Neighbor

Salmon farming might not have come to Swan’s Island but for the perseverance of several islanders led by Sonny Sprague.

Remembering when salmon aquaculture was first proposed in 1989, the former selectman recalled, “The majority of the town was for it.”

Most islanders welcomed the opportunity to develop another source of income. However, state and federal agencies responsible for granting permits were not enthusiastic. Aquaculture was regarded more as an experiment than an industry at that time.

Those were “pretty hard times,” chuckled Sprague, a large man with a fisherman’s intense eyes and quiet hands.

“I remember the day…it was over. There was no way we were going to have a salmon farm.”

Bruce Colbeth, another islander involved in the struggle, wanted to revive the project. Sprague agreed.

“We sat down that night and we did something we had never done,” Sprague recalled. Colbeth and Sprague made a list of their congressmen, senators and any state official with influence.

“We got people to call every damn person from here to Timbuktu, from here to Washington…we started calling different people, and ‘they’ called different people…and the next morning, everyone [on Swan’s] started calling.”

One of those calls was to Tom Perkins, who at the time was Hancock County’s state senator. Sprague and other town officials requested a meeting with then Governor John McKernan and Jay Clemont, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Perkins said he could get them a meeting but the island’s delegation had to be in Augusta by 10 a.m.

“We walked in through the door, and Jay Clemont, who we had gotten to know pretty well, looked up. He said to me, ‘Sonny, would you call those people down there to Swan’s Island off those phones? You can have a temporary permit. Where do you want it, here or here?’ And, that,” smiled Sprague, “is when the first pens went in at Toothacher Cove.”

Born in 1941 to an island couple, Sprague’s youthful wanderings first took him inland. But he couldn’t stay away.

“I knew I loved Swan’s Island,’’ said Sprague who returned home to fish. Not long after re-meeting and marrying island classmate, Nadia Norwood, Sprague found himself nominated for town selectman.

At 61, Sprague is still active in town affairs, lobbying hard for a recreational park, the Millpond Park, where year-round families would be assured access to prime harbor shore that might otherwise be sold privately.

“Swan’s Island is so nice; so many have worked to make it the way it is,” Sprague said. “I hope that a 100 years from now, whoever is here still can think of Swan’s Island the way we do, as a pretty damn good place.”