November News

Well, as usual for this time of year, we are back to very few restaurants. In Lockeport, only the Parrot's Pins is open now (Tuesday-Saturday). The White Gull and Town & Country (A-1 Pizza this summer) are closed and both up for sale again/still. Although A-1 seemed to be doing well leasing the T&C, apparently the family member running it has moved to the Valley or something, so they gave up the lease. The Town market offers some take-out meals and the Lydgate Corner Store has some sandwiches and such

The Chef's Table in Sable River is closed and may not reopen in the spring since Zaari is opening a restaurant in Liverpool near the Best Western. The Bayman in Upper East Green Harbour remains open 7 days/week as usual (we won one of their excellent pizzas for our Hallowe'en costumes!)

In Shelburne, Lothar's closed in early September as Lothar was asked to return to Halifax to do the catering on a movie set - the restaurant is now for sale. As is the old Shelburne Cafe/Pastry next door (still). Charlotte Lane closed very briefly for medical reasons (Roland) but he's all fixed up and they are back in business until Christmas (Tuesday-Saturday). The Loyalist Inn has a liquor license as of late September and is now open for all 3 meals 7 days a week - and looks very nice since the renovations - of course it's for sale too.

The BeanDock, Luong's, Scotia Lunch and Sophia's are all going strong. Sophia's is closed Sunday, Luong's Monday and I think Monique closes the BeanDock on Sunday as well. The SeaDog is still open and presenting entertainment one evening most weeks - this is continuing until at least November 27th (Irish Mythen show). It will likely be closing down for a while as soon as Christmas party season is over.

The Quarterdeck and Seaside Seafoods in Hunt's Point are both closed for the season - very early for Seaside this year.

Port Mouton's restaurant seems to be closed - hard to tell when it's also the office for the cabins, the liquor store and a convenience store.

On the encouraging side, Peter Swim has bought the building in Lockeport between the Town & Country and the Legion and is renovating it - rumour has it it will be an ice-cream parlour next summer.

Yesterday, a new business opened in Lockeport - Vanessa's Flowers and Gifts - in the bottom floor of the building that housed the Little School Museum this summer (under Donna Crosby's apartment). Vanessa has fresh flowers and lots of very nice gift-ware - particularly candles, Christmas items, vases, picture frames etc. Lovely presentation - I hope she is successful. One thing that may help her this year is that there was a fire Thursday morning in the pharmacy and there apparently was a lot of smoke damage although the structure seems to be okay. It was an electrical fire and the shop was closed for Remembrance Day so I guess it smoldered for a while before setting off the alarm. It looks like Bevin has grabbed the bottom floor of the Masons' building to use as a temporary pharmacy - Bell Aliant and Lester (our electrician) were working in there this morning and an alarm company was there yesterday. Hope they get it up and running - we'll need to renew our prescriptions before we leave for Ottawa and Florida in a couple of weeks.

Recently the weather has been simply AWFUL - buckets of rain and very strong winds. The flooding has been terrible and who knows how much infrastructure damage will be revealed when it finally recedes. We went out to dinner in Liverpool at Lane's Privateer Inn (always open, thank God) last night with Gail who lives in Little Port L'Hebert down the East Sable Road - she has to drive through water to get out to the highway for the last week or so. The same is true of the West Sable Road and many others - not to mention the already obviously washed out roads in Yarmouth county, the washed away Tusket bridge and all the flooded homes and cottages. A theory is developing that the extreme flooding is a direct consequence of the interior clear-cutting in Nova Scotia - there is nothing left to contain the run-off.

Today is beautiful though - mid teens, clear blue sky, no wind - a very welcome break.

There was a meeting last week to discuss the future of the Little School Museum (it was going to be moved into the middle of town after the ravages of Hurricane Bill last year). Harlow's didn't seem to feel it was going to survive an attempted move and the front porch and back annex would not have been moved anyway. So the town citizens decided to go back to the previous plan to raise the building a few feet (above where the flooding occurs during storms) since it appears that the Town will be able to do some repair work to the rapidly disappearing dunes behind the Museum (and in other parts of the beach too) - permission for the work has been granted by the powers that be in Halifax and Ottawa, big rocks are available, now they're working on conning some level of government into funding the whole thing. Historically the Little School has always sat where it is and people really wanted to keep it where it is - time will tell if this is the right decision. The Town also plans to look at some pumping system to direct water to the back harbour before it can accumulate into deep puddles or lakes.

An additional item of interest at that meeting was that there seems to be growing support for a Lockeport Museum to house all the many items in storage that are not-school related and for which there is simply not enough room in the Little School. This would be good news for the Historical Society which is also looking for a more suitable home.

That's all for now folks!