Lucy the Lobster will once again use her canny crustacean conjecturing on Sunday to predict whether we’ll see six more weeks of winter. (Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl photo)

Organizers call it a shellebration, while lobster lovers think of it as the most delicious time of year.

The eighth annual Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl is set to crack open on Saturday at businesses, galleries and community centres along Nova Scotia’s South Shore. 

Each February, the month-long festival highlights the South Shore’s most famous and lucrative export.

Stephanie Miller Vincent is the co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative, which organizes the event.

“It’s one of the reasons that the lobster crawl happens in February. It’s peak lobster season, yes. But we all know that we get into that spot where we need a little nudge, maybe a little nip with a claw to get us going.”

More than 70 events are scheduled, with more being added as Feb. 1 gets closer.

Two of the biggest events are coming up on Sunday, or Groundhog Day. In Barrington, people will wait to see if Lucy the Lobster sees her shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter. 

And at the Quarterdeck Resort at Summerville Beach, near Liverpool, a dozen restaurants from around the South Shore will compete for the title of best lobster roll. 

Local author Pam Wamback has written a children’s book called Lucy the Lob-Star, about Lucy’s rise from the depths to become a famous weather forecaster.

Lots of food events are scheduled, like a chowder showdown. And many restaurants and bars will be featuring additional lobster dishes on their menus. But the month also features arts events around the South Shore, including local artisan markets.

• Go here for a complete list of Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl events

Liverpool’s Queens Coast Trading Company has even created a special tea blend dedicated to Lucy the Lobster. 

Miller Vincent says the lobster crawl is especially important for local fishermen and businesses in light of the tariff threat from the United States.

“And certainly the events that are happening in the U.S. and the conversations that are being spoken about makes us remember that … we should be looking at home first and shopping. And listen, the South Shore’s got some amazing products and amazing shops, restaurants, marketers, whatever it might be. There’s no better time to go see them than it is in February.”

As for Lucy’s prediction on Sunday?

“Lucy has been right every single year, and I don’t want to jinx her. Last year she was the opposite of Punxsutawney Phil and Shubenacadie Sam. And in the long run, she was absolutely right.

“You know, we did end up with the weather that she predicted. So she’s going to be right, no matter what that is. And the best thing is, no matter what she predicts, we still have at least six more weeks of lobster season.”

For more information on the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl, visit their website at lobstercrawl.ca or follow them on Facebook.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Stephanie Miller Vincent is the co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative. The organization held its annual general meeting Tuesday at the Quarterdeck Resort in Summerville Centre. (Rick Conrad)

Tourism operators on Nova Scotia’s South Shore are looking forward to a good season, optimistic that visitors will return to the area after a disappointing 2023.

Stephanie Miller Vincent is the co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative, which counts almost 120 members from Peggys Cove to Barrington. 

“We’re a resilient group. We’re also a really optimistic group. And weather will play a factor, the economy will play factor, but we know we’ve got first-class product, we’ve got things to offer that nobody else has in other regions of Nova Scotia or Canada, so we’re looking forward to a really great year.”

The co-operative held its annual general meeting on Tuesday at the Quarterdeck Resort on picturesque Summerville Beach. About 40 members from hotels, restaurants, municipalities and chambers of commerce around the South Shore got an update on the group’s efforts to boost tourism and to extend the season beyond the summer and early fall.

Wildfires, floods and rain contributed to a challenging 2023 tourist season for the area’s businesses. The South Shore, the Yarmouth and Acadian Shores and Cape Breton saw declines in room nights sold compared with 2022, while accommodation numbers in the rest of the province were higher than the year before.

Hotel stays, or room nights sold, on the South Shore for the May to October 2023 period were down about five per cent over 2022.

Those at the meeting on Tuesday said early indications are that this year’s bookings are up over last year.

Jill Forrest, the general manager of the Quarterdeck, said early bookings look good.

“It’s promising for this upcoming year for sure. We are in a last-minute trend, it seems. Even last year, people tend to wait and see what the weather’s going to do and pull that final trigger on booking and knowing where they’re headed. But things are looking very good for the year.”

Susan Corkum-Greek, MLA for Lunenburg and Nova Scotia’s minister of economic development, told the co-operative’s members that she checked with the province’s tourism officials before the meeting to get an idea of what the season might bring. 

“And we have early indicators of early bookings. We know for instance that the Yarmouth ferry has a higher percentage of advance bookings, The hotel association is saying that. Room nights are not the only indicator but it shows buy-in intention and says something of length of stay.”

The co-operative’s annual lobster crawl in February always attracts a lot of attention. This year, the group says its marketing efforts resulted in more than 100 media headlines, reaching about 270 million people, with an advertising value of just under $7 million.

About 100 of the co-operative’s members held 128 events around the South Shore connected with the lobster crawl. And just under 80 per cent of those who attended a lobster crawl event were from Nova Scotia, according to a survey conducted by the co-operative.

Miller Vincent says it’s always difficult to predict what the season will be like. But she expects staycations to be big again this year.

“You’re always trying to look at the data,” she says. “We always look at the price of gas, but we’ve got more flights coming into Halifax so that’s important. The economy will probably keep people closer to home and looking to see not only what’s in their own neighborhood but what’s next door. Staycations have become more important than before Covid because we recognize what we’ve got here.”

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Rae Bonneville is the chairwoman of the newly formed Lunenburg Queens Business Collective. (Rae Bonneville)

Business groups on the South Shore have teamed up to form one large umbrella organization, potentially representing hundreds of businesses.

The Lunenburg Queens Business Collective includes the chambers of commerce and boards of trade from Liverpool, Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Bridgewater and Riverport. It also includes the South Shore Tourism Co-operative. 

Rae Bonneville is the new group’s chairwoman. She says the group won’t replace the business groups in each community. It will enhance what they’re already doing and give them more voice and visibility.

“It’s just so much more of a pool that everyone can access,” she said in an interview. “If you’re a member of the Lunenburg Board of Trade, for instance, you’re also a member of the collective. And your connections are really extended. … The connections for business are much higher. And also it gives us a much stronger voice for going to council and representing the businesses with a much stronger voice. It’s not just Liverpool on their own, dealing with a challenge. It’s all of us supporting that group. … It just gives us a lot more strength.”

Bonneville, who is also the president of the Bridgewater Chamber of Commerce, said the idea was first hatched by the Bridgewater chamber about two years ago. 

“It seemed like a great idea to unite and form a united voice and have a stronger presence and support each other in the whole region.”

She said that although the group is brand new, it already has its sights set on some big issues. 

“One of the biggest things we’re trying to tap into is a really good transit system between all of these towns to help with students and seniors and all kinds of shift workers and that sort of thing.”

And it has taken over responsibility for the Lunenburg Queens Business Awards, which are planned for November at the Best Western in Bridgewater.

Bonneville said they hope to hold region-wide job fairs and to create an activity calendar, so that an event in one community doesn’t compete with an event in another.

“It’s pretty exciting, we’re getting a lot of really positive feedback. I think this is going to have a lot of legs as we go along.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

The Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl Festival kicks off Thursday. (Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl Facebook page)

By Rick Conrad

Get your shell cracker ready, sharpen your lobster pick and loosen your belt. Thursday marks the beginning of the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl Festival.

The month-long celebration of the succulent shellfish includes businesses all along the South Shore, from Barrington, the lobster capital of Canada, to Peggys Cove, and as far inland as Kejimkujik and New Ross.

Things really get going on Friday, when Lucy the Lobster marks Groundhog Day in her own special way. If you’re at the Cape Sable Island Causeway at 8 a.m., you’ll get to see if Lucy predicts a longer winter.

The South Shore Tourism Co-operative launched its first lobster crawl in 2018 to help bring visitors to the South Shore in a typically slow time of year.

Stephanie Miller Vincent, the co-ordinator of the co-operative and the festival, says that with more than 100 events at 80 different businesses around the South Shore, it’s a great excuse to get out of the house.

“February is the longest shortest month of the year and we all need a reason to get out and crawl,” she says.

“There are just always great reasons to either come and visit the South Shore or crawl around the South Shore if you already live here.”

The festival features five signature events — Lucy and her shadow on the 2nd, the Lobster Roll Off competition at the Michelin Social and Athletic Club in Bridgewater on Feb. 4, the inaugural Chowder Chowdown Showdown on Feb. 11 at the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown, the Tail End Party at the Old Fish Factory in Lunenburg on Feb. 23, and the Beachside Bingo Brunch Buffet at the Quarterdeck Inn in Hunts Point on Feb. 25.

The chowder showdown is already sold out and there are only a few tickets left for the lobster roll competition, Miller Vincent says.

But there are events all over the South Shore to tickle your lobster fancy. The Region of Queens is also getting in on the lobster-loving action with Light Up Queen’s, an outdoor nighttime party in Centennial Park on Feb. 24.

“The economic value of lobster crawl has increased every year,” Miller Vincent says. “It’s now an anticipated event. We have businesses that stay open because of lobster crawl or extend their hours because of lobster crawl.

“It’s a little bit of everything. It’s truly taken a month where hibernation might have been the most popular activity and really encouraged people to get out.”

If you’re really into the crawl, you can find something to do for all 29 days of February, Miller Vincent says. You can pick up a passport at participating businesses or on the website at lobstercrawl.ca, track your progress and enter to win prizes. 

As for Lucy, she gets to return to her bottom-dwelling ways a few days after she sees her shadow or not.

“Lucy is often a different Lucy. She does her duties, spends a couple of days at the spa at Capt. Kat’s (Lobster Shack in Barrington Passage) so you can pop by and get a ‘shellfie’ with her and then Lucy gets released,” Miller Vincent says.

“We do not eat Lucy, nor do we allow anyone else to eat Lucy. Lucy gets released.”

For a full schedule, visit lobstercrawl.ca or follow Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl on Facebook.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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