Halifax : Features

My Nova Scotia is Better Than Yours By Chris Turner Aug 1, 2007

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Little-known Antigonish County may lack the individual feats of the province’s better known spots, but collectively, it’s got them all licked, says frequent visitor Chris Turner. Oh, and did he mention the nascent award-winning wine industry?

I’m not naturally inclined to think of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, as a tourist destination. Ask me what the can’t-miss sights are, and I’m apt to tell you that the long, rolling lawn in front of the big old yellow-and-green house on your left at the crest of the hill on Hawthorne Street is a world-class kick-the-can venue (and a pretty decent softball field), and that the backyard is without parallel as a site for al fresco lobster boils and serious Scotch drinking. That’s the house where my mother grew up and where my uncle Ron still resides, and my parents just built their retirement home next door.

Come to think of it, though, there’s plenty to recommend about the place as a vacation spot, even if your ancestors weren’t on one of those boats of displaced Highlanders that showed up on the Northumberland Coast 200 years ago. In fact, make a checklist of what people come to Nova Scotia for, and you’ll find most of it either in the town itself or scattered around the surrounding county.

Downhome Celtic culture? Yeah, b’y.

From the kilted lugs tossing tree trunks at Canada’s longest-running Highland Games (them’s cabers, by the bye) to the fiddle-propelled biweekly ceilidhs at Piper’s Pub, Antigonish is as Scots a burg as you’ll find on this side of the pond.

Rugged rolling coastline and quiet beaches? Many uncrowded kilometres of both. Fresh seafood by the boatload? Heck, I was well into my teens before I learned that not everyone’s family gatherings featured picnic tables piled with lobster or trips to the harbour to gather mussels.

Still, I’d wager your first question is: Where the heck is Antigonish, anyway?

Actually, your first question is probably Ann-TEE-goh- what? Well, it’s pronounced ANN-uh-guh-NISH, and it’s a town of 4,700 in the northwest of the Nova Scotia mainland, roughly midway between Halifax and the Cape Breton Highlands on the Trans-Canada.

All of which got me wondering: why isn’t Antigonish better known?

One obvious reason is that it isn’t quite as vast, scenic, or quirky as Cape Breton just up the road. (A shorthand, Us Weekly-esque comparative measure: Cape Breton’s most prominent celebrity cottager is Jack Nicholson; Antigonish County’s is Ethan Hawke.)


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