Among the Fisherfolk: J.F.B. Livesay and the Invention of Peggy’s Cove

J.F.B. Livesay’s Peggy’s Cove is a Canadian landmark within an uncelebrated genre, travel writing. An ode to the contented lifestyles of rugged Nova Scotia fisherfolk, Livesay’s book is not only important as a literary work. This essay argues that it also illustrated the thorough rejection of nineteenth-century ways of seeing the province’s society and landscape, and that it foreshadows the postwar mass tourism that would transform Peggy’s Cove and much of Nova Scotia. By helping to popularize what is now the most famous fishing village in Canada, Livesay ironically hastened the move away from the gentle, humanistic travel that he so memorably captured in his writing.