Peggys Cove 200 years on

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This article was published 16/04/2011 (5490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PEGGYS COVE, N.S. — On the 200th anniversary of Nova Scotia’s picture-perfect village by the sea, Peggys Cove resident Roger Crooks says he’ll celebrate the simple life of the past, while lobbying for a future fix-up.

Crooks, 74, is among the 40 remaining full-time residents of this community, famed for its landscape of stark granite boulders, crashing Atlantic seas and the lighthouse on the wind-worn rocks of Peggys Point.

Two hundred years ago, King George III issued land grants to the six founding families who settled the area.

Life in the first century was part of an uncomplicated rhythm of work, family and church, says Crooks.

"In the beginning there wasn’t much. There were garden lots and fishing and that was how they survived," he said.

Crooks has kept a clipping from a journalist who visited the village in 1934, in the early days of tourism, and wrote of its caring and proud residents.

His great grandfather, Wesley Crooks, a postmaster and fisherman, told the visitor, "if on this earth there is a better community of self-supporting Christians than you can find at Peggys Cove, I don’t know where it is."

"In time we may all vanish from this rock and leave no sign of our occupation. Who can say? Not me."

The inshore pollock and cod fisheries that Crooks’s grandfather plied are long gone, after a groundfish moratorium was declared in the early 1990s.

Crooks estimates there are just four or five fishermen who still live in the town and operate the local vessels that fish lobster and mackerel.

Fortunately, the occasional visitor from the city grew to a steady procession of cars and articulated buses, bringing about 500,000 tourists each summer to visit the community about 45 kilometres southeast of Halifax.

Crooks, whose oldest son runs a small gift shop, says the tourists are welcome and a "blessing" that has kept the place alive.

"I just treat everybody the same … There’s no strangers. They’re just part of an extended family," he says.

"We’ve got a lot to share … We’ve got so many coming to see the community and take away their own beauty from it."

Still, while the anniversary website describes Peggys Cove as "a stalwart symbol" of Nova Scotia’s marine heritage and culture, Crooks wonders how that heritage will be maintained.

He says the village needs help from local and provincial governments to improve roads and expand the breakwater.

Larger storms are sending waters cascading up the cove and causing water to run over the road into the village.

"I’d like to see a group that has a dedicated concern to the village because of what it means to this community, to Nova Scotia and the Maritimes as well," he said.

Standing by the fishing wharf, he points up to the breakwater and seawall on the crest of a hill, and says it needs expansion to protect the inner village from the days when hurricanes send seas lash into the shore.

While he hopes for improvements in the future, Crooks says he’ll still enjoy the gatherings scheduled for this summer.

On June 12, families who’ve lived here are coming for a reunion and, seven days later, on June 19, former students of the old red schoolhouse, which still stands on the crest of a hill, will gather.

John Campbell, owner of the Sou’Wester Restaurant, says a tight-knit community spirit still defines Peggys Cove.

"For me it’s not just a symbolic place. It’s my home," he says.

His boyhood was spent between serving tourists chowder at the restaurant and times at sea with local fishermen.

Now he is chairman of the committee that’s promoting the history and geology that surrounds him.

Starting April 18 and every third Monday following, visitors can attend geology walks that explain the giant boulders known as ”erratics” that cover the glacially scoured granite landscape.

There will also be a natural history walk titled Tiptoe through the Tide Pool on June 11 and a Peggys Cove Road Arts Festival from July 1 to July 14.

The events will deepen the understanding of the community and the landscape, says Campbell.

However, he believes it may still be the least planned moments that sustain the Peggys Cove charm.

"You can always find a peaceful spot on the rocks to sit and read a book and just sit and mellow out," he said.