But it's not the town I visited years ago. It's not that I want to stop progress to satisfy my nostalgic fantasy, but the touristy Lunenburg of today makes me cry. Makes many of the locals who grew up in the town cry too. One of the shopkeepers told me so.
Twenty-three years ago, we were two young women in our twenties. We went down east because we had never been before; we went without a travel plan or knowledge of the Maritimes. We drove into Lunenburg because someone at a gas station told us it was where the Bluenose of the Canadian dime was docked. Having nothing better to do, we went.
The charm of Lunenburg of old is that it was a thriving working waterfront. Townspeople built boats, fished, and transported lumber. My friend and I drove into town and saw a large dock with boats tied to shore. The roads were barely paved. We came down a bend into the dock and stopped inches from falling into the water. A fisherman waved us back and told us to park anywhere, just away from the dock.
I was looking into a backyard of colourful boats. The front view was from the water. Bustling activities, mostly of people and nets lined the dock. Horses and carriages pulled kids and wood and other cargo along the streets. Someone hauling a fishing net down the street told us they had been that way for 200 years and we should go look at the houses. People make a fuss about them for some reason, he said.
The houses were wooden shacks, brightly painted. I walked on narrow, winding dirt roads with houses that opened right onto the street. I felt apologetic as I trespassed on people's front yards. We asked where we could get some coffee. Someone suggested a diner might be open. It was the middle of the afternoon.
We stood on the street, holding our coffees, looking down on the dock. Tall masts and sails went every which way as people below them moved calmly about. I remember thinking, This is a time warp. How long will this place be undiscovered?
As we drove into Lunenburg this week, we first passed through Chester and Mahone Bay with their refurbished million dollar homes on the waterfront. Oh there is the charm of a well-to-do cottage town, and I picked out a place called Hairy Kids so The Boy can stop for a haircut on the way back. Lunenburg still had colourful houses, newly painted. The roads were paved streets with sidewalks and parking meters. Shops were everywhere, selling sportsgear to gifts to designer shoes.
The Bluenose was home, with a young crew of yuppy puppies welcoming visitors aboard its clean and sparking decks. A pay parking lot fronted the harbour. Restaurants lined the dock. Lunenburg has been gentrified, sanitized and Disneyfied.
I went into the Bluenose Shop where a woman sold souvenirs. I told her the Lunenburg I visited years before was very different. What happened? She said, The downturn of the fishery. When fishing dried up, Lunenburg almost died. What saved it was in 1995, the town was declared a UNESCO heritatge site, and some people came in to start new businesses. They still have bits of fishing and ship building, but the invisible industry is software development. That is, there are people in town who develop computer games. The town welcomed in tourism out of necessity. So Lunenburg survived when many older towns in Nova Scotia simply died.
Lunenburg is still pretty. It's just that the way of life the town symbolized is gone. What we see today is a ghost of its former self. It's hard not to lament a loss so unique in Canadian history.
This is the bend my friend and I came crashing around years ago.
That part of the once vibrant dock is now closed.
Further down is where the Bluenose is now docked.
With restaurants and shops facing the waterfront.
But in around the back streets of the town, the houses are still pretty, some quite grand, and more colourful than before.
They repaint the houses often. Here's someone doing just that.
As if the town would forget that fishery is an important part of the town's development, one of the church's steeples wears the sign of the fish.
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