Indian pipes (AKA ghost pipes) can be found in the forest on Beaubears Island in New Brunswick/Jennifer Bain

In the dark, dense white pine forest of New Brunswick’s Beaubears Island, once home to Mi’kmaq gatherings and wooden shipbuilders, translucent, ghostly wildflowers that look like a fungus and are shaped like a smoker’s pipe cluster along a lightly-used footpath.

The Indian pipe, also known as the ghost pipe or corpse plant, even has pale white scales along its white stalk. Monotropa uniflora doesn’t produce chlorophyll, the natural compound that usually give green plants their color. And while most plants use photosynthesis to turn sunshine, water and carbon dioxide into food, this rebellious perennial gets energy through myco-heterotrophy, forming a parasitic relationship with fungi.

The Indian pipe — long used by First Nations people for medicinal purposes — is widely found in shaded woods across North America. But some feel it’s also rare to stumble upon it, and this mid-August encounter is my first. The single flower on each stalk is erect, so these are mature because the flowers point down when they first emerge from the ground.

The Shipyard Trail, where we spotted Indian pipes, is on the side of the island that was once a hotbed of shipbuilding activity/Jennifer Bain

American poet Emily Dickinson famously called enigmatic Indian pipes “the preferred flower of life” when editor/writer Mabel Loomis Todd painted a cluster of six of them for her, feeling they resembled the reclusive poet who always wore white. In an 1882 thank-you letter, Dickinson gushed “I still cherish the clutch with which I bore it from the ground when a wondering child, and unearthly booty, and maturity only enhances mystery, never decreases it.”

One could argue that as much as we do know about this speck of an island, if we have a tour guide or have read a local history book, there is more the average visitor will miss knowing about its connections to the Mi’kmaq, French fur traders, Acadians fleeing persecution and ambitious shipbuilders.

But before we delve into that, lets untangle some complicated nomenclature and geography. Parks Canada has one somewhat succinct name — Boishébert and Beaubears Island Shipbuilding National Historic Sites — for two separate places here in Greater Miramichi north of Moncton.

At Wilsons Point, there is a monument that speaks to the Acadian deportation/Jennifer Bain

Boishébert National Historic Site, at Wilsons Point across a narrow channel from Beaubears Island, is the site of an Acadian refuge established in the mid-1750s by French-Canadian officer Charles Deschamps de Boishébert.

The Beaubears Island Shipbuilding National Historic Site, J. Leonard O’Brien Memorial is the mouthful of a name for the protected island where the Northwest and Southwest Miramichi rivers meet. Beaubears was once vital to the shipbuilding industry since lumber could easily be floated down from the forests along the river. New ships could be moored just offshore in the relatively deep water during the final stages of construction.

“It is the only known undisturbed archaeological site associated with New Brunswick’s 19th-century wooden shipbuilding industry,” reads signage inside the Beaubears Island Interpretive Centre, which is the third piece of this puzzle. It’s on the mainland across from the island and run by the Friends of Beaubears Island.

Interpretive displays speak to the time when the Mi'kmaq were stewards of Beaubears Island and fished for eel in the Miramichi River/Jennifer Bain

Long before the arrival of Europeans, the Mi’kmaq were stewards of the island they called Quoomeneegook (Island of Pines) and Wilsons Point for at least 2,000 years as a meeting spot and a place within their ancestral hunting and fishing grounds to divide their harvests of eel, salmon, sturgeon, seal and more.

French fur traders, like Richard Denys, set up trading posts in the area beginning in the late 1600s.

The island was an essential part of the protection of Boishébert’s Camp d’Espérance (Camp of Hope) at Wilsons Point, which sheltered thousands of Acadians fleeing deportation from Nova Scotia by the British in the 1750s. The refugees hoped this area was a safe place for a fresh start and that the salmon fishery would help them survive. But promised provisions never arrived, and hundreds (the exact number isn't known) of Acadians died of famine, smallpox and a treacherous fishing journey before abandoning the encampment.

Unless you have a guide, you wouldn't realize that this area shows indents in the forest floor where shipbuilding once took place/Jennifer Bain

Beaubears then became the epicenter of an extensive shipbuilding industry. Between 1788 and 1866, more than 50 ships were built here and sailed across the world to take part in the Napoleonic Wars, immigration voyages to Australia, the transport of gunpowder manufactured in South America, the Crimean War, the California Gold Rush and the American Civil War.

James Fraser set up a large shipyard on the island and ran it for nearly four decades. Scottish businessman Peter Russell owned Beaubears from 1837 to 1850 and built 21 sailing ships. He later became Mormon and sold everything to donate to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A simple stone tomb on the island is said to contain the remains of seven of Russell's nine children

The shipyard’s demise is blamed on increasing global competition combined with the gradual rise of steam-powered ships, and so the island’s last ship was completed in 1866. Three years later, a fire destroyed the sawmill that was the island’s last employer. The next year the last resident moved to the mainland.

The Russell family tomb is perhaps the only obvious structure left on Beaubears Island/Jennifer Bain

The island lurched from owner to owner, including Father of Confederation Peter Mitchell (1871-1893), lumber baron Hubert Sinclair (1893-1906), Nevada mine owner Florence McKane (1906-1919) and Norwegian businessman August Butenschen (1919-1920).

Picnics were popular for a spell, and the remains of a small baseball diamond still exist. But many buildings burned down, fell into ruins or were moved away.

The last private owner, J. Leonard O’Brien, became the island’s fierce protector in 1920 and then bequeathed the land to the Government of Canada upon his death in 1973. O'Brien insisted the island be used as a public park, never be sold commercially or developed, and never be sullied by motor vehicles.

Outhouses are nestled discreetly among the pines on Beaubears Island/Jennifer Bain

Parks Canada has preserved the site more or less as O’Brien left it, give or take a few signs, outhouses, benches and a seasonal dock. There is one large trail map to show just three main trails and a couple more that create shortcuts.

“Without a trained eye it is hard to find traces of Beaubears Island’s shipbuilding industry, but they are there,” interpretive signage admits. “Archaeologists have done some work that has provided us with a window into the Island’s glory days as a shipyard community. We hope, one day, there will be more discoveries, giving us greater insight into the people who lived and worked on the Island.”

I walk three of the trails with Niki Breau Kavanagh and Shawn McCarthy of the Friends of Beaubears Island. Breau Kavanagh is the full-time executive director. Now a volunteer, McCarthy was the non-profit's long-time executive director and wrote Fair Winds and Rough Fortunes: A History of Beaubears Island.

Friends of Beaubears Island volunteer Shawn McCarthy and executive director Niki Breau Kavanagh sit on two Parks Canada red chairs on the island/Jennifer Bain

In his book, McCarthy notes that archaeologists studied the island in 1977 (just before Canada announced the national historic site designation) and discovered the foundations of several houses, the location of the main shipbuilding site and old sawpits. The area was mapped and artifacts were collected and catalogued. The exact locations of many of the finds were never made public and metal detectors are banned.

Locals long called the 161-acre Beaubears “the historic park no one can visit,” McCarthy remembers. “For years, nothing happened.” It wasn’t until the non-profit group formed with a mission to “preserve, promote and interpret” the sites that visitors were welcomed beginning in 2000. It's free to visit the island, but there are fees for the ferry and interpretive center.

Despite hundreds of years of activity, two-thirds of the island was never cleared and so remains densely forested. Beaubears boasts one of the oldest Acadian forests in the Maritimes and is again the Island of Pines as the Mi’kmaq named it, thanks in no small part to the fact it escaped the Great Miramichi Fire of 1825.

There's no signage to explain this depression in the ground, but it was once a two-storey home owned by the Fraser shipbuilding family/Jennifer Bain

The island is just 2.3 kilometres (1.4 miles) long and 0.5 kilometres (0.3 miles) wide at its widest point. A pontoon boat ferries visitors between the interpretation center — built to resemble a trading post — and the island for day trips between June and September.

It’s a little dated now, but in 2005 the Friends of Beaubears Island commissioned an inventory of the island’s vascular plants and logged 254 native and 69 introduced species. (Vascular plants include club-mosses, horsetails, ferns, trees, shrubs and wildflowers and exclude fungi, mosses, liverworts, lichens or algae.) Also found were two gourmet mushrooms (chanterelles and king boletes), 34 species of birds and a healthy red fox population. Four rare plant species include hooded arrowhead, American germander, Rugel’s plantain and Hayden’s (cloud) sedge.

The Indian pipe isn’t mentioned in a booklet about the inventory, but it is shown on a card handed out at the interpretation center for plants to watch for in July along Quoomeneegook Trail — though I saw it in August along the Shipyard Trail.

“I think you’re just lucky to see them on the island,” says Breau Kavanagh. “They’re not usual. Most people have never seen them.”

Miramichi River Boat Tours speaks about, but doesn't pass, Beaubears Island as it gives visitors a taste of river life/Jennifer Bain

Then again, only an intrepid few people — 1,500 to 2,000 — venture to Beaubears Island each year. We seem to have Beaubears almost to ourselves on this Monday in late summer. A few days later when I take a narrated sunset cruise with Miramichi River Boat Tours, it's packed even though it's the sixth sailing of the day. It travels towards the downtown core of Miramichi, not the quiet route by Beaubears, but it does sing the praises of the little-known national historic site that's sadly not on the radar of most visitors.

As I return to the pontoon boat for the quick trip back to shore, I'm treated to a journey down one side of the island towards Wilsons Point. I hear about how a wayward black bear wound up on the island for a short spell during the pandemic, and how much people love the mating bald eagles that call it home.

Donna Savoy, the long-time tour boat captain who’s training a new captain (Reg Saunders) identifies some of the plants I've photographed and reveals that she recently learned that one of her Acadian ancestors was a refugee here during the deporation era. “I grew up looking at the island and not knowing I had any connection to it,” Savoy muses.

This pontoon boat acts as a seasonal ferry to get visitors to Beaubears Island/Jennifer Bain

McCarthy chimes in that his great, great grandfather was actually born on Beaubears Island. He has been coming to — and loving — the island since he was a child, and working to spread the word about it since 2001.

As much as McCarthy knows the historical side of things inside out, he's not particularly excited by the Indian pipes I can't stop stop talking about and admits that natural history is not his passion. We talk about the minimal interpretive signage on the island, the deliberate lack of infrastructure and the need to strike the right balance between preservation and enjoyment. 

“For many, the Island has been and always will be a retreat, a sanctuary from the cares of the world and a place to find solace and recreation,” McCarthy concludes in Fair Winds and Rough Fortunes. “To others, the Island is a sacred space, to (be) respected and admired, not set upon recklessly in the pursuit of amusement.”