Deer Island is one of the Fundy Islands at the entrance to Passamaquoddy Bay in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. Settled in the 18th century primarily by Loyalists fleeing the United States, it remains a fishing settlement built around fishing, aquaculture, herring weirs and lobster pounds. The Old Sow tidal whirlpool, the largest in the western hemisphere, is off its southern coast.
Although it has only a third the population it had before the 1950s,
History
Early Settlement
There are "traces" of visits to the island by indigenous Passamaquoddys, although no settlement by either the natives or French appears to have ever been attempted In 1604, Samuel de Champlain noted that a crewmember, Mssr. Poutrincourt, had almost become lost on the island. A 1733 map by Cyprian Southack suggested there may have been French homes built at one time on the southern tip of Deer Island.
thumb|A 1733 map showing Campobello and Deer Island believed to be a single island.
The origin of the name is attributed <!-- either to Estêvão Gomes having dubbed the Penobscot River the "River of Deer" in 1525 leading to the island's similar naming, or --> to a Passamaquoddy legend about the island being a deer chased by wolves represented by the Wolf Islands. At this time, Col. Gorham and Col. Benjamin Church were sent to Indian Island to raid the natives and guard over the Le Treille family. In 1964, Reginald Richardson was scuba-diving and discovered the wreck of an unidentified colony ship with its cannonade, wine and anchor near the Sandy Island ledges off Deer Island, dated between 1770-1790, which Cyril Moore prepared for the New Brunswick Museum.
The British considered Deer Island's geography to be easily defended against possible American hostility, but to lack a deep-water harbour suitable for shipping.
The government assigned formal ownership of Deer Island to Joseph William Gorham<!-- also, Gorman and Goreham --> on August 21, 1767 on condition that he settle families there as per an agreement of Dec 2 1766. It was presumed to be influenced by Gorham being the son or grandson of the original Col. Gorham. and Farrell was also granted timberland on the Digdeguash which went undeveloped. Meanwhile Gorham was tasked with the Two Sisters ship in the 1783 evacuation of the Second Fleet of New York to Saint John.
Farrell led a multifaceted life, gifting land and selling cheaply on the island to families that would settle there - regaling them with tales of his marriage to a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Charlotte, his duels and time in battle as a British lieutenant.
There was a boundary dispute with the United States over ownership of nearly all the Passamaquoddy Islands, which was settled by the 1817 Passamaquoddy Bay Commission which reaffirmed an 1803 commitment that only Moose, Frederick and Dudley Islands would not be British.
Thomas Farrell re-settled in New Brunswick post-Revolution, as the southwest corner of the province was notably fluid in its allegiance between the two nations and not concerned with his American service, Patrick Flinn held in 1805 that he'd been undisturbed as a squatter improving a family farm and controlling Bar Island since the 1780s, other than a brief period a Thomas Doyle had spent a season building a fishing camp on the southern tip which Flinn later sold to Warren Hathaway, claiming at no time did Thomas Farrell play any role on Bar Island. including boys not yet adults, collectively sought 200 acres apiece guided by lawyer Ward Chipman including ironically threatening that if not granted title deeds by the British government in Canada they would remove themselves to the United States and swear loyalty there - while still seeking to impress upon the Crown Farrell's disloyalty in having done the same.]]
Ultimately the government re-granted the land back to Thomas Farrell in 1810, denying the families' petitions - leading author Martha Barto to surmise it may have been to protect the large tracts of land held by lumber and shipping magnates in St. Andrews on the mainland, as non-petitioners, John Wilson, Thomas Wyer, Dr. John Calef, Robert and William Pagan each had a vested interest in Farrell retaining ownership. On one occasion he travelled to Fredericton with the intent of challenging MLA Nathan Frink to a duel, as was his custom. The re-grant noted that the island comprised approximately 6,300 acres - of which 4,000 acres were unsold - recognising the sales and gifts Farrell had given over the years.
Heyday of the mid-to-late 19th century
thumb|A newsprint advertisement.
In 1866, in response to the ongoing Fenian Raids meant to destabilise and drain British forces which resulted in a brief paramilitary venture to seize Campobello, the 3rd Battalion of Charlotte County Militia were stationed on Deer Island although primarily overseen by those from Grand Manan.
In September 1869 a large fire tore through the barn, harnesses, wagons and ten tons of hay that belonged to Captain Walter Calder, while he was away in PEI. In October 1869, the Saxby Gale destroyed the Deer Island schooner Echo, with three men drowned and destroyed a vast wharf infrastructure that covered much of the Leonardville harbour in a complex of buildings, sheds, and smokehouses; the area never recovered to the industry it had been prior to the storm.
In 1873, the island's first Lobster Cannery opened - it later developed the world's largest lobster pound holding up to a million pounds of live lobster near Kalamee's Crick.
In 1874, Charles Dudley Warner advocated that the United States seize Deer Island and Campobello by force, to the point of war if necessary - to ensure Canada was not used against the United States. By 1875, T.K. Parker and J.M. Lord ran large herring smokehouses, and also produced pumice fertilizer.
As of 1898, the island's businesses were listed as general shops run by Arthur Barteau, Jamesm Cline, Charles and Frank Lambert, Edwin McNeil, Nettie Poland, FW, GE and Winslow Richardson and GH Smith - as well as Seth Johnson's blacksmithing, James Hadden's coal, AA Westmore and JA Greenlaw's sardines, John Welch's lobster.
20th and 21st centuries
[[File:Deer Island steamer Viking.png|thumb|The steamship Viking, assisted by the SS Arbutus, began transporting passengers, mail and freight to Deer Island in 1896.
After the Boer War, accomplished sportsman Arnie Arneson started a West Isles Volunteer Rifle Association which practised with .303 Lee-Enfields in Seward Welch's field and at Cumming's Cove, as a reserve militia unit.
In 1903, island residents formed a joint stock company, the West Isles Telephone Company Ltd, and sold 400 shares at $5 apiece, then connected the island by telephone and within a year connected to the telephone exchange in Eastport, Maine. and taken over by the NB Telephone Company in 1953. Flora C. Fountain left Cummings Cove and spent thirty years teaching with the Perkins Institute for the Blind. By 1910, there was a baseball team dubbed the Cresants of Lords Cove which would play against Lubec, Maine. By 1970, an amateur ice hockey team called the Islanders was playing against teams on the mainland. In the 1911 Canadian federal election, Dow Grass of Deer Island was arrested for tampering with ballot boxes leading to the Sunbury—Queen's riding's invalidation of results.
In 1913, Hartley Wentworth and Frank Macdonald started a Fairhaven oil refining business "Swift Tide Oil" collecting waste oil from the ten sardine factories operating on the island, refined it and sold it to the St. Croix Soap Company. In July 1915, the number of automobiles on the island doubled as Edward Morissey, G.B. Stuart and Will Welsh each brought over their new purchases. Vernon Stuart owned two light aeroplanes which he flew from Deer Island to Grand Manan, until abandoning the hobby after crashing on a Grand Manan beach.
In July 1921 a fire destroyed much of the forest southeast of Fairhaven.
In 1925, James S. Lord became the first island resident to reach provincial legislature as the representative for Charlotte County; he was also a key figure in the Ku Klux Klan's operations in Atlantic Canada.
In 1928, the Bremen flight became the first to cross the Atlantic from Europe to North America flying over Deer Island before its crash landing in Quebec. On the return flight of its three crewmen, heavy fog required them to set down their amphibious plane just off the shore of Richardson boathouse. but within a day it was reported to have actually been a large explosion of dynamite on Deer Island.
thumb|A 1928 etching by [[Howard Cook, of a home on Deer Island.]]
In World War II, a German U-boat had placed a German espionage agent into Atlantic Canada having dropped, and later retrieved, him at Northwest Harbour on Deer Island where the ship had been spotted by Osgood Leslie. A blacksmith operation by Edward Gardener, and a shop, were situated in Richardson.]]
By 1945, Conley's Lobster on the island claimed to be the world's largest independent lobster shipper, accounting for 15% of all Canadian lobster.
In 1959, R. Greenlaw opened the 200-seat Mayfair Theatre at Chocolate Cove, but operated only four years. The Quoddy Tides newspaper was initially typeset on Deer Island in the 1960s, with material then being sent on fishing boats to Eastport, Maine for final production. At this time, Deer Island also had a 50-member band that played through the region.
In 1973, residents formed the "Fundy Weir Fisherman's Association", pressuring government to end the new purse seine ships and fish meal industries that led to overfishing. In 1978, the Department of Fisheries established experimental Salmon aquaculture sites on Deer Island, and through the 1980s aquaculture grew to replace some of the traditional fishing businesses. The 1993 closure of the sardine factory in Fairhaven left 20% of the island unemployed. In 2023, the island made national headlines when residents relied on "significant and surprising" community vigilantism "taking policing matters into their own hands", leading to RCMP comments that Deer Island appeared as a "lawless community" as part of a "long history of vigilante justice in Southwest New Brunswick" including the year before in McAdam.
History of Agriculture
thumb|Deer Island, from the 1810 survey by Benjamin R. Jones
The island's soil is listed as ideal for potatoes, oats and vegetables,
History of Religion
thumb|Lloyd Johnson was acquitted of murder after shooting James Linwood Lord in an early-morning drunken altercation on Trecartens Hill in Lords Cove in December 1925. Lord had signed a deathbed statement that Johnson didn't deserve the blame, and brothers Charles and Hazen Lord testified to witnessing the gun go off accidentally when Lord lunged at Johnson when provoked. Johnson noted he'd gone to Richardson's Store and drank two bottles of liquor with the brothers before arranging a doctor and boat to the hospital where Lord later died.
In 1825, an auxiliary "Indian Island and Deer Island Bible Society" was formed.
In June 1828, missionary Nancy Towle (associated with The Awakening's Christian Connexion radical non-doctrinal reformism) spent three days on Deer Island and won fifty converts. In 1846, Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens was sent to Campobello and Deer Islanda where he spent three years as a catechist and teacher.
In 1848, an article was published in the Christian Visitor noting the failure of Christian missions to establish any church at all on Deer Island, which was rebutted by islanders who countered that they were largely living as Campbellites and simply lacked formal services. On Sept 13 1850, Lord's Cove became the first Churches of Christ congregation in New Brunswick, which was led by J.A. Lord editor of the Christian Standard.
The island was historically a dry county as Farrell had himself been a prohibitionist for the last thirty years of his life during which he became devoutly religious and fond of the Old Testament, In 1874, the International Organisation of Good Templars abstinence fraternal order held its annual meeting in Lords Cove, Deer Island.
As of 1876, a second Church of Christ was planted at Bar Island Harbour, with Free Will Baptist and short-lived Methodist churches elsewhere on the island. From 1874-1906, the Methodist church attempted to plant a seed of Arminian doctrine making repeated efforts to build a congregation on Deer Island, but never succeeded.
In 1984, a Masonic Lodge Abnaki #55 was chartered on the island following the efforts of Frank Langley.
Myer Lord lived in Northern Harbour, with his wife Eunice, and claimed to be a faith healer by right of being the seventh son of a seventh son.
A financial endowment by Gerald Simpson of Fairhaven has allowed Acadia University to offer annual lectures on religion through their divinity college since 1979.