St. Andrews-by-the-Sea is one of the prettiest small towns in Atlantic Canada, perched on a peninsula at the mouth of Passamaquoddy Bay where the St. Croix River meets the Bay of Fundy. It was founded by Loyalists in 1783, and many of the original buildings survive — the town has more pre-1880 buildings than almost anywhere else in the Maritimes.
Water Street, the main thoroughfare, runs along the harbour and is lined with galleries, craft shops, and restaurants serving fresh lobster and scallops. Kingsbrae Garden, a 27-acre horticultural showpiece, is the main in-town attraction and well worth an hour or two; the Ross Memorial Museum and the granite Charlotte County Gaol add another half-day of nineteenth-century texture. At the tip of the peninsula, the Algonquin Resort — a grand Tudor-style railway hotel — has dominated the skyline since 1889, and the Blockhouse of 1813 still guards the western end of town.
The real draw is the bay. Whale watching tours leave from the town wharf and regularly spot minke whales, finback whales, and harbour porpoises. The Fundy Discovery Aquarium on the western edge of town is the public face of the Huntsman Marine Science Centre. Ministers Island, accessible by a sandbar at low tide, has a fascinating estate built by railway baron Sir William Van Horne. The Bay of Fundy's extreme tides — the highest in the world — are the backdrop to everything here, and the shoreline changes dramatically between high and low water.