old Tobeatic Game Sanctuary (and other) warden's cabins?

[Dusan Soudek]

Hello Charles,

    I am forwarding an updated version of an e-mail I sent out about the backwoods warden’s cabins in March 2015.

 

 

I am doing a bit of research into Nova Scotia’s three oldest game sanctuaries  (or “parks”); Tobeatik (sic, 1927), Liscomb (1928), and Waverley (1929); established by the province in response to dramatic overhunting and overtrapping of game species. An intriguing aspect of the old sanctuaries were the game warden’s cabins, constructed roughly twelve miles apart along the periphery of the sanctuaries.

 

According to the 1930 annual report of the Department of Lands and Forests there were eight cabins in the Tobeatic, seven in Liscomb and two in Waverley. I had no problems tracking down the names of the Liscomb camps (Trafalgar Gate likely a.k.a. North Gate, Fifteen Mile Stream, Sandy Island, Lochaber Gate likely a.k.a. South Gate, Long Lake, Union, Governor Lake, Hunting Lake, Key Lake possibly a.k.a. Key Hole) and of the Waverley camps (Miller Lake, Three Mile Lake, Lake Major). The numbers don’t quite add up, because some camps have been constructed after 1930.

 

Most of the old warden’s cabins have disappeared. I have visited the sites of the Hunting Lake cabin (deemed to be beyond repair and burned a few years back) and of the Lake Major one (burned a few years ago, allegedly a booze and drug den due to the easy boat access). The Miller Lake cabin exists in an enlarged and rebuilt form and is used by Scouts Canada, and the beautiful Lochaber Gate one is locked, as it is next to a paved Highway 374. The Trafalgar Gate camp may still exist as part of the DNR depot near the West River St. Mary’s but it is no longer in the wilderness. But Cofan Cabin has recently been restored, thanks to a private donation, whereas Three Mile Lake and Long Lake, both in good shape, are maintained by Protected Areas and Eosystems and by volunteers.

 

But so far I have been unable to find the names of all of the eight original Tobeatic camps. So far I have only Pollard’s (locked, deteriorating, apparently to be burned), Skudiac (various spellings), DeMoliter, Buckshot Lake, Sand  Beach Lake (Cofan Cabin), and Tobeatic Lake. There are evolving plans to restore the last-mentioned one.

 

Apparently Mason’s Cabin in Keji was never a Lands & Forests cabin, but the beautiful one on Rocky Lake (near the Mersey, open and publicly owned) is nowhere near a game sanctuary. A bit of an outlier....

 

Dusan Soudek

[Alain Belliveau]

Hey all, 

Here's a map I made a few years ago to summarize what I'd learned about the Tobeatik (sic) warden's cabins. A few more camps that were likely used by wardens aren't on the map. I suspect they made use of old logging camps on occasion, which were fairly numerous during the Depression when Bowater was cutting down any old timber that had escaped manmade fires until then. The situation of cabins (usability, maintenance, etc) was in flux almost yearly, based on old yearly summaries written by the wardens. 

All cabins have collapsed or been burned by NSDNR, except Cofan and Big Tobeatic (which is also called Bat's Rest). I'm assuming that the Savannah camp has also collapsed or been burned, though I haven't seen the site so I can't say with certainty. The latest photo I have from it (from the 1980s) shows a big hole in the side of it, about the size of a bear. At least one wood frame cabin (Buckshot) and one log cabin (Sabean) preceded the designation of the area as a sanctuary. Most other cabins were built out of logs (Cofan, Pine, Irving, Tobeatic, probably the original Pollards Falls) in the 1920s and 1930s except the Savannah cabin which was wood frame. A few cabins were built a bit later, in the 1940s, and these are wood frame (Jordan Lake, probably Spectacle Lake). A general rule is that if an old ox cart trail lead to a cabin, sawn timber was brought in for construction. Otherwise logs were used. They had a somewaht standard blueprint for newer wood frame cabins, and it appears that all log cabins were built in identical fashion (so, either by the same person or people built those cabins, or Lands and Forests had a general blueprint for these as well). I personally find the log cabin design to be ingenious given what was available to the wardens and rangers who built them. They were very simple to build, and some lasted a long time with minimal maintenance. The latest cabin to be built (in the 1950s), the newer cabin on Pollards Falls, was built as a wood frame with vertical half-logs for siding, and also included a cement foundation and basement. It was mostly accessed via vehicle. Because of this different design and use, it's a bit of an odd ball. It has recently been vandalized a little, and more-or-less abandoned by NSDNR so the odds of it getting burned down soon are rather high. 

Dusan, I have a single map showing a small cabin symbol on DeMoliter, so I hadn't included it on my map. Also, I haven't heard of a camp on Skudiak, would that refer to the old mill at the outflow? We should chat about this on our next trip, maybe on a trip to a Liscomb warden's cabin. 

[Charles Mitchell]

Sorry, I forgot to specify that I'm looking for the Long Lake cabin in Boggy Lake WA.

On Thursday, March 2, 2017 at 4:06:17 PM UTC-4, Charles Mitchell wrote:

Thank you so much, what a trove of information.
This group seems like the only source of information besides a passing reference here: 

https://novascotia.ca/nse/protectedareas/wa_boggylake.asp

Are these the coordinates of the cabin? 45.093073, -62.355465

Bing Aerial Imagery has pretty good resolution in that area and I think I can see the cabin and it's outbuilding (may have been pulled down during the last work party).

Am I correct?

https://binged.it/2mKVO7Z

My neighbour and I are planning a trip and just trying to decide if it's easier now to hoof it in on the bit of ice and snow left or wait until the lakes open up in a couple months.

Cheers and thanks again,

Charles Mitchell

On Wednesday, March 1, 2017 at 5:38:10 PM UTC-4, Dusan Soudek wrote:

[Dusan Soudek]

To Charles and Alain:

   Yes, those coordinates are correct. The rectangular clearing around the cabin is easily visible. The ‘good’ woodshed should still be there, the derelict one had been pulled down and is waiting to be burned down. The only other building, or cluster of buildings, on Long Lake is the private drive-in camp on the SW shoreline of the lake. The older and the newer structures are also log cabins and the older may be of the same vintage as the warden’s cabin, with which it isat times confused.

   About possible warden’s cabins on Skudiac Lake and DeMoliter Lake in the Tobeatic: I’ve leafed through several boxes of old warden’s daily report cards (which start and end with the name the warden slept in) at the DNR library in Halifax, and the above two localities are mentioned at times. The spellings of their names, for obvious reasons, vary widely, but are always unmistakable. What doesn’t make sense is that these two lakes are only something like 6 km apart, a short distance for the old wardens. I have no information on the exact location of these two possible cabins.

   Dusan Soudek

[Charles Mitchell]

Fascinating stuff. Thank you for confirming the coords of Long Lake for me. I'll likely get there soon.

Cheers

Charles