Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Lunenburg was named in 1753 after the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg who had become King George II of Great Britain.[3] The displaced Acadian inhabitants of the site had called it Mirliguèche, a French spelling of a Mi'kmaq name[4] of uncertain meaning. An earlier Mi'kmaq name was āseedĭk, meaning clam-land.[5]

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.[6] French colonists, who became known as Acadians, settled in the area around the 1620s. The Acadians and Mi’kmaq lived 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.[7]

Britain and France carried their military action 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. But the inhabitants of the area did not welcome the new regime. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and colonial French attacks, the British erected Fort George in 1749 at Citadel Hill Halifax and founded the town of Halifax. Later that year, Cornwallis ordered Mirliguèche destroyed.

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,[8] the settlers were accompanied by about 160 soldiers. They assembled prefabricated blockhouses and built a palisade along the neck of land where the village was laid out.[9] The settlers spent the summer building shelters for the winter[10] and, not having been able to conduct any fishing or farming, had to be provisioned from Halifax.[11] 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.[12] Others defected to the Acadian side.[13] In 1754 the town had a sawmill and a store.[14]

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 experience a severe land shortage.[15] Today these immigrants are known as the New England Planters, planters being an old word for colonist. Lunenburg was raided in 1756 by Mi'kmaq and allies, and afterwards.[16] The British responded with the Lunenburg Campaign of 1758. Hostilities with Mi'kmaq ended around 1760.

During the American Revolution, privateers from the colonies raided Lunenburg, including the 1782 raid, devastating the town. The town was fortified at the beginning of the War of 1812.[17] The British officials authorised the privateer Lunenburg, operated by Lunenburg residents, to raid United States American shipping.[18]

Over the following years, port activities transitioned from coastal trade and local mixed fisheries,[19] 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.[20]

The Lunenburg Cure was the term for a style of dried and salted cod that the city exported to markets in the Caribbean.[21] 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.[22]

Government in Nova Scotia has only two tiers: provincial and municipal. The province is divided into 50 municipalities, of which Lunenburg is one. The town is also within Lunenburg County, which was created for court sessional purposes in the 1860s and today has no government of its own, but the borders of which are coincident with certain provincial and federal electoral districts such as the Lunenburg Provincial Electoral District, and census districts. The county also covers the same terrain as the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg which surrounds, but does not include, Bridgewater, Lunenburg, and Mahone Bay, as they are incorporated separately and not part of the district municipality.

Colorful storefronts and signs lure tourists for visits

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.[1] High Liner Foods runs Canada's largest secondary fish-processing plant in the town.[36]

The town's architecture and picturesque location make it attractive to the film industry.[36] Films set in New England but filmed partly in Lunenburg include The Covenant[37] and Dolores Claiborne.[38] The 2010 Japanese movie Hanamizuki was partly set and filmed in Lunenburg[39] and the science fiction television show Haven was partly filmed there though it is set in the United States.[40] The 2012 film The Disappeared and the 2020 television series Locke & Key were filmed in Lunenburg.[41][42]

The population of Lunenburg has varied between two and three thousand since 1871, peaking from the 1960s to the '80s, and declining since. In the 2016 Census conducted by Statistics Canada, the Town of Lunenburg recorded a population of 2,263 living in 1,040 of its 1,206 total private dwellings, a change of -2.2% from its 2011 population of 2,313. The overwhelming majority of the population is English-speaking Canadian Protestants. The population decreased slightly from 2011 to 2016, while Nova Scotia's population increased slightly. At 58, the median age is higher than the provincial median of 46. Household incomes are similar to provincial averages.[1] With a land area of 4.04 km² (1.56 sq mi), Lunenburg had a population density of 560.1/km² (1,450.8/sq mi) in 2016.[1]

Panoramic view

Downtown Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, on the Corner of King and Pelham Streets.

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  St. John's Anglican Church, Lunenburg – built during the war (1754-1763)
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  Raid on Lunenburg (1756) by Donald A. Mackay
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  Raid on Lunenburg (1782) by A. J. Wright
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  Lunenburg as seen from Common Range in the 1880s
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  Memorial to fishermen along Bluenose Drive. Unveiled on August 25, 1996.
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  Lunenburg's World War I memorial
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  Town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia looking across Lunenburg Harbour from the Bluenose Golf course
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  Lunenburg Harbour
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  Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic
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  Lunenburg Boat Yards
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  Bluenose II in Lunenburg
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  View of Waterfront
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  Lunenburg Academy
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  Knaut-Rhuland House Museum
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  Lunenburg House
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  Zion Lutheran Church
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  Tourists enjoy a carriage ride through the historic district of Lunenburg. The landscape is dominated by rolling drumlins—a consistent feature of the region.

• Lunenburg English
• Charles Morris: surveyor who laid out Halifax, Lunenburg, Lawrencetown, and Liverpool.[43]
• Dettlieb Christopher Jessen: first member of the house of assembly for the town.[44]
• John Creighton: early settler and politician.[45]
• Jean-Baptiste Moreau: first missionary at the site[46]
• Halifax and South Western Railway: former railway line that served the South Shore.[47]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lunenburg.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Lunenburg.

• Lunenburg Heritage Society
• Municipality of the District of Lunenburg – Things to do in the surrounding area
• Lunenburg Booard of Trade