Discover McNabs Island by the Friends of McNabs Island Society was a recent Christmas gift from Mark. It was a guidebook which first detailed the numerous hiking trails as well as island history, geology, flora and fauna. I most enjoyed the chapters on the first European settlements and shipwrecks around the island, however I found the chapters on animal and plant life to be dull. Maps within the text were impossible to read as the text was reduced to a ridiculously small size and a magnifying glass was of no help as the text was blurry. As stated on the front cover, a larger foldout map was included which I referred to often. The larger map was easy to read. I was surprised to see that aside from the archive photos that were in black-and-white, all of the photos were in colour. That must have come at a considerable expense to the publisher. The final part of the book outlined redevelopment plans over the past few decades, such as dividing the island into 2500 residential lots or converting it to a “Canadian Coney Island”, but thankfully none of those projects managed to break ground. Aside from the erosion caused by the weather and Mother Nature, McNabs Island is very much the same island as it was centuries ago with minimal evidence of a human footprint.
One week after I wrote this review I had the opportunity to visit McNabs Island.