More Canadians visiting UFO museum

By Carla Allen

THE COAST GUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

More Canadians visited the UFO Centre in Shag Harbour in 2009. That’s just one of the findings that came to light at the end of the season during visit calculations. “We ended off our year with almost 1,100 visitors,” said Cindy Nickerson, chair of the Shag Harbour Incident Society.

The museum saw 333 visitors from the United States and 35 from other countries, including England, Scotland, Mexico, Italy, Australia, France, Holland, Isle of Man, and Germany.

Nickerson said she believed international visitors were down a bit in 2009.

This year’s 1,000th visitor was Gary Glazier from Victoria, British Columbia. In 2007 the 1,000th visitor was from Halifax and in 2008 the 1,000th visitor was from New Jersey.

Nickerson says the museum was very pleased with the performance of two new guides hired this year: Rebecca Kendrick and Sharayah Banks. “We were quite happy to be able to hire them and help them along with their future plans,” said Nickerson.

She referred to the Discover Shelburne County Fam tour as being a “great help” this summer as well as all the visitors for the UFO festival. “I think this year was a great year for tourists coming to Shag Harbour, we are glad to hear everyone is doing well. Maybe next year we will attract more people to visit and stop. We were quite happy to have all the bike tours this summer,” she said.

Nickerson also noted one of their challenges. “We do have a problem with parking space and it is very hard for large campers to get in the limited space. However we are quite happy with numbers,” she said

Nickerson says museums create jobs for students and help promote the local area. “They make good memories for people when they return home and give a taste of local history and events. They often bring back people time and again. This helps out all the local businesses - not just those in tourism. “When you open up in the start of the season you hope to have a good year, but at the start of the season you can only wait and hope.”