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The CAT ferry that connects Nova Scotia to Maine is launching its 2026 season, and its operator is already reporting nearly 18,000 pre-season bookings — surpassing its reservation record set in 2024.
In comparison, pre-season reservations in 2025 were around 13,700.
The operator, Bay Ferries Ltd., attributes the jump in interest to American tourists eager to visit Canada.
“We’re tracking right now between 80 and 85 per cent of the number so far is American utilization of this service, which is a great leading indicator of what the service is meant to do,” said Mark Wilson, president and CEO of Bay Ferries Ltd.
“As long as we have a good weather season, I would predict that we’re going to get very, very close or surpass back to our 2024 numbers, which would be significant itself.”
The ferry links Yarmouth, N.S., to Bar Harbor, Maine. Despite a tense year in international relations between the United States and Canada, Yarmouth’s mayor says she hasn’t noticed a significant decline in American tourists and looks forward to welcoming more.
“Can’t wait. Tens of thousands of Americans coming our way. It’s all good news,” Mayor Pam Mood said.
But when it comes to Canadians travelling south of the border, experts say those numbers haven’t recovered.
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“I think a lot of those hurt feelings from last year are still there,” said Robert Huish, associate dean of research in the faculty of arts and social sciences at Dalhousie University.
“And they’re not resolved in any way, which is why you’re seeing at least a 25 per cent decline in Canadians travelling to the United States, and that’s not just with tourism.”
Huish said, however, it appears the bond hasn’t broken between Maritimers and their New England neighbours.
“This has always been a destination spot for American tourism. And cost-wise, an American dollar goes farther than a Canadian dollar does at the moment,” he added.
“The size of the American market is just so massive that it’s hard to sort of round up new markets to compete with that overall.”
The international ferry route operated for more than half a century before ending in 2009, when the Nova Scotia government briefly eliminated an annual subsidy.
In 2014, the service returned but linked Yarmouth to Portland, Maine, instead of the previous port, Bar Harbor.
The province eventually hired Bay Ferries to operate the ferry with a high-speed catamaran and moved the port of call back to Bar Harbor. However, funding, construction and the COVID-19 pandemic meant the loss of the 2019, 2020 and 2021 sailing seasons.
The service resumed in spring 2022.
Critics say the provincial subsidy of about $21 million a year isn’t worth the cost, but tourism operators in the relatively isolated Yarmouth area see it as an economic lifeline.
“We just have to go back a few years to when the ferry was not here: night and day — and that’s an understatement,” Mood said.
“I think it’s the difference between having a business, and having a successful business, and not having one at all.”
She pointed out that the entire province can benefit from the tourists brought in on the CAT since many stay for extended periods of time.
“They stay overnight, and either they stay here longer, or they carry on to Lunenburg, through the Valley,” she said.
“They always end up in Halifax. Cape Breton sees a great deal of our tourists that are coming into Nova Scotia via the ferry. So it’s provincewide.”
In February, an economic study of the ferry service commissioned by the province found that the province’s annual subsidy of about $21 million was worth the cost.
The report said tourists using the vehicle and passenger ferry spent considerably more than visitors arriving by air or road. It found they stayed in Nova Scotia an average of 8.4 nights and each person spent about $106 per day.
That report also found the ferry generates between $31 million and $42 million a year in gross domestic product, depending on how it’s measured, and contributes between $2.7 million and $1.7 million to provincial revenue.
The ferry has become integral to Nova Scotia’s tourism industry, which reported $3.7 billion in revenue last year — and has more ambitious goals for 2026.
“In terms of the numbers, I mean, it was $3.5 billion in 2024, $3.7 billion in 2025, in light of all the uncertainty that’s happening,” said Darlene Grand Fiander, president of the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia.
“So the potential for Nova Scotia, with a new strategy where partners are working together, where we’re beefing up our access into the province, where we are looking at the quality of our product — if all those things come together, the potential is tremendous for significant growth.”
— with a file from The Canadian Press
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