Tantramar Marshes - History and Economy of The Marshes

History and Economy of The Marshes

For a full account of human activity on the marshes, see the History of Sackville.

Before the arrival of Europeans, well-traveled portage routes connected the Bay of Fundy with the Northumberland Strait. Migrating from Port Royal in around 1671, Acadian established a village in the area (which they called Beaubassin). They founded a number of scattered setttlements on higher ground, and created the dykes and sluices which converted the salt marshes to fields and pastures. Following the Battle of Fort Beauséjour which market the end of the battle for Acadia between the British and French, it was the site of the beginning of the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. Six years later the British resettled the area, and continued to convert the marsh to arable land.

As time went on land ownership became consolidated a Commission of Sewers was established which was crucial to the economy. By the mid-1800s 10,000 hectares was producing grains, root crops, and marsh hay. Once the land was drained, the cost of producing hay was low, Tantramar hay was sold to lumber camps, exploration, and mining in Atlantic Canada and stables as far away as Boston. In the 1930s there were more than 400 post-and-beam hay barns on the marshes, for hay storage. Today there are fewer than 30. The price of hay was 28$ per ton in 1920, but as horses were replaced by cars and as manufacturing moved west, the hay price fell to 7$ a ton in 1938. The marshes then became pasture, and as their agricultural profitability declined the Canadian Wildlife Service and Ducks Unlimited helped to return the marshes to a more natural state.

In 1945 Radio Canada International opened a radio transmitter and the site proved to be one of the best shortwave transmitting locations in the world. Shortwave broadcasting ended in 2012.