Culture & traditional boat building in Lunenburg, the idyllic harbor town in Nova Scotia

On the east coast of Canada, a place whose name sounds strangely familiar. The small town of Lunenburg, west of Halifax, was founded in 1753 by North German immigrants. Today, the idyllic town with its many wooden houses is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the 19th century, Lunenburg was one of the richest towns in the British Empire, becoming prosperous through fishing and shipbuilding.

Glenn Rhodenizer's family traces back ten generations directly to German immigrants. And what the Rhodenizers primarily grow on their fields directly by the sea could hardly be more typical: it is white cabbage, which the farming family processes into sauerkraut. Sauerkraut can be found in every restaurant and supermarket in this area; it is the specialty of the region.

The heritage of wooden boat building is successfully maintained by David Westergard. In his ancient shed, he is assembling a 20-meter schooner from four different types of local wood. Building wooden boats, he says, is like "slow food": sustainable, conscious, environmentally friendly, waste-free.

Even the traditional dorys, the rowing boats of this area that were once used by fishermen, are made of wood. Once a year, teams from Canada and the neighboring U.S. compete in the big dory race just off the town's idyllic waterfront. Danette Eden won the previous year and trained hard all winter to defend her title.

Ollie Cote also races dory, but for a living. He collects "Irish Moss", seaweed, which is a very valuable raw material for food and cosmetics and of particularly good quality here in Nova Scotia. Even though the industry needs large quantities: it is harvested by hand and from a small boat, as if time had stood still.

In its heyday at the beginning of the 20th century, Lunenburg was even able to afford an opera house, donated by the wealthy shipbuilders, although only 3,000 people live here. The opera survived the decline of shipbuilding, initially as a movie theater, but since the 1970s it has been left to decay. Farley Blackman made it his life's work to save the opera house, and now, after a decade of work, he can celebrate its reopening.

So Lunenburg is built entirely on wood. The wooden ships that once brought wealth, the wooden houses that make up the charm of the little town, the wooden opera house that shines in new splendor. Wood is still harvested in the traditional way in Nova Scotia today: Horse Loggers use horses to pull the felled logs out of the hilly and rocky forests, which are impassable for motor vehicles. Kristan Kelley forms a well-rehearsed team with his favorite horse, Belle. In the deep snowy winter forest, both know their roles and ways to retrieve the building material that made Lunenburg rich and beautiful from the endless coastal forests.

For this nature documentary, a Canadian team from Halifax accompanied Lunenburg's residents for an entire year, in all seasons. The result is a touching portrait of a town and region that, after many years of decline, has been transformed from a prosperous center of fishing and wooden shipbuilding into a bustling jewel on the Canadian coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a rich tradition and a high quality of life.