About the Old Mason Boatyard:
Boat building used to be an important industry on Big Tancook.
Around 1827 the first boat was made on Tancook. It was a 29 ton schooner built by John Baker. He named the boat 3 brothers.
Alfred Langille was the first islander to open a boat building shop. It was around the 1860s.
A short time later Tancook became famous for building Tancook whalers and schooners. The first Tancook whaler was built by John Crooks and George Baker.
Others builders were: Joshua Mason, Alfred Langille, Amos Stevens, Alvin Stevens and Henry Levy.
These builders not only built the boats but were very skilled at sail-making.
Many different designs were constructed.
Some were: Round bow design
Spoon bow design
Knockabout design.
Reuben Heisler had a boat shop at Northwest Cove which burnt down in 1923. In 1924 he moved his boat building business to Chester. In 1907 Stanely Mason opened the Mason boatyard at Southeast Cove. The most boats were built between 1923 and 1932. The area around the boat shop was known as Canvas Town because the sails were made of canvas.
In the beginning all the work was done by hand. Around World War II tools and machinery were used. There was a pond beside the boatshop used for soaking planks.The pond is still there. The boats shop's business was closed down in 1970.
In 1981 Howard and Sam Rodenhiser built their first fishing vessel at the boatyard.That was the last fishing vessel built there.
The boat shop was destroyed in the early 1980s and was burnt down by Brian Hirtle.
Note: All that remains here of the Boat shop is a slab of cement where the picnic tables now sit for our rest area.
Tancook Island has its own sub-species of ring neck snakes. This area also overlooks the site of the old Mason Boatyard. See info on both below:
About Ringneck Snakes:
Tancook has its own sub-species of this snake. John Gilhen collects ringneck snakes each year from Tancook for a display at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax. My family has learned much about snakes from him as we help him everytime he comes. He has been fortunate enough to get pregnant snakes which lay eggs at the museumfor display. When the exhibit is over he returns the snakes to the place that they had origionally come from. We have learned how to tell the sex of a snake, when it is shedding and if it is pregnant.
This snake has a bluish black color on its back and sides. It has a yellow-orange or red-orange ring around its neck and continues down to the belly. It is rare for the snake to have an incomplete neck-band. The ring is roughly one to two and a half scales wide. Along the snakes belly there are around 150 scales.These snakes like to live in wooded areas, most commonly near pond shores, streams and bogs. Ringnecks hide under logs and rocks during the day and hunts at dusk. They have been seen crossing roads at night. Their favorite food is the red-backed Salamander. Some of them even eat the young of smooth green grass snakes and redbelly snakes.
The females lay many yellow-white eggs in damp places that are exposed to the sun's heat such as rotting wood or rocks. Females even lay eggs together, at times, in group nests. There had been a nest found with 117 eggs at one time. A female lays anywhere from one - eight eggs each year and hatch between late August and early October.
•Newly hatched babies (58 were measured) are 10 to 13 cm long.
•Adult males (69 measured) were 28 - 41 cm long
•Adult females (66 measured) were 26 - 54 cm long