Peter Zwicker and Basem Awaad/NewLife Studios
127 Ocean Stone Drive, Lunenburg, N.S.
Asking price: $1.97-million
Lot size: 1.3 acres
Taxes: $5319.60 (2024)
Listed by: Rosie Gair, Engel & Völkers Nova Scotia Lunenburg
The backstory
If you’re sitting in your pricey condo in your expensive city and wondering if this is all there is there’s a fellow in one of Canada’s best small towns who’s ready to trade with you, leave the Hallmark life behind and go back to the inner city.
“I am living the W Network fantasy; I just finished judging the local pie contest,” said Gio Amenta, an interior designer who gave up his condo in Vancouver’s Yaletown area a little more than a year ago in exchange for a slower pace of life. That said, the path there was somewhat circuitous.
“I got sick of it all in Vancouver, a mid-life crisis is what it was. I was 44 at the time, and I said ‘Oh I’m bored of everything I’m going to move to Europe,’” said Mr. Amenta. “So I went away for eight months to Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Sicily.” But the travel left a lingering feeling: “Europe is great for visiting and vacationing; I don’t think this is where I want to set up my home base.”
Mr. Amenta grew up in Port Hardy, B.C., a tiny town on the north end of Vancouver Island. He decided he’d like something like that again.
“I really had this Hallmark movie fantasy: I did crave that small-town life,” he said. “So I looked up the best small towns in Canada and Lunenburg came up a lot. It is gorgeous, and it turns out I had friends who had been living in [nearby] Mahone Bay.”
Mr. Amenta has seen more of Canada than most: 20 years ago he was part of the Canadian Tenors singing group that toured widely. So he speaks from experience when he opines that the only place where people are nicer is in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“There are lovely people out here. People hold doors open here; this woman [who he was renting from when he first arrived] would let me use her Land Rover. I was sick and they’d bring me soup. Who are these people? Vancouver is all hustle culture, this is the opposite.”
A big part of the move to Nova Scotia was the participation of Mr. Amenta’s sister, who decided to tag along. They even renovated a basement in-law suite to provide a place for their parents to visit, or move in. Unfortunately, their parent’s health issues became too difficult to manage from the other side of the continent. Mr. Amenta’s sister has moved back to B.C., and he hopes to follow her soon.
The house today
The Cape Cod-style home on Stone Drive is part of a gated community just outside of Lunenburg. Annual fees go toward the upkeep of the private road and the communal tennis and pickleball courts, and there are rules about what kind of exterior features owners are allowed to install. A gravel pathway leads to the front deck, which wraps around to the ocean-facing rear of the house.
Inside the foyer is manufactured hardwood in a rich brown with bright-white risers on the stairs leading to the second floor. To the left is an office space; to the right is a door to the formal dining room and straight back is a living room with windows on two walls that opens to the waterfront view. Opposite the windows is a reading nook that is covered in a mural that stretches across two walls.
“Murals and arches are my jam, I think that’s my Italian heritage. When I was in Europe I couldn’t get enough of them,” Mr. Amenta said. But if they aren’t to your taste, have no fear of destroying priceless art: All of them are wallpaper: “For me, very few things can make an impact like [murals]. They are mimicking the old frescos, they’re done with a little crackle texture with the print.”
There’s a second mural with a deep green forest in the primary bedroom suite on the second floor, Mr. Amenta chose to bring the nature of Nova Scotia’s forests and serve as a backdrop to water views out the windows. In the other bedroom on this level there’s yet another mural of a dreamy ocean scene with windswept blues and greys. “Any image that’s too realistic I can’t stand – photo realistic or too saturated or bright – because they take over a room,” said Mr. Amenta.
Home of the Week, 127 Ocean Stone Drive, Lunenburg, Nova ScotiaPeter Zwicker and Basem Awaad/NewLife Studios
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The home was built in 2015, but a previous owner refinished the interiors, removing all the builder-basic MDF baseboards, wall panels and trim to replace them with solid wood. The kitchen on the main level is largely original but, wherever there’s no murals or prints, Mr. Amenta redid the walls with the more muted palette of Farrow & Ball paints. The formal dining room is a mix of light rose paint and William & Morris wallpaper, evocative of the 1800s heyday of Lunenburg.
A powder room and mudroom/laundry room have been updated as well, but the big change to the house was in the basement where Mr. Amenta turned the whole level into an in-law suite with a walkout to the waterfront.
This space was intended as a potential long-term spot for his parents and he spared no expense to make it comfortable. The floors are all polished concrete with cozy underfloor heat, and the suite is anchored by a well-appointed kitchen and living room with French doors to the terraced lawn. The primary bedroom also has a set of French doors facing the exterior, a full bath with antique bureau repurposed as a vanity rounds out this level.
The antique-to-vanity move repeats in the other bathrooms, and there’s a variety of other antiquing finds around the house that are a bonus for the next buyer: Mr. Amenta is selling the house fully furnished.
Location, location, location
Lunenburg straddles a spit of land between the wild Atlantic Ocean to the south of the main harbour and a series of bays and inlets on its north side. The Garden Lots are on the sheltered norther side of the land outside of town, with the rear yard facing the “Back Harbour” of the peninsula.
“You don’t get the same weather hazards, when you’re here. You’d almost think you’re on a lake if not for the ocean air and the waves,” said Mr. Amenta. Fully aware of the dangers of a wild sea, Mr. Amenta wanted something on the water, but safe: The house is 100 feet above the waterline.
The back harbour is popular with boaters, and there’s space and permission to build a dock and a boathouse. For now, the main way to enjoy the water is either cold plunge from the rocky beach, or lounging on the rear deck.
“The smell, I can say, is different. This ocean smells sweeter than the West Coast and I’m not the only one who said that,” said Mr. Amenta. The quality of light is different too. “There’s a gossamer quality here to the skyline a lot of times. The view from here I love, I look out over these little hills, and they are all different colours.”
Another benefit of the location is that you don’t even need to purchase tickets to the various outdoor music festivals held in town.
“Just sitting here I can hear it across the water, the whole concert is as clear as a bell,” Mr. Amenta said. Otherwise it’s a very quiet setting. Certainly private enough for a former Canadian Tenor to belt out his biggest notes without worrying about noise complaints from the neighbours.
“I’m always singing, I love a lot of opera and Italian music. I didn’t sing a lot in Vancouver: you can’t let it rip in a condo … opera is not quiet,” he said.