“Will it be possible to save this salt marsh?” Rosemary Gilliat Eaton and the Preservation of Environmental Heritage in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia

Scroll this

Digital painting of a white lighthouse on a cliff.

This post is part of the series “Gender and Atlantic Ocean Environments,” co-edited with Written in the Waves journal, for their special issue Soil and Sea.

Rosemary Cassandra Gilliat was a British photojournalist who immigrated to Canada in 1952 to pursue a career in freelance photography. She took contracts with the National Film Board, The Beaver, Canadian Geographic, and more. Her photographs of northern Indigenous communities are particularly well known and have received significant scholarly attention.1 Less well-known is her work in Cole Harbour.2 Upon marrying her husband, R. Michael Eaton in 1963 and developing a health condition that restricted her ability to travel, the couple settled down in the community near Dartmouth in 1965. There, the Eatons became involved with environmental organizations like the Nova Scotia Bird Society, the Cole Harbour Rural Heritage Society (CHRHS), and the Cole Harbour Environmental Committee (CHEC).

 In the 1970s, Rosemary Eaton led efforts to preserve Cole Harbour’s natural and cultural heritage and was a central figure in the preservation of the Cole Harbour salt marsh. At the time, there was a growing concern amongst members of the CHEC that increased developments in Cole Harbour threatened the biodiversity and well-being of the coastal salt marsh. Most concerning was the city’s plan to dump sewage into the harbour.3 Building on the work of the CHRHS, I argue that Eaton contributed to the fight against this development in part by acting as an informal librarian, archivist, and historian. Noting that the Cole Harbour salt marsh was “not just any old swamp,”4 Eaton collected books and scientific papers from across North America relating to salt marshes, to prove that sewage would destroy the natural environment and threaten the area’s ecosystem. This included various studies and reports from Louisiana State University, the New Hampshire Fish & Game Department, and the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, where her husband, Michael Eaton, worked as a hydrographer.5

Former curator of the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum (CHHFM), Terry Eyland, recalls stepping into Eaton’s home office, a space filled with stacks of notes, books, and newspapers with only a small pathway for walking.6 According to Eyland, Eaton’s collection was purposeful and organized, like a personal archive and library. She made her collection accessible to researchers and the CHEC, whose goal was to preserve Cole Harbour’s natural environment. She compiled her research into documents now held by the CHRHS. This includes pages of handwritten notes titled “Eel Grass,” “Saltmarshes of the Maritimes,” and “Cole Harbour: Case History of a Tidal Marsh.” Eaton presented these manuscripts to members of CHEC and used them to form parts of letters to city council. In “Cole Harbour: Case History of a Tidal Marsh,” Eaton wrote:

For centuries sportsmen have come to hunt the Canada Geese, Black Duck, and other waterfowl that find food and shelter in the [Cole] harbour.
Fishermen came for sea trout and salmon…
Local farmers took produce from the marsh to Halifax City Market…
But then Man’s impact on the harbour was felt…
In 1970 large scale suburban developments threatened the marshes with sewage effluent and sediment but the main sewer was diverted because of public protest….
Will it be possible to save this salt marsh?7

Eaton recognized that natural and cultural heritage were both at risk and that research and documentation were essential to their preservation.

”Jack Settle cuts hay on drained marsh,” 19?, Ira Settle Album, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

As a photographer, Eaton saw great value in images. In addition to the books and papers she collected, she also collected photographs, including re-photographing collections from local families that farmed on salt marshes. Eaton visited Cole Harbour families and re-photographed family albums for the CHRHS,8 preserving valuable sources that would have otherwise stayed within domestic archives.9 The photographs she collected showed how Nova Scotians farmed the salt marshes and linked the Cole Harbour salt marsh with natural and cultural heritage. One photograph circa early 1900s of the Settles, an early prominent Cole Harbour family, shows a man cutting salt hay with a horse-drawn mower.10 A later photograph that Eaton took in 1980 shows John Lapierre of West Chezzetcook cutting salt hay with a hand scythe. Farmers often used salt hay as mulch to retain moisture in the soil or used it in ice houses to slow down melting. This, and other photographs Eaton took and collected, are valuable documentation of historical settler agricultural practices in the region.

“John Lapierre cuts salt hay, West Chezzetcook.” AUG80T6, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

Eaton also recorded histories. She took an abundance of notes and conducted oral interviews to establish a chronology of Cole Harbour’s history. Eaton interviewed Cole Harbour residents from diverse backgrounds including Mi’kmaw and Acadian about their traditions and agricultural practices. In an interview conducted with Margaret Phillips—a Mi’kmaw community advocate who was instrumental in the preservation of the Cole Harbour Reserve No. 30—Phillips and Eaton discussed the importance of fishing and hunting and the reserve’s proximity to water sources like the salt marsh. Eaton wrote in her notes: “the Micmacs camped by the mouth of Little Salmon River” that connects to the harbour.11

By documenting and recording the community’s history, Eaton took on the necessary roles of librarian, historian, and archivist to show that the Cole Harbour salt marsh was connected to the community’s rural heritage and therefore ought to be protected from increased development and wastewater. To answer Eaton’s question, it was indeed possible to save the Cole Harbour salt marsh, and her own work was central to the campaign. Today, the Salt Marsh Trail in Cole Harbour is one of the most popular trails in the Halifax Regional Municipality, and forms part of the Trans Canada Trail. One section of the Salt Marsh Trail is “Rosemary’s Way”—named in her honour.12

Featured Image: Rosemary Eaton, “Early Morning Looking Towards Cole Harbour Dyke.” NOV78T6 (black). Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.
Series Header Image: Digital Painting by Emily Button.

[1] Danielle Siemens, “Photographic Encounters in the North: Rosemary Gilliat Eaton’s 1960 Trip to the Eastern Canadian Arctic,” (master’s thesis, Carleton University, 2016); Carol Payne, The Official Picture: The National Film Board of Canada’s Still Photography Division and the Image of Canada, 1941-1971 (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013); Paul Seesequasis, Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun: Portraits of Everyday Life in Eight Indigenous Communities (Toronto: Knopf, 2019).

[2] Nicholas Hamilton, “More Than a Thousand Words: The Work of One Photojournalist Brought Rural Nova Scotia into Focus,” Canada’s History, January 7, 2025, https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/women/more-than-a-thousand-words.

[3] Cole Harbour Environmental Committee, “Introduction,” Box 11, File 7, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

[4] Rosemary Gilliat Eaton, n.d., Box 11, File 6, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

[5] “Mr. R. Michael Eaton,” The Governor General of Canada, accessed August 22, 2026, https://www.gg.ca/en/honours/recipients/146-15831.

[6] In a conversation with Terry Eyland, former curator of the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum, July 23, 2026.

[7] Rosemary Gilliat Eaton, “Cole Harbour: Case History of a Tidal Marsh,” Box 18, File 6, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. 

[8] Rosemary Eaton Legacy Project and Outdoor Classroom, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, 2024.

[9] Rosemary Gilliat Eaton, “Cole Harbour: Case History of a Tidal Marsh,” Box 18, File 6, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

[10] ”Jack Settle cuts hay on drained marsh,” 19?, Ira Settle Album, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

[11] Margaret Phillips, interview by Rosemary Eaton and Cole Harbour Rural Heritage Society, HF 12, Tape 12, Side A, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Oral History Interview, Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum Archives; Rosemary Gilliat Eaton, “Micmacs,” Box 5, File 61, Rosemary Eaton fonds, Cole Harbour Heritahe Farm Museum Archival Collections, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

[12] “Salt Marsh Trail – Trans Canada Trail,” Nova Scotia, accessed July 18, 2026,  https://novascotia.com/listing/salt-marsh-trail-trans-canada-trail/; “The Salt Marsh Trail,” Halifax Trails, accessed July 18, 2026, https://www.halifaxtrails.ca/salt-marsh-trail/#google_vignette.

The following two tabs change content below.

Sara Spike

Sara Spike, PhD, is a cultural historian of rural communities and coasts in Atlantic Canada. She is an Instructor in the History Department at Dalhousie University. She lives in rural Nova Scotia/Mi'kma'ki, where she is writing about the cultural history of fog in Atlantic Canada.

NiCHE encourages comments and constructive discussion of our articles. We reserve the right to delete comments that fail to meet our guidelines including comments under aliases, or that contain spam, harassment, or attacks on an individual.