DIGBY WATERFRONT SQUARE

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The Town of Digby, Nova Scotia, like many other small municipalities in Eastern Canada, is faced with a need to renew its aging infrastructure, while maintaining community liveability, vitality, and pride in its sense of place. Since 2014, Snow Owl has designed and managed several important projects for the Town of Digby, to further these sustainable community goals.

Digby has a great waterfront downtown, with working wharves and boatyards in and around the historical commercial district. At the hub of it all is the Town’s waterfront promenade deck / cenotaph.

We overhauled the stark, underused, and crumbling wooden deck and sidewalk area, and turned it into a bustling downtown outdoor living room with great views of the Annapolis Basin. It has become a popular hangout for locals and visitors alike, and a venue for community events.

Our program of renovation work did some thoughtful tweaks to the existing site ergonomics, aesthetics, and stormwater management, along with some sensible new additions to make it special:

  • We replaced the scabby old sidewalk with a new concrete plaza, using a simple custom saw cut pattern to make it pop out as the town square.
  • The rotten old decking and handrails were replaced, adding tougher, more durable deck material to support maintenance equipment and special event facilities, featuring a unique scallop-shaped inlay to honour Digby’s working fishery (it is also the centrepiece for the Town’s Christmas Tree).
  • Taking advantage of having the deck and sidewalk torn up for this work, we also patched up the underlying waterfront retaining wall, placed better structural fills, and improved the stormwater drainage.
  • The all-season outdoor furniture program gives a classic Maritime deck feel with robust and cost-effective 100% recycled plastic, made in Canada, picnic tables and Adirondack chairs, along with a new water bottle filling station, recycling facilities, bike racks, and plantings. Everything was carefully placed to make the square more inviting.
  • Our construction program was tailored to help small local contractors bid competitively and do the work, helping the Town’s infrastructure spending stay in the community.