In 2017 I created a book and exhibition called "DISAPPEARING BEFORE OUR EYES". It was about traditions of Grand Manan Island that were eroding in waves of modernity. New methods of fishing, building, and communicating washed away the old, sheds and wharves fell into the sea. One chapter of that book is about the history of Tate Shed:
Lester Tate had been born in 1890 in Cutler, Maine. His father and grandfather were sailing-schooner captains trading with the Caribbean islands: salted herring for molasses and rum. Lester's mother was a Passamaquoddy Native. He came across the Bay of Fundy to Grand Manan, married Eva Ingalls, and built this shed and his wharf in 1922. In 1938 Lester and Eva, with four kids of their own, took in my teenage father, a budding fog-scientist, like an adopted son.
Lester's sons Myhron and Kenton Tate continued the family tradition as hunter-gatherers on the wild ocean. Myhron fished with his dad and inherited the shed and boat when Lester could longer go to sea and became a berry picking, potato farmer.
Myhron & Eunice's sons Mervin, Paul, and Bobby followed the same path while their daughter Mary married another fisherman who built his own wharf just down the Ingalls Head shore. Every fisherman had his own wharf and shed on the shore. The next generation faced a different set of choices.
But then the economics and the methods of the wild fish industry shifted, having an individually owned shed and wharf became an unprofitable proposition. The property fell into the hands of the growing salmon farming industry. As I point out in "Disappearing Before Our Eyes", for the next 18 years the shore was owned by a series of off-island corporations each owned by a larger corporation far far away. The shed was abandoned.
Huge cement anchors and steel floats imported from a mainland factory came to dominate the shore where Lester used to build his lobster traps by hand with wood planks he shaped from trees he felled and extracted with a team of oxen from the dense winter woods.
The wharf became unsafe and the shed was poised to fall into the sea.
Then in 2018 Cooke's Aquaculture generously sold the property back to Peter Cunningham and Adam Tate and their wives.. It stands as a rare example of a large corporation "doing the right thing". We are grateful and we are also a bit awed by the responsibility we have taken on.
By August 2019, the descendants of Lester and Eva Tate, all still professional fishermen, recovered sufficiently from a rugged winter at sea, started showing up to rebuild the shed.
The work began with removing a heavy old stove which had collapsed the floor and broken the foundation post below.
Our neighbor to the South is Fundy Marine Service Center where fishing boats from all over The Bay of Fundy are hoisted out of the water for repair.
"Fogseeker", named after my father who collected fog, was built by Robert Ingalls at the next shed down the shore. When he could no longer go fishing, he built 108 of these boats, there are 6 remaining on Grand Manan. Adam tells me that when he was 8 years old he and I went for a ride in Fogseeker, and that I offered him the opportunity to take the wheel. He says it was the first time he ever captained a boat. I almost remember that.