Spaniard’s Bay mayor needs no more proof of global warming

By Mark Squibb/October 14, 2021

The past weekend’s storm didn’t come with as much hype or ado as Hurricane Larry did a few weeks ago, but folks in Spaniard’s Bay saw gigantic waves crashing on the community’s main road Saturday morning.

The RCMP had the road closed for a time, and days later, crews were still cleaning the mess up.

Route 70 is the main stretch of road that runs from South River to Old Perlican and is maintained by the provincial government. As such, much of the mess left by the weekend storm was the responsibility of the province, not Spaniard’s Bay council, though Mayor Paul Brazil noted there was some debris on local roads that needed to cleaned up by town staff.

“I don’t ever remember seeing waves that large before,” said Brazil. “Every three or four years we’ll have a big storm surge, and the waves will send rocks in across the road, and you’d have to clean it up. But for some reason this particular event seemed to be 10 to 15 percent stronger than probably in my memory, and I’ve been here 64 years.”

Brazil allowed large boulders could be placed to act as a breakwater in the future, but the boulders might prove to be an eyesore, so it wouldn’t be an ideal situation.

“So, I’m not sure if that’s really an option or not, it was just something that was thrown out to me out on the day of the storm,” said Brazil. “Everybody is talking about global warming and the seas rising and storms being stronger and lasting longer, and if anybody is a skeptic, I think this kind of stuff educates you to the fact that, ‘Yeah, they’re probably right.’”