User Rating:  / 1

PoorBest 

Canada's 1st Geocache (way point name GCBBA ) was placed at East River near Exit 7 on 28th June 2000 by an ex-navy communicator - known as eastriver. Eastriver has lived in the Mill Cove/East River area for many years; is a well known hunter and sports fisherman and teaches hunter safety training to other local sportsmen. Eastriver was a pioneer of Geocaching.

 

In September of 2000 there were less than 75 Geocaches hidden worldwide, and enthusiasts kept insisting "if you hide it, they will come"; eastriver started to plan his first geocache.
    
Eastriver hid Canada's 1st Geocache in June of 2000, it wasn't found until November of that year. Probably for no other reason than the activity of Geocaching was so new, and not many people were using hand held GPS receivers at the time.

Eastriver's geocache is still one of the oldest active geocaches in the world and today there are over 250,000 active geocaches in over 221 countries.

To honour Canada's 1st Geocache, the Atlantic Canada Geocaching Association (ACGA) has had a sandstone monument fabricated from Wallace Sandstone. The stone comes from the Wallace Quarries Ltd. In Wallace on Nova Scotia's North Shore and the craftsmanship of stone cutting was done by local geocacher Wallace River .

Wallace stone has been used in buildings in many Canadian provinces and several American states including: apartment buildings in New York, a Justice building in San Francisco, mansions in Montreal and Boston and Canada's own cradle of government the Prince Edward Island Legislature.

The sandstone monument was placed at Graves Island Provincial Park on Saturday 17 June 2006 (N44 33.608, W64 12.398). On the following Saturday (24 June 2006) the ACGA hosted a Celebration of Canada's 1st Geocache for the geocaching community and the general public.

This was a day of family fun. Activities included a BBQ for lunch, games with prizes for the kids, educational instruction on GPS use and hands on demonstrations on how to place, geocoin trading and more importantly, find a Geocache.

 

There are Geocaches hidden in nearby communities; including Tantallon, Queensland, Hubbards, Mill Cove, Bayswater, East River, Chester, and at every exit along Highway 103 from exit 2 to 12.

 The whole idea of placing a monument on Canada's first Geocache came from an Ontario Geocacher named Jeff-Trex . After which Tucats & Eastriver gathered a number of other local geocachers to help out locally: dragonflys , the lost geeks & theCyr .

 

Despite the weather (30mm of rain), over 70 people attended the event. Geocachers from Nova Scotia, Moncton, Ottawa & Maine were in attendence. hike4familyfun won the prestigious hiking stick, hand crafted by eastriver himself. 50/50 was won by charmers. Various other prizes, including unactivated geocoins were won. $362 dollars was collected from the 50/50 and walking stick raffle.

NSsouthpaw surprised the event organizers with two items: custom button for those who attended and a special cake to honor eastriver.

At the end of the day, the logbook was given to eastriver. 

The event organizers would like to thank Graves Island Provincial Park , Wallace River , Groundspeak Inc., The Trail Shop , Hubbards Home Hardware, Geocaching Alberta South & landsharkz for their contributions to make this event possible.

 

 

• < Prev
• Next >