The Gulf of Maine Times: Vol. 5 No. 4 : In New Brunswick, a visit with Mary Majka and David Christie

Our story begins somewhere in the mid-1960s, when Mary Majka, the host of a television nature program in Moncton, New Brunswick, decided to visit friends who lived at the end of a sickle-shaped peninsula called Mary’s Point. “Come see the birds, you must see the birds,” they had told her. “And be sure to come at high tide.”

A 36-year-old friendship provides a valuable link in the migratory chain of shorebirds.

And so she went, and was not disappointed. Sheltering Ha Ha Bay, an embayment of the larger Shepody Bay, Mary’s Point is an expansive carpet of salt marshes, sand dunes and upland forests north of Fundy National Park.

Standing at the end of the point all those years ago, Majka watched as thousands of shorebirds amassed wing to wing, performing a spectacle of aerial acrobatics she had never seen. With dogged intensity, the birds followed the tide line, in and out, then thinned out across the exposed flats nearly vanishing from sight. As Majka would soon learn, they had come to fatten up on the flat’s enormous reserves of mud shrimp before making the long journey south.

But as it turned out, her visit was far from tranquil. While she tried to watch the birds feed, her friend’s five children charged across the beach chasing the birds and throwing rocks at them. “It was pandemonium,” she recalls. “I kept yelling, ‘stop kids, stop. It’s not good to do that to the birds.'"

Later, her friend’s husband took Majka for a spin in his four-wheel drive vehicle, which entailed careening through the salt marsh and onto the beach, forcing the birds into the air. “The whole thing, what they were doing was crazy, but that was so common in those days. No one had any knowledge.”

That evening Majka couldn’t sleep. “I started thinking over and over about what I was going to do. Here it was, they were my friends. But I just knew I couldn’t get too emotional about that. Something had to be done.”

Enter David Christie, an esteemed naturalist and curator of the New Brunswick Museum, who Majka and her husband, Mike, met while Christie was a student at the University of New Brunswick. In the early 1970s, Majka and Christie began conducting the first shorebird surveys at Mary’s Point and sending their findings to the Canadian Wildlife Service. Scientists there were able to connect the data to studies in southern James Bay on the migratory pattern of the semipalmated sandpiper. They concluded that the vast flats of the Upper Bay of Fundy served as the stopover point for the sandpiper and other shorebirds winging their way from the subarctic to South America. And Mary’s Point was among the most important roosts.

Today, Mary’s Point is protected as part of the Shepody Bay Wildlife Reserve administered under the Canadian Wildlife Service. All of the bay has been declared a Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve under the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. That the area is recognized internationally as a major shorebird staging area for autumn migration is due in large part to Majka and Christie.

The century-old farmhouse that the Majka’s share with Christie presides over Mary’s Point like an ever-vigilant watchtower. They own a summer cottage nearby, next to the Mary’s Point Interpretive Centre, an attractive pine wood structure they were instrumental in building.

While Christie walks down to the shore to count the remaining birds of the fall migration, Majka sits in the sun porch of her farmhouse, surrounded by tropical plants and a large Norfolk pine tree. She recounts her history as a naturalist and guardian of birds in colorful detail. Her laugh is melodic and her cornflower blue eyes are animated and intense. The daughter of a Czechoslovakian countess and Polish school principal, Majka was born in Poland in 1925. She spent more than two years in forced labor during World War II, at a farm in northern Poland. After the war, she attended medical school where she met her husband. They made the journey to Canada aboard an American troopship in 1951 and eventually settled around Moncton, where her husband worked for years as a pathologist. In August, the couple commemorated their 50th anniversary in Canada at the Pier 21 National Historic Site in Halifax.

Although she never practiced medicine, she has no regrets. “I think I accomplished more as a naturalist than I would have as a doctor,” says Majka, who founded the Moncton Naturalists Club and co-founded the New Brunswick Federation of Naturalists. “I’m more of a saver and protector of animals and birds.”

"I have these ideas that
sometimes are out of this
world, and David
will say, ‘Look, that’s
impossible, it can’t be
done,’ and that goads
me on and I say, ‘So who
says it’s impossible?’”

Her naturalist’s pursuits took hold early in life, she says, but the turning point came when she read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. At the time, Majka was raising two sons and hosting a weekly television program called Have You Seen, which covered nature topics. She recalls pleading with her producer to let her do a segment on Silent Spring, but he refused, saying the book was too controversial and “way out.”

But then she discovered Mary’s Point. Ever since that August day when she first saw the birds at high tide, she has acted as the wetland’s sentinel, educating everyone from birders to hunters to partygoers to how special the place is and how important it is not to disturb the birds. The reaction has not always been pleasant.

“One guy in a dune buggy almost ran me over,” she says. Another man told Christie, he considered the birds “target practice.”

In the 1970s, the Majka’s bought the cottage and farmhouse overlooking Mary’s Point, with 40 acres near the most critical roosting area. Christie stayed with them on weekends while he commuted to the museum in Saint John, then moved in permanently in 1980.

“David has been a member of the Majka family for 36 years,” Majka says.

The Christie/Majka bond has also proven to be a highly productive partnership; one that has served as a valuable link in the shorebirds’ migratory chain. Once the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) acquired and designated Shepody Bay as a protected area in the mid-1980s, Majka and Christie, as officers of the New Brunswick Federation of Naturalists, began in earnest to raise financing for an education and interpretation center. Initially they set up a visitor’s post in their garage and hired students to educate the public and monitor the beaches. Later the CWS moved in an old trailer on to the reserve, but it required too much maintenance, Majka says.

Mary's Point Interpretive Centre. Photo Andi Rierden.

Finally, she continues, “We got various, various grants. I was like a beggar going around saying ‘give me money, give me money.’” With the rounds of financing, the naturalists’ federation built the Mary’s Point center section by section. Today it holds an education and interpretation room, audiovisual room, library and observation deck. The public bathrooms are equipped with compost toilets and the waste is recycled and used in the center’s flower gardens.

A trail behind the center leads to a small deck overlooking the beach. Down below, long rows of bone-gray driftwood serve as a sort of spectator’s galley, where visitors can watch from afar or set-up tripods and telescopes. In August, during peak migration times, the center receives 100 to 250 visitors a day. There is no charge for visitors and Majka and Christie do not receive a salary.

“See anything interesting?” Majka says to Christie as he returns from his walk. “There are 120 sanderlings, 25 dunlins, seven white-rumped sandpipers and a black bellied plover,” he reports.

While Christie’s approach to the shorebirds is measured and methodical, Majka, on the other hand, describes herself as being more ethereal. Besides their work on Mary’s Point, they have rescued lighthouses, covered bridges and a historic bank building that Majka had moved to nearby Riverside-Albert and turned into a museum.

“We sometimes argue, but overall we get along famously,” Majka says. “I am a visionary in that I am always somewhere up in the sky. I have these ideas that sometimes are out of this world, and David will say, ‘Look, that’s impossible, it can’t be done,’ and that goads me on and I say, ‘So who says it’s impossible?’”

Later into this warm October day, they lead me to the shore where the tide is nearly full and a tiny flock rests on a thin crescent of beach that serves as their roost. In the distance, stiff-legged sanderlings skitter along the tide line then burst into flight, looping out over the water. We sit on the driftwood logs and watch the last of these fall migrants follow Fundy’s restless rhythms.

“I have spent so much of my life watching these birds,” Majka whispers. “They are like old friends.“

Mary Majka received a Gulf of Maine Council Visionary Award in 1996.