The tiny, tiny Medway in Nova Scotia

Why can't we have a dinky lighthouse?

Slightly late bonus edition of Local Authority this week. Sorry about that. I said at the start of the year that the schedule may have to change from the usual Tuesday bonus day, and this week it finally caught up with me. The plan is still to stick with Tuesday for now, but there might be the occasional slip into Wednesday. You’ll still get this bonus edition every week regardless, but things may move around a bit on odd weeks. As ever, thanks for paying to keep this silly little project going.

This week we’re continuing our tour of Medway’s in other parts of the world, and is probably the nicest one we’ve visited so far.

Welcome to Port Medway, Nova Scotia, Canada.

The country clearly has a fine history of giving things with Medway appropriate names. Port Medway sits on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, facing out to the Atlantic, and sits within a wider Medway area, which seems to cover a remote peninsula of the main island.

Now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Port Medway sits on a river called the Medway, had an extensive shipbuilding industry, and entered a long decline following the closure of that industry in the area. At its peak, the area had over 5,000 residents, but this has dwindled to only a few hundred in recent years, presumably because very little seems to exist in the region now.

Amenities seem to extend to a post office, a gift shop, and a solitary bed and breakfast (two reviews in two years!), and nothing but a scattering of houses. It appears that up until last year, The Port Grocer was at the heart of the community - it appears to have been a hybrid of grocery store, cafe, community hub, live music venue - but it appears to have closed for now after failing to find new owners to take it on. Which feels like a shame as it seems like a super nice community resource.

If there’s one thing this tiny Medway has going for it, it’s having not one, but two lighthouses. Seems a bit greedy when our giant Medway doesn’t even have one, but here we are. That said, the lighthouses of Port Medway do seem to be the tiniest lighthouses known to man.

If you’re pondering a trip to this pleasant alt-Medway, there is a literary festival held every summer - the Port Medway Readers’ Festival - where renowned international authors like Margaret Atwood descend on Port Medway for what seems like a very nice event. The festival will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, so clearly they are doing something right.

Unlike some of the previous Medway’s I’ve covered in this series, this one doesn’t have any formal connection to our Medway, and the name is just a happy coincidence. The area was originally founded as Port Maltois by French settlers, who were displaced by settlers from the US who mispronounced the name as Port Metway, and somehow over time it has evolved into Port Medway. You can find more on the history of Port Medway here.

Footnotes

Know about another weird Medway place in the world? Ever been to this other Medway? How does it compare to ours? Are you only in Medway because you thought you were moving to Canada and somehow ended up here? Let us know in the comments!

Albums that soundtracked the creation of this newsletter: Amy Locust Whatever by Cyberbully Mom Club, and Repent Replenish Repeat by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip.