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Provincial ownership of Minister's Island has been a mixed blessing. The Government has done sporadic repair work over the years. Local stonemason John Gibson has replaced all of the chimneys in the main building, a large section of the windmill, and the entire north wall of the house. A new roof has been installed on the main building, at a cost of $100,000. The Island has been protected from destruction, but also from development and, until recently, from ordinary local visitation.As concerns the latter, the case of Bill Clarke is a rather sad illustration. After the Island's purchase in 1977, Mr. Clarke continued to make his trips across the bar to plant flowers along the drive leading to the main house. This was entirely of his own volition; he wasn't a Government employee. Then one day he found the gate locked against him. The problem—to some at least—was that as an older man Mr. Clarke might possibly come to harm over there and there would be no immediate assistance available. It was for his own good. That was a sad day for Bill Clarke, his son Henry remembers. His family had worked the Island since the turn of the century, he himself had been born there, and his children raised there. In effect, he had been locked out of his own home. Bill Clarke returned home a sad man that day, and never went back. The locals generally have found the gates locked against them as well. It's a kind of irony that the Island which under the Van Hornes and even the Hosslers and Norman Langdon, was always accessible to local residents, was, in 1982, the year in which the Province acquired full ownership, restricted from free access. Said David Myles of Historical Resources, "We're going to protect the place." That was partly because archeological digs in the late seventies and before had revealed a significant native presence dating back thousands of years (the Island was designated a National Historic Site in 1978 for his prehistorical heritage), and partly because the Province simply didn't have the money or staff to keep the Island properly supervised. During the auction, said Myles, "people stole the doorknobs right out of the house."
A small concession was granted in 1983, when a local business called Osprey Travel was allowed to take tours over on a limited basis. Only two, in fact, took place that summer. As for development, there was a small flurry of activity in 1984, when the first Minister's Island Committee was formed locally and plans drawn up for what might, in the best of all possible worlds, be done with the place. Impetus for the formation of the Committee had come a few years earlier when several groups had expressed an interest in the Island. Ballet East, a group out of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, wanted to use it for a summer music camp. Unfortunately, Government was unable to make a decision before the October 1983 deadline.
A local equestrian group expressed an interest in the Island around that time, the New Brunswick Federation of Agriculture considered the idea of reactivating the old farm, and as a result of a meeting of provincial and federal parks personnel who met in St. Andrews for a Parks Canada training session, a master plan was drawn up for the Island as a provincial park. The Province seemed receptive to ideas, said Dick Wilbur, first Chair of the new group, and so a comprehensive development scheme was put together. The Committee agreed that vehicular access would be inappropriate except for shuttle buses and a ferry service. The Island would be divided into three-fold use: the northern end would be kept as a wilderness area, for use by Scouts, for example; the center would concentrate on farm operation, perhaps with an equestrian school; and the southern part, containing Covenhoven, should be restored to at least functionality, with visitor tours conducted by horse-drawn carriages, featuring interpretive centers and picnic grounds. The farm should be a working farm, not a Kings Landing operation, with horse power used as extensively as in Van Horne's day. Unfortunately, nothing came of the Committee's recommendations that summer because the poor condition of some of the buildings made the cost of installing adequate fire protection equipment prohibitively high.
And in one form or another, that has been the story of Minister's Island ever since. In 1985, for example, Ottawa businessman Malcolm Thorne, managing director of Ottawa-based St. Andrews Marine Center Corporation, spent a fair bit of change drawing up plans for a $45 million condominium and resort facility featuring time-shared condos, marina, boardwalk and shops, railway museum, executive cottages—and public access. That dream died on the drawing board. In 1990 Fredericton newscaster Lane McIntosh put together something he called the "Minister's Island Project," hoping to raise public awareness of this neglected resource. McIntosh had a green vision of the Island. He foresaw not only tourism there, but "an international center demonstrating organic farming, wind power, solar power, tidal power, botanical gardening, and ecological pursuits." The only thing that could be called development happened in 1993 when the Government opened up the Island for more extensive visitor traffic.
In the summer of 1993 hundreds flocked over on guided tours to catch a small glimpse of history. Liberal Premier Frank McKenna created a bit of a stir in the fall of that year when he announced portentously that "We have a major proposal in front of us for Minister's Island from very responsible people with a history of successful development." This company proposed a $35 million dollar development with both private and public funds. It would be a kind of Xanadu, with gardens restored to period condition, re-purchase of original furniture and paintings, spa, health food restaurant, sea baths, and with Covenhoven as a kind of bed and breakfast. The unnamed company hoped to draw 400,000 visitors to the Island each year, and to grease the wheels would publish a video and book. But not a nickel will be spent, McKenna warned, "unless the people of St. Andrews want it." Two months later it was revealed that the developer in question, Bruce McLaughlin of Ontario-based Brumac Corp., was actually broke, or soon would be, as he was facing a lawsuit from the Ontario Securities Commission for misappropriation of funds. No, there would not likely be any development on Minister's Island by Mr. McLaughlin.
About the only significant event since that time has been the designation of Minister's Island a second time as a National Historic Site—this time in 1998 for its Van Horne associations. In the summer of 2006 Conservative Premier Bernard Lord announced $450,000 in funding to help maintain and restore the Island, but those present at the small ceremony in the empty drawing room of Covenhoven must have felt all too keenly the inadequacy of even this amount of money towards doing anything significant on the estate. Since Provincial ownership the Island has been basically on life support. For political reasons Government could not afford to lose it, but for economic reasons it cannot afford to restore it. And so its exists in a kind of limbo.
To some extent it has been a victim of its own splendour. Only a multimillionaire with a keen love of the Island could do anything towards bringing it back to life, and yet provincial ownership means that that option, even if it were a possibility, could not be effected. Memories of Norman Langdon preclude it. In 2003 a Canadian movie directed by Marc Grenier called Red Rover was filmed partially on Minister's Island. It was a horror movie, focusing on murder and the occult, and a good part of its creepiness was the old home of Covenhoven itself, standing magnificent and decayed on a remote offshore island. It was an index of how far the estate had fallen from its former grandeur, that a ghost story could be set upon it. Visitors to the Island today must still, even in the daytime, feel sometimes a sense of eeriness, standing in the midst of such faded splendour, wondering how anything so lofty could have fallen so far from grace.