Lunenburg is a port town in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, Canada. Situated on the province’s South Shore, Lunenburg is located on the Fairhaven Peninsula at the western side of Mahone Bay. The town is approximately 90 kilometres southwest of the county boundary with the Halifax Regional Municipality. The town was established by the three founding fathers, Patrick Sutherland, Dettlieb Christopher Jessen and John Creighton during Father Le Loutre’s War, four years after Halifax. The town was one of the first British attempts to settle Protestants in Nova Scotia intended to displace Mi’kmaq and Acadian Catholics. British settlement posed a lasting, grave and certain threat to Mi’kmaw hegenomy over their traditional territory. Considering that British conditions for peace required surrender of Mi’kmaw sovereignty to the Crown, the Wabanaki Confederacy raided Lunenburg nine times in the early years of the settlement in an attempt to reclaim their loss.
The historic town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. This designation ensures protection for much of Lunenburg’s unique architecture and civic design, being the best example of planned British colonial settlement in Canada. The historic core of the town is also a National Historic Site of Canada. In Europe, Lunenburg is known in particular through the television series Jesse Stone with Tom Selleck, in which the city takes over the role of the fictional small town of Paradise “near Boston“.
Lunenburg was begun as an agricultural settlement, taking advantage of one of the few pockets of good soil along Nova Scotia’s South Shore. However, in the 19th century the town evolved as a major centre for the offshore banks fishery, building and manning fishing schooners to exploit the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the fishing banks off Nova Scotia. The town was incorporated on October 31, 1888. It helped sponsor the construction of the Nova Scotia Central Railway in 1889, which became the Halifax and Southwestern Railway and helped further develop fishing exports and allied industries such as the Lunenburg Foundry. While wooden shipbuilding lapsed in other parts of Nova Scotia with the arrival of steamships, Lunenburg yards specialized in fishing schooners which remained competitive until the 1920s. The most famous was Bluenose built in 1921 by Smith & Rhuland, a schooner which brought in record catches and won the International Fishermen’s Trophy.
Tourism is Lunenburg’s most important industry and many thousands visit the town each year. A number of restaurants, inns, hotels and shops exist to service the tourist trade. Numerous artists operate their own galleries. The town is home to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, part of the Nova Scotia Museum. The schooner replica Bluenose II is operated by the museum and based out of Lunenburg. The town is also home to the privately run Halifax and South Western Railway Museum and the Lunenburg Heritage Society’s Knaut-Rhuland House. The town has a history of being an important port and shipbuilding centre with three active shipyards (Scotia Trawler Equipment Limited, Snyder’s Shipyard and ABCO Industries Lunenburg Shipyard). The Lunenberg foundry casts brass, bronze and aluminum, and is specialized in naval work. There are now numerous small businesses, high-tech industries including Composites Atlantic and HB Studios, and trade plants including High Liner Foods, which was at one point the largest fish plant in Canada. This plant now handles manufacturing and most fishing is done offshore.
