03/05/2026
Happy 90th Birthday, Ben Smith! 🎉
Today we celebrate a remarkable Lunenburger whose life story is deeply woven into the fabric of our town. Engineer, community builder, volunteer, and proud descendant of one of Lunenburg’s early families, Ben has spent a lifetime quietly shaping the place we all love—from his work with National Sea Products to his many contributions to community organizations, recreation, and heritage projects across town.
Ben and his wife Roxie—one of our treasured and longstanding Board Members—have together given decades of service to Lunenburg. Their story is one of family, community, and enduring commitment to this special place.
In 2023, writer, LAF Board Member, and Town Councillor, Alison Strachan captured that story beautifully. On the occasion of Ben’s 90th birthday, it feels like the perfect time to share it again...
LUNENBURG'S ROXIE AND BEN SMITH: THEIR LOVE & UNFAILING COMMITMENT TO THE TOWN OF LUNENBURG
Apr 10, 2023
By Alison Strachan
On Easter Sunday, I met with a couple of Lunenburg lovebird octogenarians at their lovely yellow home on Green Street in Lunenburg's New Town. A home I walk by at least once a day on my travels with dogs, and a home I've admired from the outside for years.
Roxie and Ben Smith's Green Street home (yellow) across from the playground in the morning light. At this Tuesday night's Council meeting, Council will be voting on whether or not a food truck will be placed on the grassy area in the foreground of a Park across this one-way street in front of the Smith's front porch.
The front entrance is up and in through a front porch where I've often seen Ben and Roxie, sometimes with their children or grandchildren nearby, relaxing during the summer months while enjoying the children across their street at Victoria Park playing, swinging on swings, sliding down slides and picnicking with their parents or babysitters at nearby picnic tables.
As I'm about to enter, Roxie points across the way to a huge rhododendron bush at the end of the park and we both chuckle over how we have watched the children creating their own playspaces, playing hide and seek and making fairy forts under those rhododendrons every spring and summer for years.
Inside the Smith's home is just as lovely as the outside. Filled with paintings of the Lunenburg area, portraits of Ben's grandparents, and photographs of the couple's children when they were small who now share the walls with photos of their own children, there is a deep sense of family once you cross over that front door threshhold.
Ben Smith's grandfather's business location on the Lunenburg waterfront (now the Dockside Restaurant, painting by Lunenburg artist Joseph Purcell
Inside, Roxie also shows me a six-inch thick Smith family bible filled with pages of family marriages dating back two centuries, children born from those marriages, and death information. It is a complete family history of a family that was amongst the early settlers of the area that came from Germany in the 1700s to today.
Ben's grandfather and grandmother built the Green Street home in 1898, the same year that Ben's father was born. The home has been in the Smith family ever since.
Roxie was born in nearby Mahone Bay but has called Lunenburg home for most of her life. Ben was born in Glace Bay where his father worked as a school teacher. After spending his working career in Glace Bay, Ben's father retired from his position as Supervisor of Schools in that area of the province and returned to Lunenburg.
Years ago, the Town of Lunenburg created a Prominent Lunenburgers Program to recognize "the diverse talents and contributions that Lunenburgers have made in Canada and around the world". It lists notables such as Dutch Mason, Captain Angus Walters, and the Town's former mayor, Sherman Zwicker.
It also lists a number of Ben's relatives, his uncle, Clarence Morrow, his uncle Wallace Smith, and his great-uncle William C. Smith.
All of these relatives had a connection to the sea through either owning fishing schooners or the founding of early fish processing and exports up to the development of what we now know as National Sea Products.
Ben himself, is now retired from National Sea after working there as Plant Engineer for many years.
Being the son of a school teacher who made the move from Lunenburg to Cape Breton, Ben's family would return to Lunenburg for two full months each summer where the family owned a cottage at Herman's Island. During those summer days, Ben would be found on the Bluenose Golf Course.
It wasn't just golf that got him up there. He and his father would arrive at the course with a brown bag and pick edible mushrooms to fill that brown bag.
After graduating from high school in Glace Bay, Ben moved to Halifax where he first went to study science at the University of King's College and eventually graduated with an engineering degree in the 1960s from the Technical College on Spring Garden Road.
At that time, Roxie who graduated from the Lunenburg Academy in 1959, was studying X-ray technology at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax.
Their paths would not cross until later.
While at university, Ben would get summer jobs in Lunenburg. The name of the late Andrew Eisenhauer comes up often in conversation. Andrew hired Ben one summer to work at Eisenhauer's Atlantic Bridge Company (ABCO).
Another summer Ben worked with Maritime Telephone & Telegraph doing build design.
His face lights up though describing one summer when he worked at Moirs Chocolates in downtown Halifax designing equipment. He says with a big grin, "We could eat all the chocolate we wanted".
After graduation, Ben went to study in Great Britain on an Athlone Fellowship. Although he humbly tells me about this fellowship, I know that it is one of the most prestigious study grants awarded to the "cream of the crop" of graduating Canadian engineering students.
Ben completed two years in London followed by one year at Bristol Siddeley Engines, graduating from Bristol University with a Master's Degree in Engineering specializing in thermodynamics.
After that Ben travelled around Europe with friends and managed to spend some time along the Rhine. He says he deeply enjoyed the Rhine and it turned out that where he was staying was where his ancestors had originally come from when they left Germany for Lunenburg in the 1700s. He felt a real connection to that land when he was there.
Ben returned from England in the fall of 1967 and accepted the position of Assistant to the Director of the Atlantic Regional Laboratory at the National Research Council. A couple of years later, he was approached by his cousin Jim Morrow to join National Sea Products to assist in completing the build of a new Fish Processing Plant which was being built just outside of Lunenburg at Battery Point. The new plant was a move away from its former location on the Lunenburg Waterfront. Work at National Sea Products saw Ben through to retirement.
Ben injured his wrist one day and went up to the 1952-built Fishermen's Memorial Hospital in Lunenburg to get it checked out. It was there that he first set eyes upon Roxie, working as an X-ray technician. The rest is more history added to the Smith family bible.
Some weeks later, Ben, a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, was going to a Chamber dinner and invited Roxie to go with him. After a couple of Roxie's friends
checked Ben out, Roxie was given the green light to go ahead and date Ben.
Six months after that they were married. This year, they celebrated 56 years of marriage.
While Ben spent his working career at National Sea Products, Roxie spent hers at Fisherman's Memorial Hospital. They also managed to raise a few very talented and accomplished children during that time.
When National Sea first moved to its present location, Ben says, "It was the biggest plant in the world". National Sea was gaining more of an international presence at the same time, expanding from its two plants in Halifax, plants in Lunenburg and Lockeport, to plants in Newfoundland, the United States, and Australia.
Along with his paid work, Ben served on the Lunenburg Board of Trade. During that time, Ben and Edgar Gerhardt, who passed away in March of this year, improved the existing campground at Blockhouse Hill. Formerly, there had been a lighthouse-type building atop the Hill. When that building started leaking, Ben was approached to help engineer the new Blockhouse that stands there today.
Ben Smith helped with engineering services on a build of a replica 1750s military Blockhouse. Because Blockhouse Hill is positioned on a sloping hill overlooking both Lunenburg Back Harbour and Lunenburg Front Harbour, a British military encampment was based in the 1750s at the Lunenburg Common Land. (The Notebook)
During his time, he also was involved in expanding the campground on Blockhouse Hill.
Lunenburg was in transition. Towns are always in transition, but its transition was about to include being put on the world stage.
Back in those days, before the current horse and buggy tourist tours we see today, Ben tells me that, "Edgar Gerhardt thought it was a good idea to show people around town in a dory pulled by a tractor". The thought of that when compared to the variety of touring options today brought a chuckle from both of us.
As though not having enough to do, Ben became President of the Bluenose Golf Club, was on the startup team of Curl for a Cause, served as a Scout and Cub leader, and coached boys and girls curling, proudly saying that one of his boys' team's participated in the Nationals one year. That team was comprised of none other than Ben and Roxie's son and Jamie Myra, a name many folks in Town know of today from shopping at his Stan's Dad and Lad Shop on Lincoln Street in the Town.
Ben was also instrumental in forming the Lunenburg Museum Marine Society which operates the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic on Lunenburg's waterfront.
His early days post-retirement were consumed with the rebuild of St. John's Anglican Church after the Hallowe'en 2001 fire that reduced the church to charred wood and ashes.
Describing Ben's life as simply "busy" is an understatement.
Roxie has had an equally busy volunteer life. Her list includes serving as Chair of the South Shore Health Board, President, and various other roles at the Lunenburg Academy Foundation including organizing the 100th year anniversary in 1995 with her friend Jane Ritcey Moore that saw 1400 graduates and their family members return to the area in celebration, time spent on the Fishermen's Hospital Auxiliary, with Efficiency Nova Scotia, and service on a provincial healthcare review team.
Both tell me that they've seen many changes in Lunenburg, many changes that have been exciting to live through, and rattling some off as examples: the Bluenose and Angus Walters era, the move of National Sea from the waterfront, the opening of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, the designation of the Town settlement as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the residential development and expansion of New Town, a new regional P-9 school, the ABCO expansion, the building of a Medical Center and home for the VON, a new Provincial office building, the transition of a working waterfront to what the waterfront has become today, new sewage and water treatment plants, and a daycare center.
As they see it Lunenburg is very different from the Town Roxie grew up in and the Town they raised their family in during the 1970s and 80s but in a very good way.
Honestly, I didn't realize how much time I spent reminiscing at their dining room table until it was time to leave and I noticed that the children who had been playing at the park outside earlier had gone home for their naps or Easter supper.
Town of Lunenburg
