Lunenburg is a small fishing town on Nova Scotia's east coast, roughly midway between Halifax and Liverpool. It is one of the oldest settlements in Maritime Canada; enough of the old buildings remain that it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, one of only two cities to be assigned this designation on the North American continent. The other one is Quebec's Old City, with houses of historical significance and cobblestone streets dating back to the settlement's first incarnations in the early 1600s.
Lunenburg was not established as a permanent settlement until much later than Quebec, though the site had been used as a fishing camp and meeting place since time immemorial, first by the indigenous Mi'kmaq and later by the Acadians. It was formally founded in 1753 in the midst of a period of colonial conflict; King George's War and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had seen the strength of the British presence in the Maritimes reaffirmed, but tensions were building again, and the growing threat of another war provided the impetus for the creation of a new colony for Britain.
The town was named for King George II, who had been the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg before he ascended the throne in 1727. (Nearby New Brunswick was later named for George III, who held the same position.) At the time of its construction, it was the only British settlement in Nova Scotia outside of Halifax, founded in 1749. That said, none of its settlers were British; they were "foreign Protestants", recruited from Switzerland, France, and Germany, chosen specifically for their potential loyalty to the British crown.
Settlement operations were placed under the control of a British officer, Colonel Charles Lawrence. To entice people to the new colony, Lawrence offered free land grants to every family who came; a small property within the town proper on which a house might be constructed, another small plot east of town to serve as a garden, and farmland further inland. This same strategy would later be used to encourage people westward to settle the prairies; here it worked well enough, and Lunenburg was soon self-sufficient, with an economy based mostly on the fishing industry.
The townsite sits on a narrow stretch of hilly land between two harbours, with narrow streets organised into a rectangular grid.
The remarkable thing about early Lunenburg was that most of its settlers had been farmers before they came overseas, with no training in shipbuilding or in efficient fishing methods. Most of them had left home only because of the farmland that was promised them; but it turned out to be considerably less appealing in reality than on paper, with thin and rocky soil making it unsuitable for agriculture on a serious scale.
With no other recourse (apart from returning home, but the journey was arduous and the passage expensive) but to learn how to make a living from the ocean, Lunenburgers set to work coming up with fishing methods and building boats. They had brought with them a long tradition of fine craftsmanship and handiwork; some of it is still preserved in Lunenburg's Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, part of which is devoted to tracing the history of shipbuilding here.
The fishing industry caught on quickly, and the town prospered. By the mid-1800s, its population had swelled to more than the old buildings within the grid could hold; in 1862, some of the common land outside the boundaries was swallowed into the town, and subdivided into generous lots. The "New Town", west of the carefully-planned grid of the older area, became the home of the area's most affluent shipbuilders and merchants; a number of the massive and ostentatious houses built there still exist.
The heart of Lunenburg, and most of Nova Scotia, was the fishing industry and the other industries that supported it: shipbuilders, canners, processors, foundries, and a railway system to transport preserved fish grew up along the coast, traces of which are still visible today. High Liner Foods Inc., one of the largest fish processors in North America, got its start in Lunenburg. Lunenburg Industrial Foundry and Engineering Ltd. dates back to 1891, and still has offices on the town's main street not far from the waterfront. The Lunenburg Marine Railway was at one time one of the most economically important railway systems in the Maritimes.
The height of the Age of Sail, in the late 1800s to early 1900s, made Lunenburg even more prosperous. By that time, shipbuilders here had honed their methods to an art, and were renowned for their exquisite work. An undated photograph in the Fisheries Museum shows Lunenburg Harbour during this era. There is no room on the wharf for trawlers and fishing boats for all the tall ships under construction, and an empty field nearby is a forest of masts, with workers everywhere scrambling to get things finished on time. The most famous ship built here was the Bluenose, in 1920. This also marked the end of the era of tall ships, as new technology ushered in the age of steam-powered vessels, but the legendary speed and sleek lines of the Bluenose ensured Lunenburg's place in shipbuilding history.
On the practical side, a number of new fishing methods evolved here, and along the rest of Nova Scotia's coast. The advent of better steam engines meant that Lunenburg shipyards became devoted to building giant trawlers; these could carry out large numbers of smaller dories for offshore fishing. Shelburne dories, faster and lighter than conventional craft, were quickly adopted by Lunenburg shipbuilders; their increased manoeuvrability made offshore fishing more efficient. Fishing with drag nets came into vogue later on, when demand outweighed the number of fish that could be caught by handlining; ironically, this also saw the decline of the fishing industry, as Newfoundland's Grand Banks were depleted and government protection programmes were put into effect to preserve the cod that remained after years of overfishing.
Now, Lunenburg is less of a fishing town than it is a tourist destination, but there are still a handful of people who make their living from the ocean. There are still ships built here, but now they are mostly leisure craft. Government-imposed and -enforced fishing limits have mostly put a stop to fishing with drag nets; some Lunenburgers have gone back to fishing by hand, or turned to trapping lobsters instead.
As a place to visit on holiday, Lunenburg is lovely and well worth the drive, less than an hour from Halifax and not far away from Peggy's Cove. The Old Town is full of churches that date back to the eighteenth century, all of them well-preserved or undergoing renovations to restore them to their original state. Most of the houses bear provincial heritage plaques with the names of the original inhabitants and when they were built. Houses in the New Town are extravagant in the Victorian style; the older ones are more humble but built to last, repainted in bright colours now faded to pastels. From across the harbour it looks charmingly anachronistic like a postcard, or like Newfoundland in The Shipping News. The museum provides fascinating history and background for visitors, and I can't wait to go back.
Sources:
18th Century History and Architecture. Town of Lunenburg. http://www.town.lunenburg.ns.ca/pages/history/18century.html
19th Century History and Architecture. Town of Lunenburg. http://www.town.lunenburg.ns.ca/pages/history/19century.html
20th Century History and Architecture. Town of Lunenburg. http://www.town.lunenburg.ns.ca/pages/history/20century.html
Lunenburg's Heritage. Town of Lunenburg. http://www.town.lunenburg.ns.ca/pages/history/heritage.html
Municipal Facts, Figures, and History - Counties of Nova Scotia. Province of Nova Scotia. http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/muns/info/mapping/LUNEJ.asp
and an afternoon wandering around the Fisheries Museum reading the interpretive material on the walls and interrogating the staff.
A detailed map of the town can be found at http://www.town.lunenburg.ns.ca/pages/images/map/mapbig.gif
and a map of Lunenburg County at http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/muns/info/mapping/images-county/lunenburg.gif
The official site of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic can be found at http://museum.gov.ns.ca/fma/.
Cheers to Cletus the Foetus for having a keen eye for details.