PREFACE 
     
    
   
   
    
     In November 1953, three men were forced by weather to spend 
     
     the 
     
    

    
     night as the only persons on Boughton Island. In this book there 
     
     is an account of that event. The author, the Reverend John Paine 
     
     ended his account of the adventure with this comment: 
     
    
   
   
    
     word about Boughton Island itself. This is one of the 
     
    

    
     historically important spots in the Province. Many generations 
     
     of hard—working and honest people called it home. Now it has 
     
     been abandoned and there is a touch of sadness in its forlorn 
     
     and waste places. Houses which once echoed the noisiness and 
     
     laughter of children, and which were the centre-pieces of life with 
     
     its alternate lights and shadows, are now falling rapidly into decay. 
     
     Once fertile land will soon be wilderness. There is desolation on 
     
     every side. 
     
    

    
     Certain/y no one would blame the last remaining residents 
     
     for evacuating the island, and it may be assumed that they did so 
     
     reluctant/y and only under pressure of physical difficulties which 
     
     seemed to have no other solution. Nevertheless, it seems a pity 
     
     that successive governments have not seen their way clear to 
     
     devise some plan whereby the little island-community might have 
     
     been given such transportation facilities as would have made 
     
     abandonment of their homes unnecessary. 
     
    
   
   
    
     My father, Andrew Macdonald, was one of the three who were 
     
     forced by bad weather to spend a cold November night on 
     
     Boughton Island. He and his brother Gerald operated their store, 
     
     known as R.J's, with a view of Cardigan River. In 1955 he and my 
     
     mother drove across Canada and my father said that nothing they 
     
     had seen on that journey appealed to him as much as the view 
     
     down the Cardigan River to Boughton Island. 
     
    
   
   
    
     This book is lovingly dedicated to his memory.