Food, Drink and the Pleasures of Eating in Old-Time Nova Scotia

Lobster Labels

Nova Scotians love lobsters and we've loved them for a long time! We've also been canning and shipping them around the world since at least the 1830s, when the province's first commercial cannery began in Yarmouth. By the early 1900s, Roberts, Simpson and Co. had become the largest lobster exporters in the world, with canneries in Halifax, Yarmouth, Charlottetown, PE and Vancouver, BC. The labels displayed here are from a scrapbook compiled by the company between 1880 and 1938, and include samples from canneries throughout Nova Scotia. Some of the labels presented below include recipes for cooking and serving lobster. If you like what you see, visit our Flickr site to explore more!