To many around the globe, Nova Scotia lobster is a prized delicacy. But in the province on Canada’s Atlantic coast, it’s as everyday as Vegemite to an Aussie – some mums have been known to pack lobster sandwiches in school lunchboxes.
I don’t dislike lobster; I just don’t love it. It seems like a lot of work for dinner. Visiting Nova Scotia might change my mind, I thought, as just getting there is hard work. Few destinations are further from Australia – the capital, Halifax, is nearly 17,000 kilometres from Sydney.
I arrive hungry – unsurprising after nearly two days’ travel (I started from Melbourne) – to drop my bags at the central and elegant Sutton Place Hotel, then wander Halifax’s compact downtown streets looking for dinner. At The Bicycle Thief, one of its most popular restaurants, there’s a free stool at the bar.
I am about to order the lobster but the diners beside me insist I choose the fresh crab and mascarpone ravioli. I don’t argue – and I’m glad. It is the most delicious start to my east-Canadian culinary explorations.
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The Bicycle Thief is on the touristy 4.4-kilometre harbourside boardwalk. The working harbour is home to Canada’s largest naval base, and there’s some lobster fishing alongside the busy commercial shipping.
On my first full day in Nova Scotia, I join my travel companions to visit historic vessels and a maritime museum off the boardwalk. Lunch is at the Waterfront Warehouse, once a tugboat repair depot.
We order the generous seafood towers, with gleaming, fresh lobster in prime position. I’m not enticed to don the shelling bib just yet, instead going for the plump local Cape Breton oysters, shucked to order.
“Are you going to Peggy’s Cove?” It’s a question I’m asked repeatedly during my short stay in the capital. Halifaxians, it seems, are almost as proud of this village as they are of lobster.
About 45 minutes from Halifax, it is among the most photographed sites in Canada. Visitors angle for a shot of its century-old working lighthouse – one of more than 150 historic beacons in Nova Scotia – atop wave-washed granite.
Joining the throng looks like a lot of effort for an uncertain return. Like lobster, so I wander off. In the Spindrift Gallery, a converted cottage, I view evocative old photographs of the village’s fishing community that put the industry into historical perspective.
An hour’s drive away at Oak Island Resort, I learn that long before Canada’s European history began, lobster was harvested for food. “The Mi’kmaq were in this area 10,000 years ago,” says Tony Sampson, whose Salty Dog Tours ferries visitors to nearby Oak Island.
“You still find artefacts,” Sampson says, describing Indigenous arrowheads and tools that occasionally surface on the island. “Some could be up to 10,000 years old. Further south, around the Tusket Islands, even more turn up. It was heavily fished by them.”
(Oak Island is the location for The Curse of Oak Island, a long-running History Channel series about the search for buried treasure – Sampson’s a regular cast member.)
Lobster isn’t on the menu at the resort, but there is another satisfying staple – chowder. Rather than leaning into lobster, one of my travel mates is on a chowder odyssey, ordering it wherever we dine.
Other Nova Scotian emblems come into focus as we continue our trip – lighthouses, for one. I start counting them after Peggy’s Cove: for every one working along the coast, there are two ornamental versions dotting the manicured gardens of brightly coloured homes in the province’s south, and I count them too.
Those houses – sitting side by side like a box of bonbons, each with their own embellishments – are among the most striking pleasures of touring here.
They reach a kaleidoscopic peak in Lunenburg, established in 1753, a UNESCO World Heritage Site as North America’s best surviving example of a planned British colonial settlement. It’s a whimsically hued and delightful place to stroll on our food adventure with Lunenburg Walking Tours.
Our last stop on the tour, at the Old Fish Factory Restaurant on the waterfront, includes a delectable lobster roll – no bib required.
It seems I’m coming around to the whole lobster thing – so much so that I decide to visit lobster habitat – kind of – when we overnight at White Point Beach Resort, an hour south of Lunenburg on the coast.
It’s a 96-year-old summer camp-style resort, dreamy for an Australian who’s only ever seen such places in movies (hello, Dirty Dancing).
So it feels rude to not take a dip in the North Atlantic – despite the fact that it’s raining, the sea is churning and a board at reception says the water is 18C.
The board doesn’t lie. It’s very cold – ideal for lobsters, not so much for me.
I warm up in the resort’s nautically themed dining room. In place of lobster, there is an expertly cooked Canadian steak – a reminder that Canada’s bounty goes well beyond the ocean.
Canada’s culture is vast and rich, and soon we are heading to the Acadian Shores, on the southernmost end of the province.
From the early 1600s, French Acadian settlers shaped this coast, fishing and farming reclaimed land. For more than a century, the region was contested by France and Britain, until the British took control and, in the mid-18th century, forced away thousands of Acadians.
Today, Acadian culture endures in Nova Scotia through its seafood-driven cuisine, maritime traditions, language and strong sense of identity tied to the sea.
Off the town of Wedgeport, we explore all that, from plastic chairs precariously untethered in the back of a wee fishing boat.
We’re with Tusket Island Tours; our captain and the outfit’s owner, Simon LeBlanc, is Acadian, from a multi-generational lobster fishing family.
We navigate around a fleet of impressive commercial lobster vessels to the Tusket Islands, where three centuries ago Acadians built shanties (shacks) so they could be closer to the fishing grounds.
Locals still keep their traps on the islands for the lobster season and the shanties are now weekenders, and we’re set for a chowder lunch in one owned by LeBlanc.
But an hour into the tour our boat’s engine dies. In the days of pirates and rum runners, this would have been a scary place to break down.
Today, LeBlanc calmly radios for help, then steps from the bridge to sing sea shanties a cappella – his voice is lovely – while we bob on the deep blue, waiting. A gentle breeze blows, the sun glints off the water with an intensity I’ve never seen before and the sky is the colour of forget-me-nots.
We’re soon rescued – too soon if you ask me – and towed on our way, as I realise lobster and all it means to Nova Scotia has become an invitation to slow down and enjoy the region’s unique hospitality, history and beauty.
In days to come we visit the pretty Annapolis Royal, established by the French in 1605, now one of the oldest European settlements in North America. Lunch is at Halls Harbour Lobster Pound, on the shore of the Bay of Fundy – where an armada of lobster boats rests on the seabed awaiting the turn of the 16-metre tide.
At the Lobster Pound, I can avoid the bib no longer. Here, live lobster is ordered by weight. I order the smallest, trying not look too long at the tanks where the creatures await the pot.
I crack on – pun intended – but still can’t say it’s my lobster epiphany. Still too much work for a meal. Most others at the table are thrilled by their lobster lunch (one abstains, having cried at the sight of the tanks).
Before whale watching off Digby in the Bay of Fundy, we stop for yet another lunch at a small cafe that doubles as a ticket office. I scan the menu. No lobster, but scallops – another Nova Scotia emblem – populate a roll. I’ve had so much seafood, I am about to order the grilled cheese sandwich.
Then I remember Bay of Fundy scallops, particularly Digby scallops, are prized worldwide. My better self pipes up: how often back home is a scallop roll going to be a $20 lunch option? With scallops this good?
Looking across sparkling water towards New Brunswick in the open air on a blue-sky early autumn day, I eat one of the greatest sandwiches of my life.
Thank goodness for better selves, and for the bounty and generosity of Nova Scotia, there is a memorable feast for all the senses. Lobster fans or not.
THE DETAILS
FLY
Air Canada flies Sydney-Vancouver direct. Reaching Halifax requires at least another connection, most likely in Calgary. See aircanada.com
STAY
The Sutton Place Hotel Halifax is a stylish and central base in the capital. Rooms from $300. See suttonplace.com
Oak Island Resort, a charming seaside hotel, has rooms and “chalets”. From $200. See oakislandresort.ca
White Point Beach Resort has a range of accommodation on its vast grounds, from rooms to houses. Its new Lakeside Glomes glamping domes are from $215. See whitepoint.com
TOUR
Salty Dog Tours, from $47 a person. See saltydogtours.com
Lunenburg Walking Tours’ Tastes of Lunenburg, from $109 a person. See lunenburgwalkingtours.com
Julietta Jameson is a freelance travel writer who would rather be in Rome, but her hometown Melbourne is a happy compromise.Connect via email.
