The Queens County Museum in Liverpool reopens this weekend with its popular annual event Dickensville and the Festival of Trees. (Rick Conrad)
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Liverpool, with multiple events planned for the historic Astor Theatre and the rest of downtown Liverpool this weekend.
Melanie Perron, co-owner of Hell Bay Brewing in Liverpool, says she hopes summer 2024 is better than the 2023 season. (Rick Conrad photo)
By Rick Conrad
Fires, floods and downpours combined last year to keep visitors away from the South Shore, according to numbers released recently by Tourism Nova Scotia.
Hotel stays, or room nights sold, for the May to October 2023 period were down about five per cent over 2022. That compares to an overall decrease of two per cent in all of Nova Scotia. The only regions that saw more people in 2023 were the Eastern Shore and the Annapolis Valley.
The South Shore was one of the hardest hit areas of the province. Yarmouth and Acadian Shores saw the biggest drop at six per cent over 2022.
Stephanie Miller Vincent, co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative, says the wildfires in Barrington and Shelburne, and torrential rains and floods later in the summer conspired to keep people away from the South Shore.
“We had an odd beginning to our peak season in 2023,” she said in an interview. “We had fires in the Barrington area that shut down (Highway) 103 so folks weren’t travelling this coast. So that affected numbers.
“2023 numbers are tough to look at because we’re looking at numbers that are coming the year following a couple of years of pent-up travel demand.”
The numbers aren’t really surprising to businesses and organizations in Queens County that rely on summer tourist traffic to help float them through the rest of the year.
Melanie Perron, the co-owner of Hell Bay Brewing Company in Liverpool, says she saw a lot fewer visitors from the Maritimes last year.
“We rely so much on our patio season to bring in tourism and people from the city and other places,” Perron says.
“And it seemed like it rained every weekend so those would have been when we would have had a surplus of people coming and enjoying our beaches and our parks and then coming and stopping and having a flight (of beer) or getting beer to go. So I found our numbers were way down because of the weather.”
At the Queens County Museum, which relies partly on donations from tourists, visitor numbers dropped by more than 3,000 across its four properties over 2022. Besides the main museum, Perkins House, Fort Point Lighthouse and the Queens Museum of Justice are also part of the museum complex.
Dayle Crouse, the museum’s administrative assistant, said that despite a spike in visitors in 2022 when people were doing more post-Covid travelling, the numbers still haven’t recovered to 2019 levels.
“We found that after Covid and everybody had a little bit of freedom they really spiked and everybody was spending their dollars and going out. But then I think the next year, people really started to rein in their dollars and numbers have dropped.”
Crouse says a combination of rising gas prices, bad weather and news coverage of the wildfires contributed to the decrease.
Miller Vincent says that while tourists from outside the Maritimes tend to book their vacations six months to a year in advance, those closer to home are more spontaneous.
“As Atlantic Canadians and Maritimers we look on Wednesday and say, ‘OK, what’s the weather this weekend? Should I go or should I stay?’ And if it’s calling for rain, you’ll see those accommodation numbers not pick up where they need to be.”
Perron says she hopes 2024 brings brighter weather and more people back to the area’s beaches and the brewery’s patio.
“We usually bank on the summer to get through the winter. So our summer was so dismal that we’re just scraping by to get through the winter and hopefully we’ll have a nice sunny hot summer to bring out all the beer drinkers.”
Festival of Trees and Dickensville courtesy of Queens County Museum
The Queens County Museum is celebrating Christmas like it’s 1999, or thereabouts.
For the past couple of decades, the museum has marked the holiday season with the Festival of Trees and Dickensville displays.
The Festival of Trees showcases over 35 trees, each with different decorations or themes and placed around the museum while Dickensville features scale model recreations of the people and places from Charles Dickens’ novels.
Director Linda Rafuse says after being unable to welcome visitors in during the pandemic they’re excited to continue the tradition once again.
“We’ve been doing this exhibit for so long now, with our two learning trees that we’re now having some of the children that we told this story to many years ago are now bringing their children in to hear the story of the Legend of the Christmas Spider,” said Rafuse. “That’s just so heartwarming.”
Rafuse says the local elementary school classes will be filing in over the course of a week in December to experience the stories and displays for themselves.
The displays are open to the public seven days a week for no charge, but the museum gladly accepts donations.
In fact, for the first time the Queens County Museum is hosting a Christmas wreath auction as a fundraiser.
Entrance to Zion United Church in Liverpool. Photo Ed Halverson
A Liverpool church that boasts the oldest established congregation in Queens is being sold.
The Zion United Church closed its doors in December according to chair of the closure working group* Ray Baker.
He says the congregation is getting older and their numbers are decreasing.
“Unfortunately, it’s a sign of the times, we’re not having a lot of younger families become members of the church,” said Baker. “So, it’s more difficult to operate it and find the funds to run it.”
Baker says the with fewer than 40 active members in the church it is no longer possible to pay the bills and upkeep on the 150-year-old building.
Complicating matters further, Baker says their minister retired in June at the same time the church board chair resigned, effectively leaving the congregation without leadership to help guide them through the ever-changing COVID regulations.
At a special meeting October 24, the congregation made the decision to sell and the last service at the church was held in December.
Zion United Church. Photo Ed Halverson
Director of the Queens County Museum Linda Rafuse says the Zion United church was formed from congregations that date back to the 1700s, making it historically significant.
The first chapel was built by some of the founding fathers of Liverpool including merchant Simeon Perkins who is buried in the cemetery behind Zion United.
The current church was built in 1866 after a fire destroyed the second chapel the previous year.
Rafuse says the church has already approached the museum about donating several artifacts.
“It will be a loss to the history of Liverpool but we’re here to preserve those memories,” said Rafuse.
Baker says a working group comprised of himself and several church elders have received several options for closing down the church from the United Church regional office.
He says there is a distinction to be made between the church and its people.
“The congregation is the people,” said Baker. “And the building is just that, the building.”
Baker says there’s a strong desire within the congregation to stick together.
Some of the options are to continue as a congregation and share space in another church or disband and join other congregations.
Selling the church will be further complicated by the fact it is responsible for the upkeep of three cemeteries.
Cemetery behind Zion United Church. Photo Ed Halverson
Baker says the working group is in discussions with United church officials and the municipality to determine what options are available for dividing the cemeteries from the church while ensuring the graveyards continue to be maintained.
“We can’t sell the church with the cemetery. I mean, what buyer would want the building, for whatever purpose but also have a cemetery to look after,” said Baker.
A meeting will be held February 12 where the congregation will be presented with their options and decide on how to proceed.
*A previous version of this story mis-identified the closure working group as a disbanding committee. The story has been updated with the correction.
One of the oldest homes in in Nova Scotia is new again.
Liverpool’s Perkins House reopened Monday following an almost year-long renovation.
Director of Perkins House and the Queens County Museum Linda Rafuse says like everything else, the pandemic played a role in the timing of the reopening.
“It was supposed to be opened a couple of weeks ago but that got delayed with the last COVID shutdown because we had to wait for the furniture to be transferred to the house,” said Rafuse.
The historic site has been closed since May of 2015 when staff reported structural issues.
The province stepped in and provided $1.5 million dollars to assess the damage and restore the site.
The house is now structurally sound and ready to resume its role telling the story of Liverpool’s past.
Rafuse says walking into Perkins House transports visitors to a different time.
“When you’re coming into a historic home, you want to walk into a historic home that looks like it’s been lived in,” said Rafuse. “That’s how the staff will interpret it to you and tell you the story.”
Visitors to Perkins House will experience the story of its owner Simeon Perkins through discussions and demonstrations with staff dressed in period costume.
Perkins House staff. L-R: Director Linda Rafuse, interpreters Linda Moulton and Jamie Dunn. Photo Ed Halverson
Many of the hands-on activities such as laundry, weaving and sewing will be made available as COVID restrictions lift.
Rafuse says finally reopening the building means a great deal to the entire community.
“This has been an iconic symbol in the community for over 250 years. Everybody always keeps their eyes on Perkins House and [are] always asking how are things coming and when is going to open and always the discouraging answer of, don’t know, don’t know,” said Rafuse. “So it has been a long road but the end result was worth the wait.”
Perkins House is open to the public seven days a week. Check their website for times.
