A Day at Big Tancook Island



Susan Tooke reading to the students yesterday at Big Tancook Island Elementary School, one of the last one-room schools in Canada. There are five students and one teacher who travels from the mainland and back every day by ferry. There is one island for every day of the year in the bay, although the ferry’s engineer said that that’s debatable. Big Tancook is about 10 km off the coast and takes about forty-five minutes to get there. Nearby are smaller islands like Little Tancook, East Ironbound, Grassy and Starr. One hundred and fifty people live there year-round and the population swells to 250 in the summer.