Peggys Cove: on sacred ground

This Nova Scotian village made headlines when Swissair Flight 111 crashed off its coast four years ago Monday. But the province is determined to shelter the memorial from commercialism and mass tourism

By LASZLO BUHASZ
TRAVEL WRITER


Saturday, August 31, 2002 – Print Edition, Page T4

PEGGYS COVE, NOVA SCOTIA -- The sea-carved coast of Nova Scotia between Halifax and Yarmouth at the province's southwestern tip can be heartbreakingly beautiful.

Villages with brightly painted clapboard houses hug blue-water coves framed by dark forests. Headlands are pounded by great Atlantic swells that explode in white spray over rocks they have been sculpting for millions of years.

Legendary fishing and ship-building centres -- such as Lunenburg, Mahone Bay and Chester -- have been restored and buffed into living museums celebrating their Victorian mercantile glory. At every turn, a visitor is reminded that history has run long and deep here since John Cabot arrived in 1497.

But this rugged coastline has also seen more than its share of tragedy.

And nowhere along Nova Scotia's south shore has beauty been so entwined with tragedy than at Peggys Cove, a tiny fishing village of less than 100 full-time residents and a lighthouse that is arguably the most photographed spot in Eastern Canada.

Ever since W. R. McAskill photographed it as "Quiet Cove" in 1921, photographers, artists and tourists have come here to capture its many moods. For decades, they have been seduced by the beauty of its huge pale-granite humps, the octagonal white lighthouse perched at the frothing shore, the tiny harbour with its weathered fish sheds clinging to the rocks like barnacles, and the colourful fishing boats beside docks heaped with lobster traps and floats.

Four years ago, images of Peggys Cove invaded the living rooms of the world when the village found itself in the international spotlight for an entirely different reason. About 10:30 p.m., Sept. 2, 1998, a Swissair D-11 jetliner, bound from New York City to Geneva, crashed into frigid, shallow waters about 10 kilometres off the coast here, killing all 229 people aboard.

The catastrophe of Flight 111, the drama of futile search-and-rescue attempts, grieving relatives and the kindness of the villagers were international television fodder for days.

The result was predictable: Tourism in Peggys Cove has boomed.

Much of this has been due to the recent increase in cruise-ship stops in Halifax, a 40-minute drive away, and to the introduction of a high-speed ferry service between ports in Maine and Yarmouth that bring a growing number of American visitors. But there's no denying that curiosity about the site of the plane crash has played a role.

In the summer, the huge parking lot behind a modern restaurant and gift shop -- the one you never see in tourist brochures -- is filled with dozens of buses carrying group tours and visitors on day excursions from cruise ships. By noon, hundreds of cars jockey for position on the narrow road that winds through the village between the small boutiques, caf�s and craft shops.

A bus driver, smoking a cigarette near the rank of portable toilets at the edge of the parking lot, shrugs and says that while most of his passengers are interested in Peggys Cove, they also want to know about the crash.

"It's usually one of the first things they ask about," he says. " 'Show us where it went down,' they say. Not much I can do but point out to sea."

Small hotels and B & Bs here, as well as in communities nearby, are almost fully booked for the week of the crash's anniversary. But many of these guests have a more personal interest in being here than simple morbid curiosity. They are the family or friends of those who perished, and for them there is a special spot of remembrance discreetly removed from the commercial bustle of the village itself.

Just down the road in Bayswater, on a barren stretch of rocky shore on St. Margaret's Bay, a dramatic memorial to the victims and those who rushed to the crash site to search for survivors has been erected at the ocean's edge. A giant boulder was split in half and tilted toward the water, the two halves like cupped hands. There are three notches at the top of the stones to represent the number 111. On their flat surfaces are engraved the names of the dead and a dedication:

"In memory of the 229 men, women and children aboard Swissair Flight 111 who vanished off these shores September 2, 1998. They have been joined to the sky and the sea."

It is a place of great beauty and dignity that Nova Scotia is determined to shelter from commercialism. You won't find it mentioned in provincial tourist literature, and a tiny parking lot at the head of the winding trail leading to the memorial discourages crowding and preserves the peace of those who have come to remember their dead. Its image will never be exploited on postcards, T-shirts or coffee cups.

Both the tragedy of the Swissair crash and the importance of the memorial here have been been overshadowed by the events of the terrorist attacks almost exactly three years later in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But for those who lost family and friends here, it will always be sacred ground.

This is just the most recent memorial to tragedy along these shores. On the outskirts of Peggys Cove is the William E. deGarthe Memorial Provincial Park with a 30-metre-long frieze the artist sculpted from a granite outcropping. It depicts a guardian angel above 32 of the village's fishermen and their families, most descendents of the six German families that settled the cove in 1811. It is a potent reminder of the divine protection most fishermen here hoped for, and often didn't receive, as they wrested a living from the treacherous waters.

And, along Route 333 toward Halifax, at another tiny village called Terence Bay, the SS Atlantic Heritage Park is a memorial to a much earlier, and even greater, disaster. The Atlantic, a White Star liner, ran aground near here in 1873 and 500 people lost their lives in the storm-whipped waves. It was the greatest sea disaster before the Titanic.

On a summer day, with the sun sparkling on the water along this beautiful coast, it is well to remember that this same sea can also be a cruel mistress.
For a copy of Nova Scotia's Doers and Dreamers guide to the province, or for information and reservations, phone (800) 565-0000 or visit http://www.exploreNS.com.


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