Piper down: Village in New Brunswick wants giant sandpiper returned to pedestal
A new sculpture has been commissioned and a platform has been built -- but a New Brunswick village's oversized avian avatar has still not returned to its roost.
Standing 2.4 metres high and weighing 135 kilograms, the statue of a semipalmated sandpiper was once the pride of Dorchester.
Since 2001, Shep -- named after nearby Shepody Bay -- had pointed thousands of tourists and townsfolk to the mudflats of the Bay of Fundy, where the pint-sized shorebirds gather in late July in a pit stop on their flight from the Arctic to South America.
After the original wooden statue started to rot and had to be removed three years ago, local officials commissioned a $10,000 reincarnation made of steel, epoxy and fibreglass.
The result is now sitting in the workshop of artist Robin Hanson in French Lake, N.B., as municipal officials try to untangle what one former official said is "red tape" grounding the bird.
A recent municipal amalgamation has stalled payment for the sculpture.
"They invested in the platform, the steps and there's no bird," Kara Becker, the former deputy mayor of Dorchester, said with a laugh. "It actually looks terrible because, as you know, Dorchester has the prison there and it had a jail and it kind of looks like hanging gallows to me."
She said people in Dorchester are willing to raise funds for the statue.
The Dorchester village council commissioned Hanson to craft a replacement Shep, but on Jan. 1, the village was merged with Sackville and Pointe de Bute to form Tantramar. That meant Shep took a back seat.
Debbie Wiggins-Colwell, who was mayor of Dorchester and is now a councillor for Tantramar, said she is "working diligently" and is hopeful Shep will be on its perch before the community's annual sandpiper festival in July. Tantramar Mayor Andrew Black did not return a request for comment.
The semipalmated sandpiper looks similar to a sparrow, weighing about 20 grams -- less than a handful of coins -- with a 30-centimetre wingspan to power its long trek. Starting in early July and peaking by mid-August, millions of these birds stop on the Fundy beaches to feed and double their weight before making the 2,500-kilometre journey to South America, said Nick Lund, a network manager for Maine Audubon.
Hanson said he is confident the problem will get resolved and Shep will take its rightful place. No stranger to oversized sculptures, he said that when making a statue that's many times the size of the real bird, he has to be careful, because every mistake is magnified.
"Look, that's why you measure not once, not twice, but probably about 10 times for everything you do," he said.
Once Shep is on display, it will join a host of other larger-than-life roadside monuments in the province, including Blowhard the Bony Horse in Cardwell, Lady Potato in Grand Falls, a giant axe in Nackawic, a lobster in Shediac, and Buttercup the Cow and Daisy the Calf in Sussex.
Keith Dewar, a tourism and hospitality professor from the University of New Brunswick, said New Brunswick is sometimes called a "pass through province" leading to more popular East Coast destinations, such as the urban centre of Halifax, Anne of Green Gables' house in Prince Edward Island or Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia.
Novelty attractions are one way that smaller communities can convince travellers to pull over, Dewar said. "If you have a big sandpiper, big lobster or something else -- people might stop and buy a coffee."
Wiggins-Colwell said the area's economy relies heavily on the tourism brought in by the sandpipers, both tiny and enormous.
After COVID-19 shut down tourism for two years, it's all the more vital to have Shep on a platform showing tourists the way to the semipalmated sandpipers.
"We have to celebrate that," she said. "(The statue) is a very good way of doing it. It's kind of an icon."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2023.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
BREAKING Alice Munro, Nobel literature winner revered as short story master, dead at 92
Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world's most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history's most honoured short story writers, has died at age 92.
Latest updates on air quality alerts, and when the smoke may reach Ontario and Quebec
Wildfires have led Environment Canada to issue air quality advisories for parts of B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, as forecasters warn the smoke could drift farther east.
Are these Canada's best restaurants? Annual top 100 list revealed
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
Attack on prison van in France kills 2 officers, inmate escapes
Armed assailants killed two French prison officers and seriously wounded three others in an attack on a convoy in Normandy on Tuesday and an inmate escaped, officials said.
Maximum payout for LifeLabs class-action drops from $150 estimate to $7.86
Canadian LifeLabs customers who filed an application for a class-action settlement began receiving their payments this week, though at a much lower amount than initially expected.
Steal a car, lose your driver's licence for 10 years under new Ontario proposal
Repeat car thieves may face lengthy licence bans under proposed changes to Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act.
$1.6B parts plant for Honda electric vehicle batteries coming to Niagara Region
A Japanese company has announced it will build an approximately $1.6-billion plant in Ontario's Niagara Region that will make a key electric vehicle battery component as part of Honda's supply chain in the province.
B.C. brings in law on name changes on day that child killer's new identity revealed
The BC NDP have tabled legislation aimed at stopping people who have committed certain heinous acts from changing their names.
Manitoba premier to visit areas impacted by wildfire
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew will get a close-up look at the devastation from a large wildfire burning in northern Manitoba Tuesday.