Oak Island, Nova Scotia...
intriguing story of lost treasure -
Oak Island treasure hunter not ready to give up
By JOE O'CONNOR, Postmedia News October 12, 2010 Golf ? It's a waste of time. And vacations, well, there's no time for those either, no reason to be lying about in the Florida sun sipping umbrella drinks when there is work to be done.
And there is always more work, and never enough time, not for Dan Blankenship. Not for the past 45 years. Not for a hopelessly driven dreamer with gold in his eyes.
He is 87. Don't ask about retirement. There is no quitting, no turning back, even with the clock ticking down to a Dec. 31 deadline that changes everything.
"It is way too late (to turn back)," says Blankenship. "It's been too late for a good many years. I had a good contracting business in Florida. I had friends, a good reputation, and I shucked it all to come up here and make a gamble."
"Here" is Oak Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, near the well-heeled town of Chester. It is a 56-hectare postage stamp shrouded by trees and central to a mystery that has been tormenting treasure hunters like Blankenship for more than 200 years.
Blankenship has searched for the fabled treasure hidden on Oak Island since he read about it in the January 1965 edition of Reader's Digest.
It is a Canadian cliffhanger dating back to 1795. A teen came upon a tree with a missing branch and beneath it, a weird depression in the earth. So he began to dig, an excavation that revealed an underground shaft -a Money Pit.
Some say it is pirate booty. Others imagine Aztec gold, the lost treasures of the Templar Knights, a tomb for Norse kings or even Shakespeare's original manuscripts.
It could be anything, or nothing at all.
Blankenship's search could be nearing its end. Once the current treasure trove licence he holds, along with his four partners from Michigan, expires on Dec. 31, that's it. No more licences. At least not ones where the treasure hunter gets to keep 90 per cent of whatever he finds.
If the legislation stays on track, a new permitting process will be struck in the new year and any search for treasure essentially would be an archeological dig. Any riches unearthed on Oak Island would be the property of Nova Scotia.
Even if the deadline passes without a find, Blankenship -the island's owner -is not prepared to give up on his quest. Once infected by the mystery, few people can.
His approach is different than most. Blankenship conceives of the Money Pit as a ruse, a clever decoy. It is his contention, and has been ever since 1967, that the treasure is elsewhere on the island.
That treasure, he believes, consists of riches conquistadors looted from Mexico, Central and South America.
Blankenship is a man who is not ready to lie down, an 87-year-old who is brimming with life, no matter how much disappointment he has encountered along the way.
"If I didn't think there was something on this island I wouldn't be here," he says. "And I sure as hell didn't stay here for 40 years thinking there was nothing."
radio broadcast from 1955 - CBC -
http://archives.cbc.ca/lifestyle/pastimes/clips/9701/
Read more:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/techn...#ixzz12FajsHU5