GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF BEVERLEY LAKE
By Andy Smith

["Getting to the Bottom of Lake Beverley.” Eastern Woods & Waters: Atlantic Canada’s Own Outdoor Magazine, ‘Small Fry’ Department, Vol. 19 No. 6, December 2003, p. 11.]

The first time I’d paddled Nova Scotia’s Shelburne River and crossed Beverley Lake I hadn’t given its name a second thought. But shortly thereafter, Weymouth outfitter, Hantford Lewis, casually asked if I’d seen a plaque on Beverley Lake. I hadn’t.

One doesn’t usually go into the wilderness expecting to see a plaque. Nevertheless, Hantford assured me that he had once found a plaque—with Beverley’s full name, date of birth, and year he died—at a beach on the lake’s north shore.

Over the following two years I had asked other wilderness travelers if they had ever seen such a plaque. No one had. Seasoned Tobeatic Wilderness Area trippers and grizzled old men who had been traveling the Shelburne for a lifetime had never seen, or heard of, a plaque.

In July, 2003, on the third day of a week-long trip down the Shelburne River, my paddling partner, Roger Newell, and I arrived at the beach on Beverley Lake. After combing the beach, and searching high and low around it, we hadn’t found a thing. It was only then that Roger noticed an oddly textured rock under overhanging brush along the bank. As he turned over a thin, coarse piece of concrete, he knew he had found the plaque.

Imbedded in its fragile concrete frame was a 4x6 inch piece of brass covered with Plexiglas. The bottom of the concrete had broken away allowing the metal to tarnish, and pine needles, sand and other debris to accumulate, obscuring the inscription. With some cleaning the words became clear:

BEVERLEY LAKE
NAMED AFTER
THOMAS BEVERLEY HARRIS
SEPTEMBER 1, 1913 — SEPTEMBER 6, 1986

An intriguing story was later recounted to me by Margaret (Cote) Harris, the widow of Thomas Beverley Harris, and her son, Gregory, and pieced together from bits of old maps and the historical record.

As it turns out, Thomas Beverley “Bev” Harris had grown up in Annapolis. His father, Francis, a banker, concerned that his teenaged sons, Bev and Charles, were in need of more maturity and male discipline, enlisted a family acquaintance and head provincial forester, Mr. Otto Schierbeck, to put the boys to work for the summer. It was the mid-1920s.

The Tobeatic Game Sanctuary, established in 1927, was where the boys were to be tested. By Nova Scotia standards the Tobeatic was true wilderness, and according to Bev’s widow and son, traveling the Tobeatic with rugged wardens and woodsmen was to provide the character-building needed by rambunctious young school boys.

As Margaret recalls, at some point on their summer travels Mr. Schierbeck told the boys that in recognition of the their stalwart efforts he would name a lake for each. As it turned out, Beverley Lake on the Shelburne River was named for Bev, but for some reason no lake was ever named for Charles.

In the weeks following Bev’s death in 1986, Greg and a family friend, John Berkey, in memory of Bev, paddled for two days, through Kejimkujik National Park and up the Shelburne River to Beverley Lake, with a small bag of cement, a protective piece of Plexiglas, and an engraved plaque.

There was a strong northwest wind that fall day they entered Beverley Lake, but Greg and John managed to find a suitable beach site along the north shore where they mixed the cement with beach sand and lake water, and mounted the plaque on a large rock.

Years of freezing and thawing, high water and winds must have eventually dislodged the plaque from its mooring, washing it into the Beverley Lake. Had Hantford not discovered it in the water and placed if further up the beach, the plaque, and the public memory of Thomas Beverley Harris, may have been buried forever in the lake that still bears his name.

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