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) of farmland along the Canard River between the communities of Starr's Point and Canard in Nova Scotia, Canada. Built by local farmers, it was begun in 1815 and completed in 1825. Today the dyke is owned by the Department of Agriculture of Nova Scotia.

Origins

The rich farmland along the river were originally dyked by the Acadians, who knew it as the Rivière-aux-Canards, to claim highly productive farmland from the Bay of Fundy tidal meadows of the Minas Basin. Beginning in the late 1600s, Acadians built progressively larger dykes across the Rivière-aux-Canards beginning first with its upper reaches at Upper Dyke, then the Middle Dyke and finally with the Grand Dyke near Port Williams. A sluice with a one-way valve, known to the Acadians as the "aboiteau", allowed the river to drain but shut out the incoming tide. After the Acadians were expelled in 1755, their dykelands were repaired and gradually expanded by the New England Planters who settled along the Canard River in 1760. They formed "marsh bodies", associations of farmers with dykeland fields, some of which still exist today, 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. The Planters had gradually added to the Acadian dikes along the edges of the river but a dyke at near the mouth of the river 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 over 2,000 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. It was built in stages seasonally, between high tides using only human and animal labour. At its peak over 100 teams of horses and oxen and 300 men worked on the dyke. In some places the swift tidal currents swept away nine out of every ten cart loads of fill.

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 walls were completed. Finishing work completed the dike in 1825. 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. The dyke also provided protection for the roads and bridges further upriver.

The Dyke in Later Years

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

Once built, the dyke proved solid and enduring, surviving major storms such as the Saxby Gale of 1869. The dyke lands of the Canard River proved very rewarding. While average dyked marsh land produced two tons of hay per acre, the Canard fields yielded five tons per acre. Hay sales proved very rewarding in the boom years of the hay market in the late 19th century when eastern urban centres paid high prices for the rich marsh hay produced from dyke lands.

However after 1920 and the arrival of automobiles, the demand for marsh hay declined. By the 1940s, the dropping earnings of dyke lands, combined with the need for a new sluice posed a challenge for the dyke's owners. The Wellington Dyke received a major rebuild in 1947 with a new sluice and sidewalls constructed immediately behind the old dyke. The reconstruction 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