Our Style: Gentle Hospitality…Vintage Maritime Style: for sale

Lunenburg

Get in touch with your seaside

Our Inn is located in the heart of "Old Town" Lunenburg, a picturesque fishing town in Nova Scotia, Canada. Lunenburg is one of Nova Scotia’s most historic and beautiful towns.

Lunenburg’s colourful waterfront, narrow streets and captivating architecture radiates the flavour of the town’s seafaring heritage. Dozens of historic buildings and homes dating back to 1760 have been beautifully maintained and the streets still follow the original Town plan of 1754. This dedicated level of preservation led to Lunenburg’s Old Town being designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. One of the best aspects of Luneburg is that, unlike many “tourism” destinations, this is still an authentic working harbour: fishing boats and boat builders line the waterfront and many locals still make their living here in traditional maritime ways. So wander the docks and chat with the Lunenburgians. Buy a lobster and we’ll steam it up for you for a picnic lunch. Step into the Bluenose II restoration and see this magnificent sailing schooner being rebuilt, or get out on the harbour in a dory or on a tall ship. At just 55 minutes from Halifax, Lunenburg is an easy weekend getaway, a perfect business retreat destination and a must-see stop in your tour of Nova Scotia’s gorgeous South Shore.

Toponymy

Lunenburg was named in 1753 after the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg who had become King George II of Great Britain. The Acadian inhabitants of the site had called it Mirliguèche, a French spelling of a Mi'kmaq name of uncertain meaning. An earlier Mi'kmaq name was āseedĭk, meaning clam-land.

History

The Mi'kmaq lived in a territory from the present site of Lunenburg to Mahone Bay. As many as 300 inhabited the site in the warm summer months. French colonists, who became known as Acadians, settled in the area around the 1620s. The Acadians and Mi’kmaq co-existed peacefully and some intermarried, creating networks of trade and kinship. In 1688, 10 Acadians and 11 Mi’kmaq were resident with dwellings and a small area of cultivated land. By 1745 there were eight families.

When Edward Cornwallis, newly appointed Governor of Nova Scotia, visited in 1749, he reported several Mi’kmaq and Acadian families living together at Mirliguèche in comfortable houses and said they "appeared to be doing well."

Britain and France carried their military conflicts in Europe in the 1700s to the New World. Under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, France ceded the part of Acadia today known as peninsular Nova Scotia to Britain. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and French colonial attacks, the British erected Fort George in 1749 at Citadel Hill Halifax and founded the town of Halifax.

The British sought to settle the lands with loyal subjects and recruited more than 1,400 foreign Protestants, mostly artisans and farmers, from Europe in July 1753 to populate the site. Led by Charles Lawrence, the settlers were accompanied by about 160 soldiers. They assembled prefabricated blockhouses and constructed a palisade along the neck of land where the village was laid out. The settlers spent the summer building shelters for the winter and, not having been able to conduct any fishing or farming, had to be provisioned from Halifax. When the settlers became dissatisfied with the distribution of provisions, they rose in armed rebellion, only to be put down by troops led by Colonel Robert Monckton. Others defected to the Acadian side. In 1754 the town had a sawmill and a store.

In 1755, after the expulsion of the Acadians, the British needed to repopulate vacated lands. It offered generous land grants to colonists from New England, which was experiencing a severe shortage inland. Today these immigrants are referred to as the New England Planters. Lunenburg was raided in 1756 by a mixed group of Mi'kmaq and Maliseet raiders, devastating the town. The attacks continued on the British with the Lunenburg Campaign of 1758. Hostilities with Mi'kmaq ended around 1760.

During the American Revolution, privateers from the rebelling colonies raided Lunenburg, including the 1782 raid, devastating the town once again. The town was fortified at the beginning of the War of 1812. The British officials authorised the privateer Lunenburg, operated by Lunenburg residents, to raid American shipping.

Over the following years, port activities transitioned from coastal trade and local mixed fisheries,^[21] to offshore fisheries. During the Prohibition in the United States between 1920 and 1933 in the United States, Lunenburg was a base for rum-running to the US.

The Lunenburg Cure was the term for a style of dried and salted cod that the city exported to markets in the Caribbean. Today a large hammered copper cod weather vane is mounted on the spire of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

The Smith & Rhuland shipyard built many boats, including Bluenose (1921), Flora Alberta (1941), Sherman Zwicker (1942), Bluenose II (1963), Bounty (1961), and the replica HMS Surprise (1970). In 1967 the yard was taken over by Scotia Trawler Equipment Limited. After the end of World War II, shipbuilders switched from producing schooners to trawlers, aided by migrant labour from Newfoundland.

Geography

Lunenburg is in a natural harbour at the western side of Mahone Bay, about 100 kilometres southwest of the Halifax Regional Municipality.

The area is built largely on Cambrian to Ordovician sedimentary deposits. The last glacial period transformed the landscape. Glaciers abraded and plucked at the bedrock during their advances across the country, creating various deposits that vary in thickness, including drumlins, which are a key feature of Lunenburg County.

The coastline in the area is heavily indented, and the town is on an isthmus on the Fairhaven Peninsula, with harbours on both the front and back sides.

Climate

The climate of Lunenburg is moderate, owing to its coastal location which helps to limit extremes in temperatures. This means it is slightly milder in winter and slightly cooler in summer than most areas at similar latitudes. Lunenburg enjoys warm, breezy summers with temperatures in the low to mid 20's (70's Fahrenheit). It is seldom hot and humid. Winters are cold and frequently wet. Heavy winter snowfall can occur, but Lunenburg's snowpack is usually short-lived due to frequent winter rains and regular freeze-thaw cycles. Thick fog and damp conditions can occur at any time of year, but especially in spring. Seasonal lag due to cooler ocean temperatures means that spring conditions arrive in Lunenburg late in the season, often not until mid-May. On the whole, Lunenburg precipitation is high from November to May, with July, August and September enjoying the warmest and driest conditions. Fall is typically bright, clear and cool. Jan: 1° Feb: 2° Mar: 5° Apr: 11° May: 15° Jun: 21° Jul: 23° Aug: 24° Sep: 21° Oct: 15° Nov: 9° Dec: 4°

Economy

According to the 2016 census the most common National Occupational Classification was sales and services, with 24 per cent of jobs. By the North American Industry Classification System about half of all jobs were in health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, manufacturing, and retail. High Liner Foods runs Canada's largest secondary fish-processing plant in the town.

The town's architecture and picturesque location make it attractive to the film industry. Films set in New England but filmed partly in Lunenburg include The Covenant and Dolores Claiborne. The 2010 Japanese movie Hanamizuki was partly set and filmed in Lunenburg and the science fiction television show Haven was partly filmed there though it is set in the United States. The 2012 film The Disappeared and the 2020 television series Locke & Key were filmed in Lunenburg.