It's a Downeast winter sport to complain about the weather in February and March. Although there has been some cold, ice and snow this year, during some winters back in the old days Deer Islanders were able to travel about five miles across St. Andrews Bay without using a boat.
     In 1876 Calvin Pendleton almost made it walking over the ice from Deer Island to St. Andrews, but he had to give up before he reached the shore of the mainland. On March 1, 1907, Pendleton decided to repeat his attempt of 31 years before. This time, accompanied by his dog and a shotgun, he walked from Pendleton Island to within gunshot of "the beacon," where the Navy Bar Light was located.
     Luther Stuart, Sydney Lord and Bibber Stuart also decided to walk to St. Andrews from Deer Island. Dragging a dory lashed to a hand-sled for safety in case the ice broke up, they made it to their destination.
     Cleveland Lord of Deer Island remembers that his father Charles Lord and friend Roy Pendleton walked across from Adams Island to St. Andrews on February 11, 1919. The Lords were living on Adams Island, which is at the northeast end of Deer Island. Upon their approach to the mainland, the duo had to jump ice cakes. While they were in St. Andrews, Charles Lord and Pendleton had dinner with William Lord, who was a lighthouse keeper there.
     Another son of Charles Lord, the late Gerald Lord, estimated that his father was about 19 years old when he made the journey. "I don't think they took a thing with them," he said of the two men. "Not even a lifeboat."
     Gerald Lord said that his uncle Hazen and Wes Stuart also made the journey over the ice to St. Andrews at about the same time Charles Lord and Pendleton walked back and forth from the mainland. "I think he took a little dinghy when Hazen went."
     Luther Stuart of Deer Island walked from there to St. Andrews alone in 1923, something he had accomplished in 1907 with Sydney Lord and Bibber Stuart. While he was in the shiretown, he called on relatives.
     Two young ladies from Lord's Cove walked from Deer Island to St. Andrews on February 26, 1923. The Eastport Sentinel reported: "Misses Thelma Lambert and Rheta English have had the remarkable experience of walking to St. Andrews over the ice on Monday last. Although a number of men walked and skated to shore, they are the only ladies who had the courage to make the trip."
Thelma's younger sister, Vera Pine, was seven years old at the time. "Thelma and Rheta were best friends and attended the same school. Evidently, they planned this at school, came home noon hour and got permission from home and school to go. My dad was away and, when my mother and Rheta's gave their permission, they thought they were going along with the men who had planned the trip."
     "Did Thelma and Rheta go along with them? No. They went ahead," Vera recalls, noting that the girls started their journey from English Bar at Lambert's Cove. "I remember my sister saying they waltzed across the bay."
     "Our uncle, Andrew Stuart, was keeper of the lighthouse in St. Andrews, and they went to visit him. It wasn't frozen solid around the lighthouse, so they had to go from ice cake to ice cake," remembers Vera. "He was shocked, to say the least."
     Vera recalls that she and her mother walked over the ice to meet the girls upon their return to Deer Island. "What an experience!"
     "Many times, if I went to the back of Deer Island with a friend, I'd point to St. Andrews and say, 'That's where my sister walked over the ice and back,'" chuckles Vera.
     On March 24, 1923, the Eastport Sentinel reported: "Never in the recollection of the oldest inhabitant of Eastport was there ever so much ice as there has been this winter, particularly right now, when acre upon acre of heavy ice, which comes from St. Andrews Bay, is piled up on the shore. The bay between this city and the Canadian shore, two miles distant, is so filled with heavy ice that boat or steamer transportation is out of the question.
     "Yesterday a boat tried to make the Canadian shores, and after four hours struggle with the ice, gave up and returned to Eastport. The Grand Manan steamer has not come anywhere near making her scheduled trips, and fish boats and freighters are barred from making a landing in Eastport many and many a day."
      In early March, the Sentinel noted, "The very large amount of thick ice on the upper rivers and along the shore is said to be making sad havoc with the numerous fish weirs in those localities, the heavy ice carrying away portions of the strongest and newest of them, while the old ... are being totally destroyed."
     Fortunately, the winter of 2018-2019 has so far been nothing to really complain about.