soon.

The faint sketches of the shortwave radio towers of CBC Radio Canada, captured by Thaddeus Holownia before their removal in the early 2010s.

The faint sketches of the shortwave radio towers of Radio Canada International, captured by Thaddeus Holownia before their removal in the early 2010s.

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