Liverpool author Bryn Pottie has been named to the longlist for the prestigious Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his debut novel, The Great Lunenburglary.

Liverpool author Bryn Pottie has been named to the longlist for the prestigious Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his debut novel, The Great Lunenburglary, bringing a uniquely Nova Scotian story to the national stage.

For 79 years, the annual $25,000 dollar prize has recognized excellence in Canadian literary humour. Past winners have included Will Ferguson, W.O. Mitchell, Stuart McLean and Mordecai Richler. In addition to local author Bryn Pottie, this year’s longlist includes humour heavy hitters such as Mark Critch and Terry Fallis.

The list “showcases the remarkable talent, wit and keen insight that continue to make Canadianliterary humour so vibrant and essential,” says Daphne Mainprize, president of Stephen Leacock Associates.

“It’s a great honour to be a Leacock longlister!” says author Bryn Pottie. “I worked hard on this book and it’s great to be recognized by an even more prestigious group than my mom and her friends at the library. Any history book will show you that the Nova Scotian story has always been full of hard, serious work. But this place is pretty silly and ridiculous, too, and I wanted to write something to highlight that.”

Set in 1922 Lunenburg, The Great Lunenburglary tells the story of two teenagers who steal the Bluenose. Blending historical fiction with absurdist comedy, the novel delivers a fast-paced, laugh-out-loud caper rooted in local culture and storytelling traditions. It was released in June 2025 by Nova Scotia’s Moose House Publications.

“It’s ironic that Bryn Pottie and Moose House are producing this level of quality at the same time our provincial government is cutting funding for publishers who provide opportunities for this level of writing,” says Moose House publisher Brenda Thompson.

After a year of steady local sales, national retail chain Indigo named The Great Lunenburglary one of Canada’s best regional books of 2025.

“The Great Lunenburglary is a kilometre-a-minute laugh riot with endless re-readability,” says Bridgewater Coles manager Justin Robar, “I’d recommend this book to anyone; there’s probably no one in Nova Scotia that I haven’t already!”

The three finalists will be revealed in mid-May, and the winner of the

and $25,000 prize will be celebrated at a gala dinner in Orillia, Ontario on June 20.

The full 2026 Leacock Prize longlist is available here: https://quillandquire.com/omni/longlist-announced-for-2026-leacock-medal-for-humour/ For more information, review copies, or interview requests, please contact Bryn Pottie at brynsampottie@gmail.com or Brenda Thompson at brenda@moosehousepress.ca.

Two Bluenose deckhands meet. Kate Smith of Sydney, N.S., is currently part of the Bluenose II crew. Craig Harding of Liverpool was a deckhand on the ship in the 1960s. (Rick Conrad)

The Brooklyn Marina rolled out the red carpet for Nova Scotia’s sailing ambassador on Tuesday evening.

A few dozen people turned out to meet the crew of Bluenose II at the small clubhouse as it visited the Liverpool area in its first stop on a tour of southwestern Nova Scotia. 

Others drove down the small wharf in Brooklyn or towards the breakwater to get a look across Liverpool Bay to where the schooner was anchored near Port Mersey Commercial Park.

Volunteers at the marina had food and drinks ready for the crew and fans of the Bluenose.

Capt. Phil Watson was one of the dozen or so crewmembers who shuttled from the sailing icon to the marina.

“We haven’t been here in a long time and we were developing a a cruise along Southwest Nova and so Liverpool it is. There’s great alumni support here and community support and the club has always been good to us so it’s pretty easy to put Liverpool on the list.. … It’s good to come back to this side of the province again.”

The tour of southwestern Nova Scotia was hatched after the Bluenose crew cancelled an early September trip to Gloucester, Mass. Instead, they said they’d do what so many other Canadians are doing this year, stay closer to home and support local tourism.

Kate Smith, a deckhand from Sydney, N.S., is spending her third summer on the Bluenose. It was her first visit to Liverpool.

“I love it. It’s great. People are sweet. It’s super awesome,” she said of the Liverpool welcome. “We really like going around this area and we figured we’d go on a little staycation basically around the south coast.”

Liverpool’s Craig Harding sailed on the schooner as a 20-year-old from 1968 to 1969.

“I’d been on fishing boats on draggers and so on but I’d never been on a sailboat until that year and I learned to sail on it,” he said. “I’ve been connected to the Bluenose ever since. Hard not to be. Really, really happy to see the support. It was beautiful to see her come in.”

The last time the Bluenose II was in Liverpool was in 2021 when the ship celebrated 100 years of Bluenose history. 

Jamie Frankel of Massachusetts just happened to be at the marina when he heard about the Bluenose’s visit. He and some others arrived on his boat The Sea Quester a couple of days before to wait for a weather window to continue their journey through the Gulf of Maine.

“None of us knew she was going to be coming at the time, so this is an incredibly welcome surprise. … As the sailing ambassador for Nova Scotia I think everyone loves her but in addition, she has beautiful lines as a ship and as a tall ship of that size I’d say that it’s always a wonderful event to be someplace where she comes in and it’s the splendor of old sailing ships and old-style sailing ships.”

Capt. Watson says the Bluenose always draws a crowd. 

“It’s bringing a fishing schooner back to a fishing community. You know all these communities have shipbuilding, fishing heritage and these schooners, whether it was a fishing schooner or a cargo schooner, they all have that history there, so to be able to put a thing in place in the harbour where you can then talk about it and you can talk about, ‘oh those schooners used to be here all the time’ or ‘they used to build them over there’, it’s a chance for the community to talk about the history of their communities and share it with them themselves and hopefully they’ll come and share it with us as well.”

The Bluenose II left Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon, sailing around Port Mouton to its next stops in Clarks Harbour, Yarmouth, Digby and Lower West Pubnico.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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