Talk:Tar Island

Under construction, should be done in a day! -Darouet (talk) 04:45, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Lighthouse - not really

FWIW, the statement "The island houses a lighthouse directing traffic for the Canadian Middle Channel of the St. Lawrence" is technically incorrect - the lighthouse being referenced is not on Tar Island, but in fact on a small but separate island near the head of Tar Island. If you go here and zoomed in on the very south end of Tar Island, you can see the island the lighthouse is actually on; it's on the outside edge from Tar. It's an automatic, "flashing red", lighthouse. You can see it clearly marked as on-the-island-that-isn't-Tar in for example the Canadian official navigation map 1436 "Whaleback Shoal to Summerland Group", or likewise US NOAA map 14772. But I don't know how to cite that properly so I'll just leave that information here for the interested. 100.43.112.70 (talk) 02:17, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Petit Detroit

This statement probably isn't completely accurate: "According to the 18th century French captain Pierre Pouchot, a narrows between the island and Canadian shore was previously called Petit Detroit by the Iroquois, and used for baptizing newcomers to the river" - see below.

During the time of the Iroquois and the 18th century, the very very narrow gap between the island and the Canadian mainland was almost certainly choked full of reeds and therefore was almost certainly not providing a passage ("detroit") of any kind, petit or otherwise. Indeed many early maps show Tar as *being* part of the mainland. Much more likely is that the "petit detroit" was still-small but larger and always unobstructed gap between Tar Island and Grenadier Island to the south - a gap nearer half a kilometer wide and the same gap that now forms part of the "Canadian Small Boat Channel". Further conformity can also be found in the section of the story that the petit detroit was "used for baptizing newcomers to the river" - on the southeast side of Tar Island, a bit nearer the foot than the head and presently marked by a flashing red navigational buoy, is a shallow sand bar that extends quite a ways out toward the channel. The sudden dropoff from sandbar to channel conforms with the detail provided in some versions of this account - that newcomers were told they could walk across the channel at this point and were laughed at when they dropped in. Difficult to imagine the same baptism in a thickly reeded wetland which was the northern side of Tar at that time. I'll try to find some citations for this but for now will leave this here to encourage others to improve the article. 100.43.112.70 (talk) 02:34, 14 July 2013 (UTC)