Kneeling on a sandy beach on a remote Canadian island, a Turner Valley photographer is surrounded by a small herd of wild horses snuffling her clothing, face and camera equipment.
That summer in 2009 was Debra Garside’s first time to Sable Island, a protected National Park Reserve 300km southeast of Halifax.
“On the second day I went out to photograph the horses and a herd was walking towards me on the beach,” she said. “I just did what I would do if I was home - I squatted down. They all reached out with their noses for five or 10 minutes then wandered off. That was a pretty memorable experience.”
The professional show jumper, turned wildlife photographer who owns Garside Art Gallery and Studio in Longview, had been dreaming about Sable Island since reading Wild and Beautiful Sable Island, written by two world-renowned photographers from Salt Spring Island.
“There were all of these incredible images of horses standing in snow-covered dunes and baby seals covered in sand and snow,” she said. “I reached out to them and they gave me all kinds of information on how to get there.”
Garside learned it’s an extensive process to tour this remote part of Canada. Among the requirements is obtaining permission from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, to stay in the weather station staff quarters, and Parks Canada. The island became a national park in 2013.
“There’s nothing there but a weather station, 500 wild horses and the most beautiful landscape you can imagine,” she said. “No one has ever been refused access to Sable Island, but the place is self-regulating because it’s so expensive to get to.”
In addition, flights can be delayed for months as the conditions must be perfect to land on the beach, she said.
“(The island) sits on the edge of the continental shelf,” she said. “It’s this constantly morphing sandbar covered in low vegetation that’s roughly 40km long and 100 feet to 2km wide.”
Garside is one of the few people who have embarked on overnight expeditions on Sable Island.
“It’s a very expensive trip,” she said. “It’s extremely physically challenging because there’s a lot of hiking involved in deep sand with camera gear.”
Historical records show horses were shipped to the island in the mid-1700s. The island was colonized off and on dating back to the 1500s by people who wanted to harvest the seals and walruses, said Garside, yet the colonies never lasted due to the hardships of living on such an open and desolate place.
With hundreds of shipwrecks over the years, the Nova Scotia government established a rescue station that operated from 1801 to 1958, said Garside.
During that time, horses were domesticated and used for farming, transportation and hauling lifeboats around the island.
Since 1960, the horses have been unmanaged.
At its peak, the island had about 50 people there and contained three or four stations with lighthouses and cabins for people who were shipwrecked. Some buildings are still visible through the sand dunes, Garside said.
The island’s unique history intrigued Garside, but nothing prepared her for what she saw.
“As we made our way to the station, we passed horses drinking out of ponds and laying in the grass and grazing,” she said. “It was just idyllic. I don’t know how you describe the first time you see wild horses galloping over a sand dune and coming towards you. It’s a powerful thing.”
Garside quickly learned the horses aren’t afraid of people and, because of her horse background, it didn’t take her long to learn the horses’ body language.
“It was the first time that I had the opportunity to be around wild horses and watch wild horse behaviour and the subtleties in the way they communicate with each other,” she said. “Just standing back and watching two band stallions fight each other, how they would protect their herds and all of those things, is just fascinating.”
Garside decided that to gain a deep understanding of what life is like on the island, she would need to experience every season.
Winter proved to be a challenge. Despite being scheduled to arrive in early January one year, she didn’t get on the island until the end of the month due to weather delays.
“What happens sometimes is the beach where the plane can land will flood during a storm surge,” she said. “It can stay flooded for weeks to months.”
This trip gave Garside a very different view of Sable Island. The island was covered in 300,000 seals giving birth and mating, making it hard to navigate without getting hissed at or charged.
The photography opportunities were, nonetheless, endless.
“The horses are covered in ice, pawing for food, and interacting with seals,” she said. “Often times (seals) are laying on the horse trail and the horse will come up and it won’t leave the trail.”
Another year, Garside took her camera equipment to the island in early April, at the end of a punishing winter.
“That’s when you see the animals in their worst condition,” she said. “The old and the weak are dead or dying. That was fairly rough.”
Garside’s most famous image, Journey’s End, is from that trip, of an old stallion that wandered onto the beach at the end of his life.
She also captured new life - foals being born - and courtship activities.
She saw the same during another trip in June.
“By that time the horses are starting to have their summer coats and look really healthy,” she said. “Of all the trips that was my favourite in terms of seeing lots of action - foals running around, horses rearing on the beach, bachelor stallions fighting.”
Garside’s most recent trip to Sable Island was last fall, making it her eighth trip and her first fall visit to the island.
“I wanted to get the changing foliage, what autumn behavior looks like for these guys,” she said. “It was very stormy. There were a lot of hurricane-force winds and a lot of days I just couldn’t go out and shoot.”
Nonetheless, Garside captured stunning imagery of the horses getting ready for winter.
“They’re starting to form bigger groups and hunkering down between the sand dunes when the weather gets really bad,” she said. “I figured out where their safe spots were, places where they could easily paw for water as well as have good grazing and shelter.”
She took her first aerial shots, flying around the island at 500 feet.
“That was thrilling,” she said. “I wanted horses walking on the beach and the long shadows when the sun gets low.”
Garside has been showcasing her Sable Island images in exhibits and trade shows across North America.
“There’s a certain power in that imagery that hits people at a really deep emotional level,” she said.
Garside’s photography has received worldwide recognition.
Most recently, one of her images was selected through Nature’s Best Photography Competition for its Smithsonian Natural History Museum exhibit in 2017.
In 2018 her image Warm Embrace, depicting a mother polar bear and her two cubs, placed third in the People's Choice category for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards in London for its worldwide exhibit.
Several equestrian magazines featured Garside’s images on the covers and she self-published The Wild Horses of Sable Island: A Horse Woman’s Journey, which features her journal entries and pictures from her first three visits to the island.
Two years ago, the World Canadian Geographical Society awarded Garside a fellowship because of her work as an educator. She was asked by One Ocean Expeditions to be a photography guide and naturalist due to her Sable Island expertise.
They developed a tour that included a day on Sable Island. Garside served as a guide three times, including for Jeopardy host Alex Trebek and John Geiger, honourary president and president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society respectively.
“If the conditions are right we all pile into some zodiacs and I lead the day hike,” she said. “I’m helping people with their photography skills, but mainly I’m talking about the horses and interpreting for people what they’re seeing, what the horses are doing, when they’re interacting, what that means.”
Recently, Garside joined a new organization, Sable Island Institute, a group of naturalists and scientists with an interest in Sable Island and a focus on research programs.
“I’m hoping to be involved with them moving forward,” she said. “They need people that have boots-on-the-ground experience with the island to guide. They want structured artist-in-residency programs. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to be one of the leaders for that.”
What draws Garside to Sable Island year after year is its untouched nature.
“It’s a chance to be in true wilderness,” she said. “I just feel like, as a studier of horse behaviour, it’s just like this never-ending laboratory of amazing stuff going on.”
Garside is interested in the island from an ecological point of view and is concerned about its future with drilling occurring nearby.
“There’s several drilling platforms within sight, which were supposed to begin decommissioning last year,” she said. “The government recently announced some of those oil and gas leases are up for bid for future drilling.
"There’s absolutely no question that this area should be preserved.”
Although the island and one-kilometre off shore is protected, the surrounding area is not, said Garside.
“Anything beyond that is fair game,” she said. “With directional drilling there could be several consequences. With the possibility of contamination there is too much at risk.”
Garside also leads photography tours annually to Mongolia for people to experience the wild horses and horse culture, and closer to home
provides two-day excursions to photograph the wild horses of Alberta.
Learn more about Debra Garside and her work at debragarsidephotography.com and sableislandhorses.ca
