If you take a drive almost anywhere on the south shore you will notice something.
Mailboxes are peppered with German names-Conrad, Meisner, Mosher, Mueller, Rafuse, Rhodenizer, Wentzell, Whynot to name a few.
Germans first settled on these shores in the 1700s-in fact according to records from that time they far outnumbered settlers from other places. When Lunenburg was founded in 1753 it was the first predominately German-speaking settlement in Canada.
People with German roots still have a strong presence here, so much so that June 7 was officially declared German Settlers Day in 2003.
Folks usually gather together each year to celebrate that common background and think back on the past said Heinz Neuhaus, Vice-President of the German-Canadian Cultural Association of Lunenburg County.
Neuhaus, originally from Germany, has lived here for 18 years and said this year they won’t be able to celebrate the way they would like because of social gathering restrictions in place due to the pandemic.
“Last year we held something at the DeBrisay Museum, and this year we were going to enjoy some German foods but we will have to just celebrate distantly,” he said.
In the last census conducted in 2016, 30 per cent of people in Lunenburg County and 35 per cent of people in Queens County identified as being of German descent.
