Four words have been etched in marker on a whiteboard in Noah Booth’s Halifax basement for years: Kayak the Eastern Shore. The words were there, scrawled in black, long before the 32-year-old geologist ever tried sea kayaking—never mind a 15-day ocean voyage. They were there longer still before Booth and his partner, Rachyl MacPhail, started their weekend backcountry trips of Nova Scotia in 2021. To Booth, a Royal Canadian Geographic Society fellow who has canoed through ice to reach the Arctic Ocean and paddled through some of the most remote reaches of Labrador, the 400-kilometre stretch of coastline between Halifax and Cape Breton offered a unique allure: A blend of both the familiar and the unexpected.
“There’s all this coastline to explore in Nova Scotia,” the Ontario-born Booth says, speaking by phone with The Coast. “And yet, the Eastern Shore seems like an area that not as many people talk about. But for me, it’s the most appealing, because of how rugged it is.”
Among the least-developed regions in the province, Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore is home to the “100 Wild Islands,” a 2,800-hectare area of white sand beaches and rocky coves, along with the Canso Coastal Barrens, filled with salt marshes and inlets where fin whales and bald eagles roam. It was an area Booth had visited before but felt called to return to, in part to shed light on its “unique marine life and ecosystems”: The Eastern Shore is home to some of Nova Scotia’s largest grey seal colonies, along with a host of rare plant species, including the endangered boreal felt lichen—a rich source of nitrogen for forests.
Together with MacPhail, Booth hatched a plan to paddle the length of the Eastern Shore—from Halifax to Port Hastings—over the course of two weeks. During the trip, the two would camp and carry the majority of their food and water supplies. When there were streams available, they would replenish what they could. They would also film a documentary—the end result of which is now available on YouTube.
From the start, it presented a challenge.
“I was intimidated by the idea,” the Cape Breton-raised MacPhail admits. “I was coming from my longest trip being three or four days, and this was going to potentially be up to 17 days,” depending on the weather.
It wasn’t going to be in their favour: Their plan was to embark in August—a warmer month for paddling, but when hurricane season would be approaching its peak in the Maritimes. There was also another small matter: Despite Booth’s backcountry experience, neither of them had been sea kayaking for very long. They only began in earnest in the spring, which meant a hurried pace of training and committing to memory the required safety skills to keep them seaworthy. That wasn’t lost on Booth.
“The ocean is a very dangerous place, and it’s easy to get yourself in trouble quickly,” he tells The Coast. “The biggest thing for us was to make sure we had the proper equipment and we knew the basic skills on how to [keep] ourselves out of trouble.”
For a trip that would lead MacPhail and Booth from the shadow of the MacKay Bridge to the Canso Causeway, the hardest stretch of their 15-day voyage might well have been the beginning. On their second day at sea, the two rounded the tip of Hartlen Point and Cow Bay and faced a crossing notorious for its exposed coastline and impressive waves. High winds brought swells to the shoreline near Lawrencetown. MacPhail capsized, losing her sunglasses and hat. More crucially, her kayak’s rudder broke.
“The wave hit me, and essentially knocked me out of the boat—sent me flying,” MacPhail tells The Coast. “It was the first moment of the trip that I thought, ‘We’re really in this now.’ But I’m glad that it happened [early], because it really humbled me.”
“The wave hit me, and essentially knocked me out of the boat—sent me flying … It was the first moment of the trip that I thought, ‘We’re really in this now.’”
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The two managed to repair the rudder. Like any good adventure, though, more trouble followed: By the fifth day of their trip, they entered a 70-kilometre stretch of coastline where it became difficult to replenish their fresh water supply. For two days, they had to ration their water. Until that point, they had been going through six litres per day.
MacPhail says the stretch was “difficult,” but a challenge she enjoyed nonetheless. “We did have to push our bodies, and that’s something that I enjoy and get out of these trips. It’s about the experience and being in the landscape, but for me, moving and setting goals is also big on a trip.”
That water-tight stretch happened during their passage through “100 Wild Islands,” a 282-island archipelago the Nova Scotia Nature Trust has been working to protect. Between Clam Harbour (a little ways past Jeddore) and Mushaboom Harbour (south of Sheet Harbour), coastal bogs and cobble beaches dot the coastline in a breathtaking region the Toronto Star once called “the most magical islands you’ve never heard of.” It’s an especially rare place: Every coastal ecosystem found on Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast is represented in the 30-kilometre stretch.
Until as recently as 2017, the area was largely privately owned. But thanks to a Nature Trust campaign, more than 85% of the coastal region is now protected under the Trust’s stewardship. That includes an 182-hectare parcel the Nature Trust acquired earlier this year, next to Owls Head Provincial Park.
“I think it’s getting to the point where a lot of people in Nova Scotia are well aware that the development has taken over much of the land here,” Nature Nova Scotia president Bob Bancroft told CBC News. “And coastal properties that aren’t private are becoming very rare.”
The efforts made to protect Nova Scotia’s coastline can feel a little bit like a catch-22: While conservation groups and public campaigns can be effective at protecting land from development, some critics caution that they gloss over a colonial attitude to land that ought to be returned to Indigenous stewardship. There’s also the stark reminder that at the same time Nova Scotia’s coastline is being protected, its historic seaside communities are shrinking: Between 2016 and 2021, per Statistics Canada, the regions of Sheet Harbour, St. Mary’s, Guysborough and Mulgrave all saw their populations drop between 1.8% and as much as 60%.
Financially speaking, times are tough. That’s something Booth would like to see change—and hopes that a brighter spotlight on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore would bring.
“It seems like a dying coast,” he says of the towns he and MacPhail witnessed that had dwindled in size. Booth’s hope is that “getting people out there and spending their money,” be it on kayaking excursions or weekend camping trips, would “help it come back to life.”
For some business owners on the Eastern Shore, the “100 Wild Islands” campaign has been a welcome sight. Since 1960, three generations of the Murphy family have run a campground at a former fishing wharf near East Ship Harbour. Ryan Murphy, who runs Murphy’s Camping on the Ocean today, has carved a career offering kayak rentals and boat tours of the archipelago.
“The diversity and beauty of the wild here is immeasurable,” he told the Nature Trust’s blog in June. (Murphy’s been involved in efforts to protect the coastline since 2011.) “I’ve been exploring these islands for as long as I can remember, and every time, the experience is different. I love giving that to others; the feeling that transports them away from everyday life to a place so peaceful and connected.”
Hardships aside, there were plenty of highlights for Booth and MacPhail to savour. For Booth, approaching the Canso Barrens on the 11th day of their expedition felt like arriving in “a land before time.”
“There’s these big granite islands that are, like, crazy dramatic topography with these sparse spruce trees growing on them,” he tells The Coast. “And this is the day before the hurricane was going to arrive. So we woke up and the entire ocean was glass calm, and there was this blood-red sky.”
For MacPhail, the Nova Scotians they met along the way deepened their connections to their home province. In Drum Head, a fishing community on the southern edge of Guysborough County, they were treated to dinner and dessert, a breakfast of eggs and toast and offered a backyard to pitch their tent in. In Canso, wind and rain from post-tropical storm Franklin drove them in search of shelter, which they found in the home of a retired couple, Buzz and Emily—“who were very welcoming in a time that we needed them most”—and their dog, Alice.
Then, there was the wildlife: Not only grey seals, but shorebirds that greeted them along the coastline.
“That was one of my favourite things,” MacPhail says, who calls the birds’ presence a “calming experience.”
“To see those animals out there doing their thing, and to be able to take that all in—the seals were so curious and playful. Every time I see a seal now, I think back to that trip.”
While Booth is tight-lipped on what expedition plans might come next, he’s grateful for the chance he and MacPhail had to try something new:
“It’s incredible to know that you can go on this big adventure in your backyard.”
Watch the full documentary below.
