Before the First World War “there was much coming and going to Cape Split by an odd little Physics professor at Acadia,” Esther Clark Wright wrote in her book, Blomidon Rose. “Some materials were transported across and around the mountain (to Cape Split) but nothing came of the affair.”

Wright doesn’t tell us which Acadia professor she was referring to as odd and little – three were involved in the so-called “affair” – but she was referring to an attempt in 1916 to harness the tides at Cape Split and generate awesome amounts of electricity.

The odd little man Wright refers to may have been Acadia’s engineering professor, Ralph C. Clarkson, an American who had joined the University’s faculty in 1912. He had patented a unique tide-generated turbine, the Clarkson Hydraulic Current Motor. The motor was the key ingredient in a scheme, originating apparently with Clarkson, to generate electricity at Cape Split and potentially light up the entire Maritimes.