Pictou Harbour

The south side of the harbour opens into the broad mouth of the East River of Pictou which flows inland through the towns of Trenton and New Glasgow.

The south-west end of the harbour is bisected by the Harvey Veniot causeway that carries Nova Scotia Highway 106.

[6] The Harriet was launched in 1798 with a registered tonnage of 422 tons and is believed to be the largest built in Nova Scotia at the time.

[11] From there the railway company operated a steam-powered ferry to take passengers across the harbour where they could connect with ships leaving for Prince Edward Island and Montreal.

[12] The Intercolonial Railway opened a line into Pictou town in 1887,[13] crossing the harbour at the mouth of the West River.

[16] In 1879 the chief imports were flour, meal, beef, pork, sugar, tea and general merchandise, while exports were coal and lumber.

[17] The Canadian Trade Review reported in 1900 that Pictou harbour was also handling produce and dairy products from Prince Edward Island, as well as most of the lobster from the eastern end of the Gulf.

[18] A pier at Granton on the Middle River, 3 miles upstream from the harbour, was loading steamships of 3,000 ton capacity with coal from the Drummond colliery in Westville.

The landscape of the harbour changed considerably in the late 1960s with the construction of a kraft pulp mill at Abercrombie Point, between the East and Middle rivers.

At the same time the Middle river was dammed to supply fresh water to the mill, and a causeway was constructed to carry Highway 106 across the harbour from Abercrombie Point to Pictou.

[26] The sand bar on the southside of the harbour entrance is an 8ha Provincial Nature Reserve, comprising beaches and dunes that provide habitat for the endangered piping plover.