Legends, questions and theories abound about Oak Island, Nova Scotia, and tales of buried treasure there. For more than two centuries, the island has been studied, searched, probed and cursed all the while failing to give up its secrets.
Joy Steele's ground-breaking book, The Oak Island Mystery, Solved (CBU Press 2015), was born of her own curiosity about "Oak Island gold," and her application of historical research to the mystery caused quite a stir among treasure hunters, historians, archaeologists and folks just plain interested in what was and is going on there. Her version of events and her take on the now mythical treasure attracted the attention of a great many Island-watchers, drawing the interest of some and the ire of others.
Among the people "interested" are many who in the past studied, explored and written about Oak Island. One of those people is professional geologist Gordon Fader, whose expertise has been sought out over the years by numerous explorers, treasure hunters, consultants and researchers whose names appear frequently throughout Joy's enquiries and books, and many others.
In her first book, Joy made the very convincing argument that Oak Island's true treasure is its multi-layered history-its role in 18th-century world affairs. Not only have the bold and sometimes foolhardy physical efforts of the treasure hunters over the past two-and-a-half centuries likely been in vain, but have almost certainly destroyed much of the evidence of what actually took place there.
Over the past couple of years, Joy Steele and Gordon Fader have been working together to solidify Joy's theories on the tantalizing evidence of human activity on Oak Island. In the process, their collaboration has not only strengthened Joy's earlier revelatory conclusions that there was manufacturing activity on the Island in the early 1700s but, remarkably, uncovered still more evidence unexplored until now.