We’ve only been sailing for 20 minutes when a fellow passenger shouts, “Thar she blows!” A North Atlantic right whale allows us to snap a close-up before dipping under the keel, likely to join the posse of its brethren (up to 200, or half the world population) and other leviathans that hang out around Grand Manan each summer. The island, bobbing at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, is also a favourite stopover for migratory birds like razorbills and Arctic terns, with gaggles touching down for some R&R. With picturesque fishing villages and towering cliffs, who can blame them? The seafood alone is a good enough reason to put the archipelago on our own migration route.

The Bay of Fundy is a veritable smorgasbord for cetaceans. Cruising with Whales-n-Sails Adventures and marine biologist Laurie Murison, we soon lose count of the finbacks, minkes and humpbacks we spot. But it was a much smaller animal that put Grand Manan on the world map. Kayaking in Seal Cove with Kevin Sampson from Adventure High, we pass some colourful sheds. “A hundred years ago, the island’s smoked herring was exported from here,” he says and points to the old smokehouses that today are a part of a National Historic Site housing the Sardine Museum and Herring Hall of Fame.

With trails that lead to places bearing such evocative names as Hole-in-the-Wall, Seven Days Work and Flock of Sheep, hiking on Grand Manan is a walk in the park. To fully appreciate Hole-in-the-Wall’s scale (it’s a four-storey rock in Whale Cove that’s been carved by the tides over millennia to form a craggy arch), we risk our limbs descending a steep, slippery cliff with the help of a rope, just so that we’ll have a story to tell our grandkids one day.

An annual pilgrim from Ontario lets us in on a secret: “The Inn at Whale Cove is the only game in town when it comes to fine dining.” Indeed, chef and owner Laura Buckley makes us feel lucky her property is also our home for three days. (The lodgings range from Anne of Green Gables-style rooms to digs with such comfy amenities as a Jacuzzi and private patio.) When we head out, Buckley sends us off with lobster-salad sandwiches and chocolate-and-walnut brownies. At dinner, we devour a calamari salad so garlicky even Tony Soprano’s mamma would approve, and a seafood risotto loaded with enough lobster and scallops to feed a family of four. But if all you crave is a freshly cooked lobster, call the Fundy House to place an order.

Grand Manan is famous (or infamous, depending on your taste buds) for dulse. The seaweed – which can be eaten raw with a beer in its dried, crunchy form, or thrown into stews and stir-fries – is harvested at low tide, mainly on the western side of the island. The cashier at Roland’s Sea Vegetables, which sells dulse and other sea veggies, including nori and kelp, tells us, “The dulse over on the mainland isn’t clean. There it grows on mud; here it grows on rock.” That’s enough to convince us to buy a pound for our own kitchen experiments.

Here are the addresses you'll need for a memorable weekend on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick.


Adventure High 83 Rte. 776, 800-732-5492, adventurehigh.com
Fundy House 1303 Rte. 776, 506-662-8341
Hole-in-the-Wall Park & Campground 42 Old Airport Rd., 506-662-8341, grandmanancamping.com
Inn at Whale Cove 26 Whale Cove Cottage Rd., 506-662-3181, whalecovecottages.ca
Roland's Sea Vegetables 174 Hill Rd., 506-662-3468
Whales-n-Sails Adventures North Head Fishermen's Wharf, 888-994-4044, whales-n-sails.com

Photos: Susan Nerberg (Fishing Gear, Hole-in-the-Wall, Inn at Whale Cove); Allan McDonald (Whales-n-Sails Adventures); iStockphoto.com / Hockeymom4 (Lobster)