Copied from The Nova Scotia Folk Collection by Allister MacGillivray:

TED: "I first went to Sable in 1947, and I had visions of Florida, you know: lots of sand and lots of horses. But if there had been any way of getting off that island besides swimming in the first three weeks I was there, I think I would have tried it! Goodness gracious, there was no let up to the work! You were in water up to your waist twelve hours a day or longer, day in and day out. We had two light stations. The main station was on the west end, and there were twelve or fifteen of us at the West Light; we had one big staff house there. The other light on the east end of the island was called East Light and consisted of five men.

"A fellow by the name of Calvin Day was the cook. Calvin used to play the guitar and, of course, I used to do a bit of singing. Together we'd go to the wireless station, the meteorology station, every so often on a Saturday night; it was just something to break the monotony. Calvin would do the playing and I'd do the singing. After a while, Calvin said to me, 'You know, this team has got to change. You're gonna learn to play this thing (i.e., the guitar).' I said, 'Good. You teach me.' Well, I damn near drove the staff up the walls for the first couple of weeks! But I learned to play, and then I started writing songs.

"I had a twelve-hour watch to do in the light station, and most of the time I had nothing else to do but write; it was either read murder-mysteries or write songs. Then one day the boys said to me, 'Look, you're a singer and a songwriter. Why don't you write a song about this God-forsaken sand heap?' I said, 'Well, maybe one of these days I will. ' So, I was kicking the idea around, and then I finally put the song together. When I went ashore, I went down to Barrington Street (Halifax) to what they called The Barrington Exchange, a second-hand shop where they had a machine for making paper records for 25 ¢. I made a recording of 'Sable Island Shores'. Ivan Dorey and his friend Jimmy were there that night doing some recording too. Ivan asked me, 'Where did you get that song from?' I said, 'I wrote it.' Then, when I found out who he was, I said, 'By the way, we listen to your show every day at lunch hour; it's the only country show we get down at Sable. ' He said, 'Well, I'd like to sing that song of yours. ' So I gave him the words to it, and I made him a copy of the record. But I said, 'Don't do it on the air for at least two weeks-till I get back to the island.

"So, I got back and one day everybody was sitting around having lunch. All of a sudden Ivan says over the radio: 'We've got a brand new song here that we'd like to dedicate to all the light keepers and the lifeboat crew on Sable Island. And it was written by one of the boys from Sable Island. ' Well, all you could hear then was a clatter of knives and forks in the room, and some of the boys said to me, 'You were the only one who was ashore. That must be your song!' So, the cat was out of the bag. And that song was on the radio every day, five days a week, for two years! Ivan had to sing it because he had so many requests for it. And Ivan released the original recording of it, done at CHNS in Halifax with 'Fiddling' Jimmy, and a steel player and a bass player.

"I'd say I've written close to a hundred songs over the past years, but 'Sable Island Shores' is the most successful of them. I calculated it out one time and I believe seventeen artists have recorded it; unfortunately, I'm not always given proper credit.

"You know, the only thing that was holding Sable Island together over the last seventy-Jive years was the hulls of the wrecked ships anchored in the sand. Once they started rotting away, there was nothing left to hold the sand, and now the currents just move the sand freely. Table Top Mountain is gone now; it was made of sand. And when we had a head count of the ponies in 1948, we had 550. I don't know if there's even a dozen left now and, if they don't get those out of there, we're going to lose them too!

"Anyway, as you know, my song has a special dedication. I've dedicated it to all the brave men I worked with-and those who came before me and after-who kept vigil over the East and West Light Stations of Sable Island, 'The Graveyard of the Atlantic'."