I first visited Sable in 1974 while working for a Calgary based survey-engineering company. One of the company’s clients was Mobil Oil, and I was there to take measurements at Mobil’s West Sable well....
I went to Sable Island. A land of magic. It had to do with luck. I was a member of the Read by the Sea committee casting about for a fundraiser; someone thought of Sable Island. That was ten years ago....
So, 9 years later, I’m on a flight returning from Portugal. After hours of looking from my window seat at the vastness of the Atlantic, something shining, small and crescent-shaped, caught my attention....
Two weeks on Sable Island … a universe contained enables a heart to open Boundless : holding the complexity of being so awake to the magnificent wonders of existence, and to the plastics that wash ashore. ...
I arrived on Sable Island in winter 2013—it was certainly like no where else I had ever experienced. I got off a helicopter and one of the first things I was told was: don’t step too close to the seals....
It was January, probably 2001, when I first visited Sable Island. I arranged to drop in for two days to do a series of stories about the island for the Toronto Star. But the island had other plans for me....
My grandfather, Daniel Brennan 1865-1950, was the first registered male child born on Sable Island. The family lived on the island while my great grandfather was with the staff of the life-saving service....
One day someone said something about an island of horses, an island of wild horses. I might have been five or six, but after that I waited and I waited, and eventually the name of the island appeared....
When my first attempt to visit the island was cancelled (rains washed out the runway) I wrote about all I dreamed of seeing on Sable. Months later, the words came to life when I finally arrived - magical....
By the end of the month, I felt so immersed in the rhythms of this island environment, where the forces of nature seemed barely influenced by humans, that I felt humbled, and didn’t want to go home....