Nova Scotia’s sailing ambassador will no longer make its long-awaited return to an American festival this week, with the vessel’s operators citing, in part, “uncertainties” that come with cross-border travel these days.
The Lunenburg-based Bluenose II had been scheduled to attend the Gloucester Schooner Festival in northeastern Massachusetts at the end of the month for the first time in seven years.
In a Facebook post, the Lunenburg Marine Museum Society, the organization that operates the schooner for the province, said it had made “the difficult decision” to skip the festival and spend more time visiting communities in its home province.
“A few things shaped that choice: plans involving cross-border travel come with more uncertainties this year, and at the same time, Nova Scotia is experiencing a very busy tourism season,” the volunteer-run society said in its post.
The society said no one was available for an interview.
Falling tourism numbers
While its statement did not elaborate on the unknowns at the border, travel into the U.S. from Canada has plummeted in recent months amid a trade war between the two countries and President Donald Trump’s threats to Canadian sovereignty.
The number of Canadians returning from trips to the U.S. by air fell 22.1 per cent in June compared with the same month one year earlier, according to Statistics Canada. Canadian-resident return trips by automobile fell by 33.1 per cent.
This year would have been the Bluenose II’s first time back in Lunenburg’s “sister city” of Gloucester since 2018. Previously, the COVID-19 pandemic and logistics got in the way of the vessel — a replica of the famed fishing schooner depicted on Canada’s dime — from attending the festival, now in its 41st year.
Lunenburg’s ties to Gloucester, a coastal city 48 kilometres northeast of Boston, date back to a friendly rivalry in the 1900s between the original Bluenose and American schooners.
‘We are bound together’
The two ports share a unique relationship, said Michael DeKoster, executive director of Maritime Gloucester, which hosts the schooner festival.
“The fortunes of Gloucester’s fishing fleet have long been tied to our sister city of Lunenburg and to Nova Scotians in general,” DeKoster said in a statement. “We are bound together by prosperous years, by tragic losses, and by centuries of grit and perseverance.”
He said Gloucester sent a goodwill expedition to Lunenburg for a rowing race on Saturday.
“Temporary challenges — whether of wind, tide, finances, or politics — cannot weaken these ties. We look forward to the day when the Queen of the Atlantic once more graces our harbour under full sail,” said Dekoster.
The Lunenburg Marine Museum Society said it looked forward to the Bluenose II returning to the festival in the future.
“Gloucester, though, will always be close to our hearts. The bond between our two ports runs deep.”
