Fundy

The geologist who served as our tour guide showing us the fossils scattered all about in the Bay of Fundy at low tide was surely one of the high points of our trip.   I found myself excited, as I always am, by contact with someone who loves his work.  The geologist particularly loved kids' questions and delighted in taking each one through a verbal tour of the eons of time etched in rock all around us.  He taught us to gauge the age of the plant or animal recorded in stone by reading the layers and how they tilt.  Facing the rock, right was newer, left was older. This is all relative.  The bay and its fossils were formed when the Appalachian Mountains were newer and bigger and more rugged than the Rockies are today and the East coast and Africa were the same land mass. He showed me how a thin white very straight line across a sedimentary boulder got there by quartz filling in a crack made in the rock by pressure from tons of ice above during glacial times. 

Soon, too soon, he reluctantly told us that he had to go up top and help lock up but encouraged us to stay as long as the tide would allow.  Before he left he told us that this bay, a narrow strip of water connected to the Atlantic emphasized the tidal motion to the extent that the water rose against the rock cliffs about thirty five feet, instead of the six foot rise we saw twice a day at our cottage on the straight.  At the top end of the bay, a person can walk on the bay floor and examine the huge rock structures, top heavy every one, with their bottoms worn away by the regular action of the water. 

The geologist told us that the soil on Prince Edward Island was a deep glacial till, tinted red by the iron oxide in it.  The island gives a different impression than the main parts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia-softer somehow and more hospitable to human habitation-perhaps because the tides there are more manageable and less deadly than in the Bay.  It costs $45.50 Canadian to get back across the eight mile bridge to the mainland.  They let you in free, but seem to be interested in keeping you there.  They know the tourist trade!

Jim