The fight to save the Isthmus of Chignecto, which connects NB and NS

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New Brunswick Senator Jim Quinn is on a mission to save the Isthmus of Chignecto. It’s going pretty well.

He is trying to convince Parliament that this narrow strip of marshland between his province and Nova Scotia, barely 20 kilometres from salt water to salt water, is of such vital importance to Canada as a nation that the federal government should invoke its special constitutional power to declare it for “the general advantage of Canada.”

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That would mean picking up the full $650-million tab to rehabilitate and modernize the existing system of dykes and aboiteaux, a distinctive Acadian tide gate that protects cropland from sea water. The feds have proposed funding half of it through a disaster mitigation fund.

Quinn got his proposal passed through the Senate earlier this summer, having told his fellow senators his name may be on the paper, but his bill “represents the collective aspirations of the four Atlantic provinces.” So now it is on the order paper for the fall session in the House of Commons. He’s hoping they move quickly so it can get into committee. Ultimately, the decision will fall to the government.

The National Post spoke with Senator Quinn recently by phone on his drive from New Brunswick to Ottawa, having just toured the Isthmus, looking at remnants of dykes from the 1600s.

Quinn is a former chief executive of the Saint John Port Authority, and he worked 32 years in federal government, 26 of them in Ottawa.

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“It would always bother me that issues on the east coast would sometimes get lost,” he said.

At a first impression, the Isthmus of Chignecto is just so fantastically named, in a league with other maritime tongue twisters like Kouchibouguac and Richibucto. It rolls around the mouth like it’s trying to escape. Perhaps partly for this reason, it is not well known.

“Hardly anybody knows where that is, and that includes a lot of people in Atlantic Canada,” Quinn said.

He points out the coincidence that, as measured by a United Nations report he cited to the Senate, the two regions of North America where critical infrastructure is most threatened by climate change — New Orleans and the Isthmus of Chignecto — are either Acadian or Cajun, the Louisiana derivation of the French ethnicity.

And while everybody knows the sea threatens New Orleans, and devastated it in the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, the Isthmus has a brand awareness problem.

“We have to work harder to make our case known and gain the support of decision makers in government.”

Even the other name maritimers have for the area is poetically evocative, the Tantramar Marshes, from the Acadian French “tintamarre,” for the clamorous din made by flocks of birds, which now also means the tradition of joyous noise-making marches for National Acadian Day in August.

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But a weird name can be a curse as much as a blessing. It’s been hard getting attention to the great peril that faces the Isthmus, this low land of bird-clamorous marshes between Tantramar, N.B., and Amherst, N.S.

He worries it’s partly because no one can spell it. He is certain some of his colleagues don’t know how to say it.

Chignecto is a Europeanized Mi’kmaq word, Siknikt, for the wider area where the water drains to the sea from the Cobequid hills to the south.

Isthmus is a Greek word that became Latinized, changing its ending from “-os” to “-us,” for a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land masses, with open water on either side. In Chignecto’s case that’s the Bay of Fundy and the Northumberland Strait. Originally the word referred to Corinth, which connects mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, and was reflected in the name of the Isthmian Games, similar to the Ancient Olympics.

But now it’s basically just a spelling bee question, a word nerd’s flourish, maybe a Jeopardy! answer.

The way Quinn sees it, about as many people have heard of it as can spell it, or pronounce it.

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So his call for the federal government to use its constitutional power to take it over and pay for it, like it has done for national railways and international bridges, is a risky move, and what the lawyers call a tough row to hoe. But he’s making progress.

Known as the declaratory power, Section 92(10) of the Constitution Act, 1867, allows Canada’s government to claim jurisdiction over for the “general advantage of Canada” over “works and undertakings” that would otherwise be provincial matters. These works are described in the Constitution as “Lines of Steam or other Ships, Railways, Roads, Telegraphs, and other Works and Undertakings.”

In the 2007 edition of his book Constitutional Law of Canada, the late legal scholar Peter Hogg counted that it had been invoked more than 470 times.

Usually it is for railways. It is meant to give the federal government a jurisdiction over works that are bigger than any one province. A major 1993 Supreme Court of Canada decision, for example, came out of a labour relations conflict between Ontario Hydro, a provincial concern, and federal regulations about the operation of its nuclear generators.

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More recently, it’s come up in pipeline debates as a potential override to provincial objections by British Columbia.

It has been invoked for the Champlain Bridge between Montreal and the South Shore, and for the Gordie Howe International Bridge from Windsor to Detroit.

Quinn thinks he has a strong case for the dyke systems at the Isthmus of Chignecto, strengthened by his argument that the feds plan to use a disaster mitigation fund would deplete that fund and presumably preclude other worthy projects.

The federal government can also exercise a different and higher sort of jurisdictional authority, particularly through environmental regulations, and through consultations with affected Indigenous communities.

There is also historical significance to the place. There is Beaubassin, an early Acadian village, and Fort Lawrence, built on its ruins, both on a ridge above the Missaguash River. There is Fort Beauséjour-Fort Cumberland. Indigenous archeological heritage points to a continuous presence over at least 10,000 years, both in permanent settlements and use of portage and water routes through the Isthmus.

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The natural history is just as interesting to those who document it, such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada, which has been running a survey of the Isthmus’ biodiversity. It has found rare birds and an endangered orchid, the southern twayblade, which appears for only a few weeks in summer.

But really, the proposal is not to spend $650-million to protect archeological heritage or a rare flower. This is about trade, transport, connectivity. That is what makes it such a high stakes gamble on when the next perfect storm might come, and how big it will be.

As Quinn describes it, this is not a local infrastructure problem. It is a national response to a global issue. It is as much about the rest of Canada as it is the residents of the former Sackville, N.B., now called Tantramar, and Amherst, N.S.

This is the choke point for Atlantic container ship cargo. This is where the rail line is. Critical fibre optic cable runs through here, and $35-billion worth of trade passes through each year. And, of course, there is the Trans-Canada Highway, which traverses the marshland close to the Bay of Fundy coast. Cut the link, and all Canada would feel it.

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So the danger is that a big storm gives the beloved anthem Farewell to Nova Scotia a new and ironic meaning. One day you can get there and the next you can’t, its coast now fully “seabound.”

“The isthmus is integral to national and international trade. As storms become more severe due to climate change, the risk of a failure in the dyke system grows with each passing year,” as N.B. Premier Blaine Higgs put it to a Senate committee.

We have to work harder to make our case known

There is precedent, even before climate change played any part. The Saxby Gale was a storm that hit the Bay of Fundy overnight on Oct. 4, 1869, coinciding with especially high tides. It got its name for a British naval officer and astronomer who correctly foresaw and announced in the newspapers that the moon’s orbit would put it closest to Earth in early October, creating unusually high tides in the North Atlantic during hurricane season.

The storm breached the Chignecto dykes of the day and flooded the Tantramar Marshes and beyond into farmland. With maybe three dozen people killed, it still ranks in the top ten deadliest Canadian hurricanes.

There were worries of something similar when Hurricane Lee arrived last September. As Quinn puts it, the conditions were there but the wind was in the wrong direction for maximum damage.

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So, if a similar storm were to arrive one day soon with the wind and the moon just right, there is a bleak maritime humour in the possibility that the rest of Canada would suddenly be able to drive to Charlottetown, but not Halifax. Saxby wouldn’t have seen THAT coming.

The trouble for Quinn’s project is that, even with a fantastically weird name, the future of the Isthmus of Chignecto does not seem all that funny.

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