Bay of Fundy Nature Conservancy of Canada. Some sources believe the name "Fundy" is a corruption of the French word "Fendu", meaning "split", while others believe it comes from the Portuguese "funda", meaning "deep". The bay was also named Baie Française (French Bay) by Samuel de Champlain during a 1604 expedition to St. Croix Island. The Bay of Fundy has a high tidal range. Oceanographers attribute it to tidal resonance resulting from a coincidence of timing: the time it takes a large wave to go from the mouth of the bay to the inner shore and back is practically the same as the
Burntcoat Head, Nova Scotia at Burntcoat Head average , with the highest being set during the 1869 Saxby Gale at . The Guinness Book of World Records (1975) declared that Burntcoat had the highest tides in the world: “The Natural World, Greatest Tides: The greatest tides in the world occur in the Bay of Fundy... Burntcoat Head in the Minas Basin, Nova Scotia, has the greatest mean spring range with 14.5 metres (47.5 feet) and an extreme range of 16.3 metres (53.5 feet).” The "National Geographic" magazine (August 1957) also made a similar assertion: “The famous tides of the Bay of Fundy move with