Wellington Dyke

Wellington Dyke near high tide in December 2011

The Wellington Dyke is an agricultural dyke in Kings County, Nova Scotia protecting over 3,000 acres (12 km²) along the Canard River between the communities of Starr's Point and Canard in Nova Scotia, Canada. Began in 1815, it was completed in 1824. Today the dyke is owned by the Department of Agriculture of Nova Scotia.

Origins

The rich farmland along the Canard River had been originally dyked by the Acadians to protect additional acres from the Bay of Fundy tides of the Minas Basin. Beginning in the late 1600s, Acadians built progressively larger dykes across the Canard River beginning with its upper reaches first the Upper Dyke, then the Middle Dyke and finally with the Grand Dyke. A sluice with a one-way valve, known to the Acaidans as the "aboiteau" allowed the river to drain but shut out the tide. After the Acadians were expelled in 1755, their dykelands were recovered by the New England Planters who settled along the Canard River in 1760. They formed "marsh bodies", associations of farmers with dykeland fields who shared the costs of building and maintaining dykes.

Beginning

Farmers in Starrs Point and Canard began to discuss building a large dyke at the mouth of the Canard River in 1802. A dyke at this location would reclaim an additional 700 acres of farmland from the Minas Basin and save the maintenance of the many smaller dykes along the river which protected 2,300 acres. A plan was organized in 1812 and construction began in 1816. The dyke is believed to have been named after the Duke of Wellington following his defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The new structure was a dramatic change from the Acadian dyke systems which were only a few feet high in most places. The Wellington Dyke would be 50 feet high, 120 feet at the base and over 300 feet long with additional embankments stretching over a mile just in from the mouth of the river. The aboiteau or sluice which allowed the river to drain was 100 feet and 14 feet wide. The work was financed and organized solely by local farmers of the Wellington Marsh Body and at its peak over 100 teams of horses and oxen and 300 men were at work on the dyke which was built in stages.

Completion

The dyke was nearly complete in 1822 when storm at high tide found a leak on the south side of the dyke and created a breach allowing the Minas Basin to flood in and destroying much of the dyke and years of work. Work was renewed the next year with some assistance from the provincial government. Finally in September 1824 the dyke was complete. Many farmers along the river had mortgaged their farms to build the dyke and some faced foreclosure. However with the dyke's completion, over 3,000 of acres were protected by the single dyke which gave farmers on the Canard River the lowest maintenance costs per acre of any dykelands in the Maritime Region. An additional bonus was the creation of a new road between Starr's Point and Canard which ran along the dyke and became known as the Wellington Dyke Road as well as protection for the roads and bridges further upriver.

The Dyke in Later Years

Wellington Dyke and Wellington Dyke Road, looking towards Starr's Point

The Wellington Dyke received a major rebuild in 1947 with a new sluice and sidewalls constructed immediately behind the old dyke. The Wellington Dyke reconstructuion was one of the first projects of a new federal-provincial partnership which was followed by 80 dyke repair projects across the Maritimes. The program came to be known as the Maritime Marshlands Rehabilitation Administration in 1948 with the federal government taking ownership and maintenance of the dykes, while the marsh bodies maintained the drainage ditches behind them. In 1970, the province of Nova Scotia's Department of Agriculture took ownership of the Wellington Dyke and other large agricultural dykes in the province.

References

Marjory Whitelaw, The Wellington Dyke Nimbus Publishing (1997)

External links

• "Photographs and Maps of the Wellington Dyke", Nova Scotia Electronic Scrapbook