Keeping the way to the bay

Seal Cove’s unofficial mayor delighted with trestle replacement

By Craig Westcott \ April 28, 2023

Last week’s announcement the trestle at Seal Cove Pond is finally going to be replaced was more than welcome news for Carl Morgan.

The much-respected retired policeman, lifelong Seal Cove resident and hunting and fishing enthusiast, has been advocating since 1988 for improvements to the trestle, which guards the entrance from the pond to Conception Bay. Morgan long ago helped found, along with Calvin Morgan, the Seal Cove Pond Improvement Committee, to lobby all levels of government for action.

“The trestle was falling into the channel,” Morgan said last Friday after watching the announcement of upgrades to the last stretch of the T’Railway in CBS. “And I can tell you this is not just a Seal Cove project. This access to Conception Bay is used by boaters all over. They come from as far away as St. Mary’s to access Conception Bay through that channel.”

The trestle was built over a hundred years ago when the railway line was laid through Seal Cove. Though the railway company maintained it up to the closure of the service in the 1980s, and sporadic repairs have been made since, time has taken a toll on the structure with some of the stones making up its foundation slipping into the channel below.

Climate change and the accompanying rougher seas caused by it, Morgan added, have also made the channel increasingly difficult to navigate.

“I’ve been going back and forth there since before I could walk,” Morgan said. “This was always maintained by (DFO’s) Small Craft Harbours years ago, and then they turned it over to the Province. Since then there has been no maintenance done on it. Years ago, when there were lots of fishermen, that was always dredged out, cleaned up and that. That hasn’t happened now since back in the ’90s. So, it’s really in a bad state out there now. The railway put these iron retaining walls there to keep the rocks from going out in the channel and that’s all after rusting apart and there are rocks coming out in the channel.”

Morgan and other boaters have long worried that a time would come when the passage wouldn’t be safe to navigate at all.

“What that was going to mean was that there was going to be hundreds who would not have any access to Conception Bay through Seal Cove Pond,” he said.

Hence the more than three decades of lobbying by Morgan to convince government to take action.

“In the time that I’ve been involved there are a lot of politicians who have come and gone, but one person who has been there, not for the full 35 years, but in the last number of years has been Jennifer Lake,” said Morgan, referring to a senior Town of CBS official who acted as a liaison for the boaters. “She always kept our file on top and she always went to bat for us. And I was very pleased with that. And of course, Helen (Conway Ottenheimer) our MHA had a great deal of input into it. But this is a great day for the boaters of Conception Bay South. And like I said, not just Conception Bay South. There are not many boat launches in Mount Pearl. A lot of them come and use Seal Cove as an access point to Conception Bay.

Ironically enough, the situation with the trestle and channel is not quite as bad lately. But Morgan knows that is a temporary reprieve without substantial improvements being made.

“Now most of my boating years are behind me,” he admitted, laughing. “But the next generation behind me, they’ll be able to enjoy this for a long, long time, for years and years to come. It’s a great news story for us.”

Morgan said while boaters will be inconvenienced this summer when the work is underway, it’s worth it. “It’s going to be short term pain and long-term gain,” he reckoned. “There are going to be days when we’re not going to be able to use it, but that’s fine. You’ll be able to use it 25, 30 years from now, and that wouldn’t be true if we didn’t do something with it.”

Morgan is hopeful other improvements may follow. The current slipway has been there since the 1980s, when Morgan and his committee collected money from the various users and built it themselves. “That’s in a state of disrepair,” he allowed, “and most people just back their boats down over the beach over the little bit of concrete that is there. So, I’m hoping there is going to be a lot of stabilization done inside (the pond) using armour stone and there will be a place that people can, without too much hassle, dock their boats. There’s a wharf there now, but it’s a private wharf that people use.”

Morgan acknowledged Seal Cove is changing quickly, what with the extension of Peacekeepers Way and the installation of water and sewer the past few years. “But I’ll tell you one interesting thing,” he said. “It seems to me that the majority of people who move to Conception Bay South, who come to Seal Cove, are towing a boat. We’ve got a shoreline from Seal Cove to Topsail and people are coming with their boats in tow and there’s really no place to put their boats other than on a trailer. So, there is a big need for a small boat basin, not a yacht club, but for the 20-foot type boats. You just look at it. Behind nearly every house there is a boat on a trailer. So yes, it’s a great day, it’s certainly a great day for us.”