Travel Chronicles 

Legends, Tides & Flowerpot Rocks
© copyright Deborah Carr 2002
(excerpt only)

Because their form is ever-changing, they have been honored with many names throughout the centuries, but one constant remains. New Brunswick's Hopewell Rocks has woven a spell of magic for generations and these unique rock formations still hold the power to invoke imagination and fascination.

Collectively, they have been called the Merry Dancers, les Demoiselles (the ladies) and the Flowerpots; individually they reveal distinctive personalities carved by nature. But no matter how you choose to describe them, the formations located along the Bay of Fundy, where the highest tides in the world wash the shores twice daily, are a favored destination for visitors to New Brunswick. 

The very nature and unruly temperament of the Bay of Fundy contributes to its preservation as one of the great unspoiled and natural places in the world. The Hopewell Rocks is the one extraordinary locale where all the remarkable elements of the bay come together and the precision and perfection of earth's symmetry is most evident. Where regardless of man's interventions and presence, geology, oceanography, astrology and ecology unite to create a most fascinating and educational milieu.

The native Mi'kmaq, who first knew these shores better than any, acknowledged the uniqueness of the Bay of Fundy and honored this special place by passing on colorful legends to explain the mystery of its existence. Their simple but vivid stories show that the unusual formations and high waters have made this a place of profound significance since man first discovered these waters.

One such legend tells the tale of unfortunate Mi'kmaq enslaved by the angry Whales inhabiting the bay. Some managed to escape as far as the beach, but were discovered and turned to stone by the water-bound captors. Their images remain encased in the cliffs and today, it takes little imagination to pick out the angular faces etched in the soft sandstone walls.

Today, with such monikers as Castle Cove, Lover's Arch, Mother-in-Law, Dinosaur Rock, and Turtle Rock, the formations spark the imagination of child and adult alike. Many years ago the phrase 'flowerpot rock' was coined to describe the vase-like shape of formations carved from the land by tidal action, each with stunted spruce growth and vegetation still clinging to its crest.

The Hopewell Rocks are actually a result of the erosion of a chain of mountains older than the Appalachians and higher than the Canadian Rockies. The reddish cliffs of conglomerate interspersed with sandstone formed as rocks and pebbles, washed down from these ancient mountains onto the level ground of the valley, then compressed and cemented together over millions of years. Later, during a period of tectonic activity, these layers of conglomerate, sandstone and shale lifted and tilted to a 30-45º angle. Vertical cracks or fissures divided the rock into large blocks.

With the retreat of the Ice Age, a mere 13,000 years ago, the bay filled with the glacial meltwater and the sea level rose. Tides became stronger and began to erode the soft sandstone along the shoreline. The surface water, filtering down through the vertical cracks in the cliffs, eroded from the top, gradually separating these large blocks of rock from the adjoining cliffs. Meanwhile, the powerful tidal action, twice daily, began to carve away the bases, leading to the creation of numerous sea caves, and most noteworthy…these world famous flowerpot rocks.

Today, while walking along the ocean's floor at low tide, visitors can see the evidence of this tilting in the layers of rock in the rock face, the vertical cracks which are the genesis of new formations, and the telltale high tide marks along the cliffs.

Most visitors, clambering over clusters of rounded mounds cloaked in rockweed, are unaware these are the burial mounds of age-old formations, toppled by the tide, and slowly disintegrating as the tides continue to sculpt the formations of the future and erase those of the past....