Nova Scotia’s exclusive Fox Harb’r Resort a haven for golfers and outdoor enthusiasts

Cumberland, N.S. — It is a late evening in midsummer, and dinner is wrapping up at the Founder’s Lodge, part of Fox Harb’r Resort, on the north coast of Nova Scotia, about 20 kilometres across the sea from Prince Edward Island.

A ride back to the guest room is offered, but that seems unnecessary. It’s pleasantly warm outside, fresh ocean air, all that good stuff. I’ll just walk.

Mistake. Or, at least, mistake in dress shoes that were bought for a wedding and not worn since. It takes the better part of half an hour to make the walk, up the hill past the luxury bungalows, down the gently sloping road between the custom-built homes and up again toward the guest suites. 

This is one of the things about Fox Harb’r: It is huge. Not in the sense that there are a lot of people on it at any one time, but that it still has wide-open spaces. It sits on more than 1,300 acres hard by the Northumberland Strait, and resort staff, with good reason, commonly offer to shuttle guests from one amenity to the other.

My walk, on protesting feet, comes to an end next to a row of buildings that each house six suites. Just across the road from those buildings, on the other side of a bicycle path, is the runway. Not far from that is the airplane hangar.

Which is one of the other things about Fox Harb’r: It is kind of in the middle of nowhere. That is intended as a compliment. 

The hanger was the first thing built on the property, a little over 25 years ago, so that Ron Joyce, the billionaire co-founder of Tim Hortons, could easily get in and out of the place from his home in Southwestern Ontario. Joyce, who died in 2019 and whose smiling visage remains in portraits and photographs all over Fox Harb’r, was born in nearby Tatamagouche, N.S., to the extent that anything is actually “near” it. Legend has it that he was visiting a newly built Tim Hortons kids’ camp in the area when he spotted the land that would become Fox Harb’r from his plane. The nugget of an idea was born.

What that idea eventually spawned was a luxury playground. There is the 18-hole golf course with ocean views, the sporting lodge that includes a shooting range and archery, a full spa and lap pool, the restaurant and bar with extensive wine cellar, including bottles from the on-site vineyard. Plus, a modest number of suites for visitors. It’s not that this was a place solely for the enjoyment of Joyce and his guests, but it wasn’t exactly marketed to the wider public. It was exclusive, and intended as such.

But that has changed, and is still changing. Under the ownership of Steven Joyce, son of Ron, Fox Harb’r has looked more outward, increasing the number of visitors and filling some of its many acres with new residents. The plan, says general manager Kevin Toth, is to move the resort from the ranks of one of the best on the East Coast to one of the top luxury resort destinations in the country. And at a place surrounded by one-stoplight towns that was, not that long ago, basically inaccessible.

“It’s rural Nova Scotia,” Toth says. And it’s a resort because Ron Joyce was back home and came across what he thought was the ideal piece of land.

It also happens to be a fine piece of land for golf. The existing course is something of a little-known gem, with only about 5,000 rounds per year played on it in its early days. That number has since tripled since Toth, who managed resort properties in places such as Banff and Whistler, came to Fox Harb’r in 2015, but it is still not a busy course.

Steven Joyce decided to expand the golf offering in 2018, and a number of top architects were invited to submit proposals for an additional nine holes.

Two of them, Doug Carrick and Tom McBroom, who between them had overseen much of the design and construction in the Canadian golf-course boom in the 1990s, had similar ideas for the property, which involved not just adding new holes but rebuilding some of the existing course to take better advantage of the coastline.

As Toth explains it, rather than choose between Carrick and McBroom, Joyce offered another solution: Why not hire both? It wasn’t exactly the Capulets and the Montagues joining forces, but Carrick and McBroom had been competing for the same design jobs for decades. At Fox Harb’r, they would be partners.

The pandemic brought major delays, but over the last couple of summers, the earthmovers have been busy and their vision is starting to be realized. A new nine holes is scheduled to open next spring, and another nine will open the following season. Once completed, Fox Harb’r will have an 18-hole Ocean Course, and another 18, the inland Vineyard Course. The new holes along the Northumberland Strait stretch over several kilometres of coastline, with harp seals snorting and snuffling below. It will be a seaside stretch to rival anywhere in Canada. The architects pitched the idea of two full courses in part because if they were adding several holes along the water, they wanted to give golfers the option of a respite on days when the wind is really howling.

Toth attributes a quote to Mike Keiser, architect of some of the most lauded golf projects in the world, including the Cabot resort on Cape Breton Island: “It was Keiser that said, ‘If you want to have true destination golf, you have to have two courses,’ and I certainly subscribe to that. And that’s what we’re doing.”

The additional golf holes also allow more room for real estate, with a few dozen home sites planned for the Ocean Course. Residents who do not stay year-round can put their homes into the resort’s rental pool, which makes it possible to cater to (very) large groups.

“Our goal is probably to raise our flag a bit higher than just Atlantic Canada,” Toth says, “It’s to be known as the leading destination resort in Canada.”

Intriguingly, once the second course at Fox Harb’r is operational, that will give Nova Scotia four high-end resort courses, including the two at Cabot in Inverness. While the two resorts will compete for tourists, they will complement each other as a draw for golfers from further afield. With Cabot and Fox Harb’r about a three-and-a-half-hour drive apart, visitors could pack a full week of golf into a trip with two stops. (The famous Highland Links course on the other side of Cape Breton remains open, too, although it announced in the spring that its main resort lodge was closing.)

Fox Harb’r, though, is aiming to be more than just a place for golfers. A new conference space opened a few years ago. It overlooks the golf course on one side, the runway on the other.

“We’re a full-facility resort,” Toth says. “And I think that’s what sets us apart.”