Canada's Atlantic Coast is coveted by people who can afford to live part-time anywhere they please. Do they offer an economic life-raft to our rural communities?

At least once a year during the nearly two decades that my wife and I have lived part-time in Nova Scotia, someone has authoritatively announced to me that my old friend Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently bought property in the province. My response to this perennial bulletin has traditionally been, "I'd be surprised if that were true." But recently-and aside from the fact that I would know if he did-I would not be at all surprised if the "Governator" bought himself into the paradise that is Nova Scotia. He would not be the first celebrity to do so. Nor, if the region continues to develop as it can and should, would he by any means be the last.

For at least as far back as Alexander Graham Bell, Nova Scotia's pristine beauty and promise of privacy, its convivial and generous residents, its arts and musical cultures and myriad recreational opportunities have attracted immigrants from among the world's rich and famous-as well as countless others like my wife and I who are neither, but simply know a good thing when we see it. Eighteen years ago when Patricia and I started spending time here, then for only a month a year and now as permanent residents who consider our house in Alabama a second home, our friend the American screenwriter and novelist Rudy Wurlitzer had owned a home in Cape Breton for 15 years, sharing a waterfront compound with photographer Robert Frank and composer Philip Glass. Actor Alan Arkin and visual artist Richard Serra have homes in the same area, and homegrown writer Alistair MacLeod has a summer house just down the road. Another fine writer, Calvin Trillin, has owned a place on Nova Scotia's South Shore for decades. And during the time that Patricia and I have lived in the province, no fewer than seven of our American friends who have visited us here have bought or built second homes nearby, among them screenwriter Claudia Hunter Johnson and Hollywood actor Ethan Hawke.

It is more than just the bracing sea air that draws these people here. Like Patricia and I, many, if not all of them, have looked for and found a "last best place" in rural Nova Scotia. That phrase, often used by movie stars to describe Montana-to which so many of them have now flocked that it no longer is one-is a longingly breathed mantra in America that, particularly since 9/11, has come to mean a place resembling what America used to be: a safe, clean, hospitable and unhostile place where people are polite and friendly and respectful of each other's privacy and differences of opinion. A place of physical beauty, uncrowded hiking trails and beaches, and unfouled waterways and air. A serene and gentle place where families and communities cleave together, where old values and professions are still practised and honoured. A place, in short, to which one's soul may be invited and expected to stay for more than a weekend.

For most transplants already here, all of that is more than enough to ask of any last best place, and some would admit to the ignoble impulse to keep quiet about the glories and pull up the ladder we climbed in on. But some of the things we love best about rural Atlantic Canada-including tight family units and intact, functioning small communities-are in mortal danger from an ailing economy that forces too many breadwinners to take jobs away from home, and far too many young people to desert the province altogether. Smug insularity cannot help that economic illness, but a proactive and intelligent effort to make this part of the world even more attractive to high-end tourism and second-home ownership might.

Jann Wenner, the New York media mogul who owns the iconic Rolling Stone and Men's Journal magazines, called me a few years ago to say that he and his partner were thinking of buying a large waterfront property in Nova Scotia: did I know of anything? When it became apparent that what he was looking for included security, an airstrip for his jet, a handy first-class golf course and spa, a private beach, of course, and fine-dining options, I had to admit that I did not.

Jann Wenner and Arnold Schwarzenegger are friends. They have multiple homes and big airplanes. They, and many more like them, are piggy banks on wings to the small local economies they frequent for pleasure, such as Sun Valley, in Idaho, and they are always on the lookout for a new last best place to put their wheels down. Sure, they might require more amenities of such a place than I and my happily transplanted friends do, but they also spread around more gelt in paying for those amenities. Why, I wondered after talking to Jann, had no-one built a landing strip here in Nova Scotia for these high-flyers?

As it happened, in 2001 someone had. But like the province itself, Ron Joyce's Fox Harb'r-a conflation of resort, private club and high-end residences-appears to be content to remain a well-kept secret. When I finally heard about the place Patricia and I drove up for an overnight stay to check it out.

While it may not be everybody's cup of Perrier Jouet, Fox Harb'r is a world-class luxury destination for deep-pocketed tourists and the Schwarzenegger/Wenner class of second-home owner. There is a large and fervent market for such places in the US and Europe, and with all that Nova Scotia has to offer, three or four or more Fox Harb'r-like places could easily flourish here and, if marketed properly, in turn help its rural areas to flourish. And why not? To a particular type of international client-and there are hundreds of thousands of them-Fox Harb'r provides just about everything he or she is looking for in a vacation spot or second-home location.

Let's call this client Bob.

Topping Bob's list of prerequisites are security and privacy. Fox Harb'r is its own gated community, sitting on 1,100 fenced and manicured acres overlooking the Northumberland Strait between Tatamagouche and Pugwash-a very private place indeed. If Bob arrives by car, he will enter Fox Harb'r through a security gate. If he comes on his yacht, the resort's private, full-service, deep-water marina is there to greet him; and if he prefers to arrive by plane-either his own or a Fox Harb'r charter-a 4,885-foot paved, private runway awaits.

Recreation? Well yes, quite a bit of it, in fact-starting with the championship golf course designed by Graham Cooke and in 2001 named the best new golf course in Canada by Golf Digest. Then there are the tennis courts, mountain bikes, kayaks and personal watercraft, a long, lovely private beach, fitness centre and indoor junior-Olympic pool. Should Bob start to feel land-bound, he can take an excursion over to PEI on the resort's luxury cabin cruiser, or a sightseeing flight on its nine-passenger airplane or five-passenger helicopter. And if he happens to be a sportsman, there are ponds for him to fly fish for trout, and good local salmon rivers on which he can be guided by a personable and capable man named Mike Clarke, the resort's director of fishing and shooting operations, also in charge of the skeet and sporting clay target shooting and the first-class released-pheasant shooting program.

For an après shooting drink or game of pool, Bob can retire to a large, on-site plush sporting lodge, straight out of Ralph Lauren, with poker tables, oversized leather furniture, and Remington's bronzes. At the end of a long day of recreation, he can relax with a variety of emollient pleasures at the full-service spa, housed in a separate building along with the pool, fitness centre, hot tub, mineral pool and sauna. A gourmet dinner at either of the resort's two restaurants along with a bottle of wine from its excellent cellar completes his day.

As a resort guest, Bob will bed down in one of its manor-style suites or townhomes, all of which feature Jacuzzi tubs, heated marble floors, terry-cloth bathrobes, and linens of a sky-high thread count. And once his wife, Helen, has convinced him (it won't take much) that of course they need a home here, Bob will have his choice of buying a lot (priced from $230,000 to $450,000) and building on it, or purchasing an already finished residence (from $700,000 to more than twice that).

"You know, sweetie, Bill Clinton comes here," Helen might say, nudging him during a dinner of butter-poached lobster served on wilted spinach, with a vanilla-flavoured sweet potato purée. "And somebody named Bobby Orr. And a former British prime minister… Why don't we just go ahead and buy that already finished house down at the marina?"

Bob and Helen were not in the dining room the night my wife and I ate the aforementioned lobster dish there. And neither was anyone else. It was December 7 and we were quite happy to have the place to ourselves. Over dessert, I finished presenting my case to Patricia for why I believed this dining room could and should be full for the resort's entire season, if not with people like us then with all the Bobs and Helens and Arnolds and Janns we know. I pointed out that tycoon resort developers such as Chris Blackwell and Tim Blixseth have waiting lists at their exclusive, off-the-chart-expensive resort/club/residences, very much like this one, all over the world.

Her face still glowing from her massage, Patricia said, "But this is Nova Scotia."

Just then, we were approached by Fox Harb'r's talented executive chef, Bryan Corkery, wearing his gleaming white jacket and a toque. After we complimented him on his food, he asked if we had tried the local Malagash oysters as an appetizer. When we replied in the negative, Bryan disappeared and returned five minutes later with a platter of said oysters on the half shell accompanied by lemon wrapped in cheesecloth and his own sun-dried tomato sauce. Salty, plump and perfect even after dessert, they may have been the best oysters we have ever eaten.

"Exactly," I told my wife. "This is Nova Scotia."

Charles Gaines is a noted book and magazine writer who lives in Nova Scotia and Alabama, his original home. His book Pumping Iron was made into a movie giving Arnold Schwarzenegger his first significant acting role. Gaines' book A Family Place: A Man Returns to the Center of His Life is set in Nova Scotia.