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SHE IS SHROUDED by the cool, blue mist of early morning that slowly evaporates into the clean, bright air of midday. Her shore is shaped by the continual pounding of the icy surf from the Bay of Fundy, site of two great whirlpools and the highest tides in the world. Her air is tangy with the mixing scents of land and sea. The signs of man's presence are barely perceptible over much of her flowing fields, dense forests, tidal marshes, expansive mud flats, and jagged headlands. Campobello Island has changed comparatively little over the centuries that man has known her.
 "The northern and southern ends of the island provide a dramatic topographical contrast. The north, with its ledge, thin topsoil and low hills, resembles the coast of Scotland. The south is almost tropical in the luxuriance of its ferns and flowers, culminating in the Fog Forest at Liberty Point, an eerie green-gray world of lichen-hung trees shrouded in perpetual fog."
She seems so far away. Indeed she is far from the hurry-hurry rat race of society; removed from the mainstream; at the end of the cultural line, the technological line, the energy line, and the financial line.
 To reach the end of that line, drive northeast along the Maine coast through countryside, becoming more sparsely populated as the miles roll by, toward the easternmost town in Maine: Lubec. Drive down the peninsula leading out to that town, along a ridge surrounded on three sides by an expanse of ocean and sky. When you reach the road's end and look across the narrow slip of water separating her from the United States, there is Campobello.
She is a Canadian island, only a stone's throw from the United States; a mile by sea from her nearest Canadian neighbor, Deer Island; twelve miles by sea from the Canadian mainland. Her residents must drive over sixty miles of U.S. roads to reach the Canadian border and the city of St. Stephens, New Brunswick. For many years, because the only medical service available in the area was in Lubec, many Campobello babies were born in that Maine town, with the resultant right to choose their citizenship in the United States.
Geographically she should be a part of the United States. Yet the island is Canadian because of a purported historical quirk. As the story goes, Daniel Webster (1782-1852) led an American delegation for settlement of the boundary issue. Sailing down the St. Croix River, Webster, being a poor sailor, refused to continue farther into the rough seas of Passamaquoddy Bay to the east and around Campobello Island. Rather, he insisted on hugging the shore of Maine, through the Lubec Narrows, thus awarding the island to Canada.
A Bridge Now Links Campobello With Lubec, Maine
Although it makes a colorful account of the manner in which Campobello came to be Canadian, Daniel Webster's stomach probably had little to do with the boundary decision. According to the proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, "We cannot question that the line according to the usual customs in such cases would have followed the navigable channels, and would have given [the United States] Campobello, geographically a part of Maine and separated from it by only a narrow and shallow channel." That Canada was the island's recipient, "was due to no virtue on her part, but was a pure piece of luck...."
Campobello was visited for thousands of years by Indians who left only huge piles of clam shells as evidence of their stays. Viking adventurers might also have touched her shores during one or more voyages. And the great French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed through Passamaquoddy Bay on his way up the St. Croix River, the present boundary between the United States and Canada. On a map drawn by Champlain in 1607 he identifies Campobello as Port aux Coquilles (Harbor of Clams).
Five years after the first known settlement of the island by Europeans, "a census taken in 1689 listed its inhabitants as four men, four women, eight boys, five girls, four horses, and seven horned cattle."
But her recorded history really began about September 30, 1767, when the island was granted to Captain William Owen by Lord William Campbell, the British governor of Nova Scotia. Named the "Principal Proprietary of the Great Outer Island of Passamaquoddy," Owen chose to christen the island Campo Bello, as he said, "partly complementary and punning on the name of the governor," and partly in response to the island's beauty, "Campo Bello being, so I presume, the Spanish and Italian equivalent of the British fair field."
Owen and his descendants ruled their little island kingdom, favorably or not, for the next 114 years. Under their rule, "the island was a feudal fief of a dynasty of Welsh seamen that gave the Royal Navy two admirals, one of whom was born on Campobello and the other of whom lies buried there." Another was once the tutor of the English prime minister William Pitt.
"The Principal Proprietary was the island's lord, and the people were his tenants. His wife was given the courtesy title of Lady. He performed marriages. He prepared sermons and preached them in the church that he had caused to be built. He was inclined to regard the island's militiamen as his private army. The first Principal Proprietary erected a set of stocks and a whipping post to punish 'the unruly, disorderly and dishonest,' and his successors were all of them magistrates. At one point the Owens issued their own money emblazoned with the family motto Flecti Non Frangi (To be bent, not to be broken)."
The fourth, and last, proprietary married into the family and changed his name to Owen, thus complying with a bequest which granted him title to the island. Seven years after his death the Owen era came to an end when his widow decided to sell her rights to Campobello to a group of American businessmen.
With one million dollars in capital, they intended to develop the island into a summer resort to which wealthy, upper-class residents of New York, Boston, and Montreal could escape, traveling by private yacht or railway car. Although a boon to the island's economy, eventually "the resorts fell victim to a variety of factors, including the First World War, the motor car, the servant problem and the income tax." But while it lasted, the resort community on the southern end of Campobello grew to include many spacious "cottages" and three prosperous hotels. Advertising brochures for the hotels described them as providing "all the comforts of a refined home," offering "quiet and retired life, made wholesome by the soft yet bracing air, never too hot and seldom too cold." They went on to say that at Campobello, "one may find absolute relief from hay fever."
Among the visitors to the island in 1883 were James and Sara Roosevelt, who brought with them their one-year-old son, Franklin, a future president of the United States. They liked the place so well that they bought ten acres of land overlooking Friar's Bay and erected a cottage of their own.
Young Franklin Roosevelt spent his summers on the island, met his future wife, Eleanor, there, and in his fortieth year contracted polio there. That illness proved to be his greatest tragedy and the source of his greatest triumph in overcoming its debilitating physical and emotional effects.
"Campobello's contribution to the making of [Franklin Roosevelt] is considerable. His character, his courage and his humanity were developed there in formative years. When his place in world events and values is determined in the years to come these three qualities will be given high rank. Whatever the verdict of political history might be, the legends of Campobello will forever celebrate the adventures and habits of his boyhood. They helped Franklin Roosevelt gain the courage and self-reliance which scorned the handicaps of a great affliction."
Because of his love of the island and its role in shaping his future, and thus the future of the United States, a tribute to his memory was developed on the island: the world's first international park.
The Roosevelt Campobello International Park was established in 1964 to preserve FDR's summer home and to give visitors the opportunity to experience some of what made Campobello a special place for him.
There are two proposed projects which could have enormous effects on the Roosevelt Park and on the ecology and economy of the island and the whole area. One is the construction of an oil refinery at Eastport, the only natural deep-water port on the east coast of the United States and, therefore, the only place suitable for the docking of crude-oil-carrying super tankers. The other project is a long-standing proposal for a tidal power facility to generate electricity.
The refinery proposal has met considerable opposition on environmental grounds. For some time the United States Department of Environmental Protection has withheld necessary air and water quality permits for its construction. And the Canadian government has proposed regulations that would prevent travel of the super tankers through Head Harbour passage between Campobello and Deer Island. They say because of the narrow passage, the possibility of rough seas, and the persistent, heavy fog, there is great potential for a huge oil spill.
The tidal power project has been in existence for almost sixty years, having been actively encouraged by President Roosevelt following its conception by a Campobello neighbor of his, Dexter P. Cooper, an American engineer who came to the island in 1919. Cooper "developed a plan for using the tides to generate electric power, through the construction of a system of dams and sea gates and the creation of two great basins, one in Passamaquoddy Bay and one in Maine's Cobscook Bay. When the moon's pull is strongest, the tides at the head of the Bay of Fundy rise and fall as much as fifty-three feet. In 1935, Roosevelt allocated ten million dollars in relief funds to the project and sent three thousand relief workers to prepare the site, but the effort had to be abandoned a year later when Congress refused to advance further funds. The plan was opposed by Canadian fishing interests and rejected by the United States engineers as too remote and expensive."
However, since the price of oil has risen so much in recent years and its availability has slackened, there is renewed interest in the possibility. Although its construction would be expensive (over $500 million) and operating and maintenance costs would be high (over $30 million per year), there would be no fuel costs, unlike fossil-fuel-fired or nuclear plants. Proponents say it would recoup its initial cost and become a clean, inexpensive yearly source of over 250 million watts of electricity.
Only time will tell which of those two energy project proposals, if either, will eventually be constructed. Both have the potential to alter the area and the lives of its residents drastically, for better or worse.
One project which already has altered the lives of Campobello islanders was the opening of a bridge linking the island to Lubec, Maine, in 1962. Some residents felt that by ending their isolation from the rest of the world it took away part of their feeling of self-sufficiency and independence. Many residents complained, "We aren't an island anymore," but the bridge and the opening of the Roosevelt Park two years later brought additional jobs and income to Campobello, whose residents had previously relied almost solely on the whims of the sea to provide their livelihood.
Yet, when the park closes and the tourists leave in mid-October, the sense of being alone on an island returns. The two seasonal motels on the island shutter their doors for the winter along with their adjoining restaurants and several roadside fried-fish, pizza, and hamburger stands. There are no theaters, no nightclubs, no museums, and no shopping centers; just two general stores.
Entertainment other than Canadian television is provided by local initiative: the senior citizens' club holds dinners and quilting parties; the Canadian Legion Hall provides a place to drink alcohol, to dance, and to play pool, cards, darts, and bingo; and the island's consolidated high school and grade school sponsors sporting and other events. Most islanders have cars and the bridge allows them to come and go as they please, but other forms of entertainment are many miles away.
The fact that there are no bars or taverns on Campobello (just two seasonal restaurants and the Canadian Legion Hall are licensed to serve liquor) reflects the island's long-standing tradition of tee totaling and the strong influence of religion on residents. Yet they have not always been uninvolved with alcoholic beverages.
During the economic hard times of the 1 870s, islanders alleviated their financial plight by starting a new industry: rum running. "There were two warehouses on the island where not only rum but Holland gin, Irish and Scotch whiskies and French wines were kept in bond until they could be sold and taken aboard the fishing schooners that came up from Gloucester in fleets of thirty or forty ostensibly to buy herring."
Outraged by the rum running in the Passamaquoddy Bay area, temperance societies and law-and-order leagues in several American and Canadian towns occasionally "forced reluctant officers to act. Usually such efforts were not very well coordinated and there was likely to be at least one 'oasis.' The Eastport Sentinel (February 25, 1880) reminded its readers now and then that Campobello was a 'rum' parish. During strict periods of enforcement considerable ingenuity was shown by thirsty Eastporters. The Sentinel (June 2, 1880) revealed that, 'among the latest discoveries in the shape of a device for smuggling is the tin bustle, manufactured for an Eastport female for the above purpose. It was filled but not in position when discovered.'"
A similar situation occurred during the Prohibition Era of the 1920s. "Elderly Campobello fishermen tend to change the subject when asked about the rum running days when Black Diamond rum could be bought in Jamaica for seventeen cents for a five-gallon-keg that could be sold in the United States for $40, and Campobello fishermen would go out in their small boats to pick up liquor from the schooners anchored near The Wolves (islands) and carry it to Eastport or Lubec."
Other forms of smuggling prospered in the area at various times. During the Napoleonic War, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain blockaded the entire continent of Europe, thus cutting off the United States. In retaliation Congress passed the Embargo Act in 1807 forbidding American ships to embark for any foreign port. Two years later Congress substituted the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed American ships to trade with any country except England and France.
"Quickly Eastport, Maine, only two miles from Campobello, became one of the busiest towns in the United States. Smuggling became Campobello's chief industry. The islanders said, 'That's why fogs were made.'"
Of course smuggling wasn't a continuous occupation for the islanders' forefathers, who not only fished but also farmed and occasionally worked as loggers or mill hands. Today's approximately twelve hundred island residents live in three scattered communities (at North Road, Welshpool, and Wilson's Beach) centered around the Harbour de L'Outre on the nine-mile-long island's protected western side. Most of the islanders work as fishermen or fish processors. Some specialize in one of many types of fishing such as hand-lining, lobstering, trawling, dragging, gillnetting, seining, or weir tending. Others do a little bit of several kinds of fishing. Some residents, especially those living at Welshpool near the former summer colony and Roosevelt Park, make their living keeping shop or catering to tourists in season. Others work at the sardine-canning factory located at Wilson's Beach. A few build boats, repair automobiles, or do odd jobs, such as carpentry. In the fall some men and quite a few women and children go "tipping" to gather evergreen boughs from which they fashion Christmas wreaths.
There is a twine shop at Welshpool that employs several people to make and repair nets for the fishing boats, although many nets are repaired right on the wharves where the boats are tethered.
Whatever they do, the people of Campobello do it with little or no sense of urgency. They take their time and enjoy their lives, whether or not they happen to enjoy the particular task at hand. Maybe they are attuned to the rhythmic changes of the tide or the seasons. Even in the sardine factory, where women are prodded by the incessant demands of a nonstop conveyor belt loaded with herring to process, there are smiles and friendly snatches of conversation to be caught. Although paid for piecework, they take time to stop and talk with strangers, to laugh and gossip.
Their speech is easily recognizable. They talk, "with an accent distinctly different from that of either the nearby Canadian islands of Deer Island and Grand Manan or the neighboring Maine coast. Their speech with its broad 'a,' slurred 'r' and such intonations as might come from the mouth of a Frenchman who had learned his English in Wales, is much the same as that of their eighteenth-century ancestors. A native of Campobello could recognize another anywhere as soon as he heard him speak."
Shortly after being exposed to their unique accent and some of the interesting accounts related by islanders, I decided to tape-record conversations with several people. In that way I could supplement my own impressions of the island and what I had read and related of her history with the thoughts and words of some of her own people, without any intermediary.
Two of the conversations I transcribed are with transplanted residents who talk about their quests to be accepted by the communities into which they moved fifteen and thirty years ago, respectively. Two other conversations are with elderly islanders. One was the oldest man living on Campobello. The other is a lady who refuses to grow old. They both tell what it was like living on the island for the past eighty to ninety years. One resident tells part of the story of his life in verse. Another, the last surviving former employee of the Roosevelt family, tells what it was like working in the summer home of the president of the United States. Finally, a now-deceased Lubec resident and former naturalist for the Roosevelt Park describes the ecology of the island.
Aside from those conversations, there are some fascinating stories about Campobello and her past which can be read from several sources (see bibliography). It is not my intention to duplicate extensively what has been written or said before about Campobello and her interesting history. Others have told it better and more completely than I can in the space and time available here. Rather I prefer to just introduce the island by way of the previous narrative and try to establish a feeling for her that has grown steadily during more than one hundred days I have spent there since October 1975. I hope that the pictures contained herein and the recorded words of her people will best describe what I found and love about Campobello.
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