The St. Andrew’s wharf has a deep personal connection to my childhood and to my love of the sea.
From 1955 until 1966, the wharf in St. Andrews was my special place. When I was in Grade One and Grade Two. I was down at the wharf every day at noon to talk with the fishermen and the crew on the mail boat and to listen to their stories about the sea.
In 1957, a couple of boys pushed me off the wharf into the sea. I couldn’t swim but I sure as hell learned to swim real fast within minutes.
It was on that pier that I would sit and watch for whales and seabirds, where I first read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
The St. Andrews of my youth has changed considerably since I was a boy. The Marine Biological Laboratory is gone. The Conley Lobster Pound burned in 1974 and I remember that no one ate mussels because they were considered dirty and why would we when there were clams, scallops and lobster. You could tell the poor kids in town because we went to school with lobster sandwiches on homemade bread and tried to trade them for baloney on Wonder Bread which seemed exotic to us.
I remember marveling at the Passamaquoddy Tides and almost was dangerously caught up a few times, almost drowning once but never losing my fascination with the daily back and forth tug of war with the moon.
That was the time when not single piece of plastic could be found on the shore although we did find glass fish floats and lobster traps were biodegradable.
My family have been residents of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island since the early 17th Century. We are Maritimers and like many Maritimers we have a deep love for the sea,
My mother died in January 1964, and my father hustled us off to the discomfort and unpleasantness of Toronto, a place so alien from St. Andrews where my accent was a source of ridicule. My heart never left, and my mother is buried in the cemetery behind the Algonquin Hotel.
I live in Paris now, but I keep up with events in St. Andrew’s and the news of this impending destruction of what is in my opinion the most important landmark of St. Andrews-By-the-Sea is sadly disheartening.
I have a very large international following of supporters and many of them understand what St. Andrews’ means to me, to my history and the contribution the town and the Saint Andrew’s wharf contributed to my education and early development as an ocean activist and ecologist. This connection has been documented in biographical books and film.
Heritage is important and St. Andrews has something that not many places have in quite the same way – a unique history, a distinct character and a beautiful geographical position and the St. Andrew’s Wharf is symbolic of this uniqueness. Otherwise, it will look like any other town in Coastal Maine and who wants that?
Photo: My sister Sharyn and I in the mid-Fifties in St. Andrews.
