Visiting New Brunswick’s Sardine Museum

Photo: George Benson

I’m originally from New Brunswick and visit “down home” every chance I get, especially when the visit involves a trip to Grand Manan Island, N.B. That’s where my wife Maureen and I spent the day on August 23, 2011. Our first stop was in Seal Cove to walk among the smoke sheds of old. We had not heard of the Sardine Museum and Herring Hall of Fame before, as it had only opened recently. We were wonderfully surprised to come across this hidden treasure consisting of three buildings full of artifacts from days long gone, when smoked herring was the island’s major industry. The sardine-can collection at the time of our visit consisted of four shelving units crammed with cans; in my photo, there are 231 cans on the three shelving units I was able to get into the frame.

Outside the museum sits a large replica of a sardine can that the original museum founders had built-and even used as a boat, with a small trolling motor, for short jaunts in the safety of the enclosed harbour at Seal Cove.

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