Nova Scotia Canada

When the Scottish expatriates of the 1800′s landed in Eastern Canada, the weather didn’t seem all that bad. The Tyrannical English weren’t breathing down their necks as badly, the land was free for hard work, and the class system on the frontier divided those who earned bed and board from those who didn’t. Like the frontier states to the West, Nova Scotia was a harsh proving ground embraced by former European individuals tired of centuries of yokebound class servitude. Though the Canadian nation was yet to take shape, persons looking for a new beginning were endeared to this unique land.

Today’ Nova Scotia is a charming step back through time, to merchants and mansions and folk music and port culture, reflecting the various tides of fortune its residents have enjoyed. Visitors to Nova Scotia can select activities from scuba diving for shipwrecks to exploring antique stores. There is fishing and whale watching, and the Aspotagan peninsular Drive, as well as the Fortress of Louisberg. The Gowrie House at Sydney Mines and the Bell Historic Site (Alexander Graham bell) are only a handful of notable spots to see.

Nova Scotia got its feet wet as a heartland first, but loomed the threads of a formally Canadian national identity later. The reigns of the place from a perspective of government administration were tossed from sceptered isle to crown head and back again. French and English settlers fleeing Europe’s war games found themselves sundered from recent sovereign nationalities with every exchange on the Continental checkerboard. When the dust finally settled on the last treaty a new nation, Canada, and a new province, Nova Scotia, had been born. Lumber, fishing and farming kept the first generations busy and profitable.

The capital of nova Scotia is Halifax, known as the City of trees. Nova Scotia became the home of a variety of nationalities living under various flags as the real estate of North America changed hands repeatedly in the 1800′s. Visitors can enjoy a tableaux of the Old World with Irish and Scots pubs on the waterfront with glass towers and old architecture. The Halifax Citadel Museum and the Glacier Bay Miner’s Museum make outstanding outings, as do the Cape Breton hiking trails.

Annapolis Valley farms and atmospheric Digby as a waterfront town contrast city, country and provincial experiences for the traveler.By 1926, Nova Scotia was firmly a member of the Canadian group of provinces and subject no longer to the English, French, or even American laws. The harsh weather in winter and somewhat unforgiving ocean isolation made the island group an ideal place to forge a new nation. Yet that same isolation kept its inhabitants largely islebound and close-knit. Mixed races and varying ethnicity gave Nova Scotia a unique footprint as an egalitarian but cruel motherland. The Great Expulsion marred its peaceful and pleasant profile as a new world opportunity.

Nova Scotia exists in the minds of many as an unknown place far-off from familiar shores. North of Maine, it shares the same Atlantic Ocean with the Northeastern seacoast of the United States. A mildly proto-tropical shoreline type of geography is never more than forty miles from the sea in one direction. Like Japan, Nova Scotia’s interior is informed by an unusual topography of rocky crags, overland valleys, and warmed climate in summer from the ocean currents and westerly winds. Nova Scotia briefly made the headlines as the location of Annie Proulx’ novel “The Shipping News”, based on a Nova Scotia native returning to the place and writing a column for the local paper about sea traffic sighted off the Eastern seas.

Nova Scotia is a blend of snowbound tropical paradise and stranded miniature Scotland isle transplanted thousands of miles to the East. Robust forested, well soiled, and lightly populated, it furnishes Canadians and Americans with vacation options and retirement ideas far from the madding crowd. Aptly named, it is formed of isolated sea fishing villages around a few central ports.Inland Nova Scotia is somewhat ambitious farming and the density does not approach saturation in any instance. Nova Scotia remains a dreamland of time gone by, when “settlement” was an action word indicating recent such primary activity.

However, French settlers into ‘Nouvelle France” fared badly in 1755 in Nova Scotia. After the usual round of treaty transfers, England’s governors grew increasingly concerned the French population wouldn’t take arms against its fraternal neighbours for the fleur-de-lys. The Bourbon lily still ranged looking for its own stamp in the Americas, while England and even Spain had their own footprint in North America. English powers required an oath to England which the “nouvelle” Francoises refused to swear. The resulting Expulsion sadly cost many Acadians their lives and those of many native Indian Mi’q maqs as well.

Governors Mascarene, Cornwallis and Lawrence ordered the French nonsworn of the oath out of the region. An underground rebellion, the burning of towns, handing over the land to New Englanders of Protestant origin occurred even as surviving Catholic Acadians fled to Louisiana. Many fleeing Acadians died on sea journeys, while hiding out with native Mi’qmaq, or fell victim to disease traveling in new lands. Scots arriving from the violent Clearances designed to liquidate Scottish clans (and loyalties) inherited their lands and heritage in Nova Scotia.