Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia (Nouvelle-Écosse in French, Alba Nuadh in Gaelic) is a Canadian province located on Canada's southeastern coast. It is the most populous province in the Maritimes, and its capital, Halifax, is the economic and cultural centre of the region. Nova Scotia is the second smallest province in Canada, with an area of only 55,284 km², and its population of 936,988^* Nova Scotians (or, less formally, Bluenosers) makes it the fourth least populous province of the country. Its name is Latin for New Scotland.

Nova Scotia's economy is traditionally largely resource based, but has in recent decades become more diverse. Traditional industries such as fishing, mining, forestry and agriculture remain very important, and have been joined by tourism, technology, film production, music and other cultural industries.

The territory now known as Nova Scotia included several regions of the Mi'kmaq nation of Mi'gma'gi, which covered all of the Maritimes, as well as parts of Maine, the Gaspé, and Newfoundland. Nova Scotia was already home to the Mi'kmaq people when the first European colonists arrived. In 1604, French colonists established the first permanent European settlement north of Florida at Port Royal, founding what would become known as Acadia. The British Empire obtained control of the region between 1713 and 1760, and established the new capital at Halifax in 1749. Nova Scotia was one of the founding four provinces to join Confederation with Canada in 1867.

History

See also individual articles on History of Nova Scotia.

Paleo-Indians camped at locations in present-day Nova Scotia approximately 11,000 years ago. Archaic Indians are believed to have been present in the area between 1,000 and 5,000 years ago. Mi'kmaq, the First Nations of the province and region, are their direct descendants.

It is also said that the Vikings may have settled in Nova Scotia at some time.

While there is some debate over where he landed, it is most widely believed that the Italian explorer John Cabot visited present-day Cape Breton in 1497. ^*. The first European settlement in Nova Scotia was established in 1604. The French, lead by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts established the first capital for the colony Acadia at Port Royal in 1604 at the head of the Annapolis Basin.

In 1620, the Plymouth Council for New England, under James I of England/James VI of Scotland designated the whole shorelines of Acadia and the Mid-Atlantic colonies south to the Chesapeake Bay as New England. In the latter 1620s, a group of Scots was sent by Charles I of England (who, like James I /James VI, was also the king of independent Scotland, and belonged to the Scottish royal House of Stuart) to set up the colony of 'Nova Scotia' or 'New Scotland'. (The Latin appellation was so stated in Sir William Alexander's 1621 land grant.) However, owing to the signing of a peace treaty with France, the territory was given to the French and the Scots ordered to abandon their mission before their colony had been properly established.

The French took control of the Mi'kmaq and other First Nations territory. In 1654, King Louis XIV of France appointed aristocrat Nicholas Denys as Governor of Acadia and granted him the confiscated lands and the right to all its minerals. British colonists captured Acadia in the course of King William's War, but Britain returned the territory to France in the Treaty of Ryswick at the wars end. The territory was recaptured by forces loyal to Britain during the course of Queen Anne's War, and its conquest confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. France retained possession of Île St Jean (Prince Edward Island) and Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), on which it established a fortress at Louisbourg to guard the sea approaches to Quebec. This fortress was captured by American colonial forces then of returned by the British to France, then ceded again after the French and Indian War of 1755. Thus mainland Nova Scotia became a British colony in 1713, although Samuel Vetch had a precarious hold on the territory as governor from the fall of Acadian Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal) in October 1710. British governing officials became increasingly concerned over the unwillingness of the French-speaking, Catholic Acadians, who were the majority of colonists, to pledge allegiance to the British Crown, then George II. The colony remained mostly Acadian despite the establishment of Halifax as the province's capital, and the settlement of a large number of mostly German foreign Protestants along the South Shore in 1750. In 1755, the British forcibly expelled the over 12,000 Acadians in what became known as the Grand Dérangement, or Great Expulsion.

The colony's jurisdiction changed during this time. Nova Scotia was granted a supreme court in 1754 with the appointment of Jonathan Belcher and a Legislative Assembly in 1758. In 1763 Cape Breton Island became part of Nova Scotia. In 1769, St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island) became a separate colony. The county of Sunbury was created in 1765, and included all of the territory of current day New Brunswick and eastern Maine as far as the Penobscot River. In 1784 the western, mainland portion of the colony was separated and became the province of New Brunswick, and the territory in Maine entered the control of the newly independent American state of Massachusetts. Cape Breton would again became a separate colony in 1784 only to be returned to Nova Scotia in 1820.

Ancestors of more than half of present-day Nova Scotians arrived in the period following the Acadian Expulsion. Between 1759 and 1768, about 8000 New England Planters responded to Governor Charles Lawrence's request for settlers from the New England colonies. Several years later, approximately 30,000 United Empire Loyalists (American Tories) settled in Nova Scotia (when it comprised present-day Maritime Canada) following the defeat of the British in the American Revolutionary War. Of these 30,000, 14,000 went to New Brunswick and 16,000 to Nova Scotia. Approximately 3,000 of this group were slaves of African ancestry, about a third of which soon relocated themselves to Sierra Leone in 1792. Large numbers of Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots emigrated to Cape Breton and the western portion of the mainland during the late 18th century and 19th century. About one thousand Ulster Scots settled in mainly central Nova Scotia during this time, as did just over a thousand farming migrants from Yorkshire and Northumberland between 1772 and 1775.

Nova Scotia was the first colony in British North America and in the British Empire to achieve responsible government in January-February 1848 and become self-governing through the efforts of Joseph Howe. Pro-Confederate premier Charles Tupper led Nova Scotia into the Canadian Confederation in 1867, along with New Brunswick, Quebec, and the Province of Canada.

Nova Scotia became the first Province in Canada to vie for independence from Canada. In the Provincial election of 1868, the Anti-Confederation Party won 18 out of 19 Federal seats, and 35 out of 38 seats in the provincial legislature. For seven years, William Annand and Joseph Howe led the ultimately unsuccessful fight to convince British Imperial authorities to release Nova Scotia from Confederation. The government was vocally against Confederation, contending that it was no more than the annexation of the Province to the pre-existing province of Canada:

"the scheme with Canada by them assented to would, if adopted, deprive the people Nova Scotia of the inestimable privilege of self-government, and of their rights, liberty, and independence, rob them of their revenue, take from them the regulation of trade and taxation, expose them to arbitrary taxation by a legislature over which they have no control, and in which they would possess but a nominal and entirely ineffective representation; deprive them of their invaluable fisheries, railroads, and other property, and reduce this hitherto free, happy, and self-governed province to a degraded condition of a servile dependency of Canada."(Excerpted from the Address to the Crown by the Government, from the Journal of the House of Assembly, Province of Nova Scotia, 1868)

A motion passed by the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in 1868 refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Confederation has never been rescinded. Repeal, as anti-conferation became known, would rear its head again in the 1880s, and transform into the Maritime Rights Movement in the 1920s, and some Nova Scotia flags flew at half mast on Canada Day as late as that era.

Government

The government of Nova Scotia is a parliamentary democracy. Its unicameral legislature -- the Nova Scotia House of Assembly -- consists of 52 members. As Canada's head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is the Government of Nova Scotia's chief executive. Her duties in Nova Scotia are carried out by the Lieutenant Governor, Mayann E. Francis. The government is headed by the Premier, Rodney MacDonald, who took office February 22, 2006. The Halifax Regional Municipality is home to the seat of government.

The province's revenue comes mainly from the taxation of personal and corporate income, as well as sin taxes, though increasingly, oil and gas royalty revenue is becoming a factor. Federal equalisation payments account for 21.23% of the provincial budget. While Nova Scotians have enjoyed balanced budgets for several years, the accumulated debt exceeds $12 billion dollars, resulting in slightly over $897 million in debt servicing payments in 2005/06. The province participates in the HST, a blended sales taxes collected by the Federal Government using the GST tax system.

Nova Scotia has elected both a Liberal and Progressive Conservative minority government over the last decade. The Progressive Conservative government of, initially, John Hamm, and now Rodney MacDonald, has required the support the New Democratic Party or Liberal Party since the election in 2003. Nova Scotia's politics are divided on regional lines in such a way that it has become difficult to elect a majority government. Rural mainland Nova Scotia has largely been aligned behind the Progressive Conservative Party, Halifax Regional Municipality has overwhelmingly supported the New Democrats, with Cape Breton voting for some Liberals and some Conservative members. This has resulted in a 1/3 split of votes on a Province wide basis for each party, and difficulty in any party gaining a majority. Progressive Conservative Premier Dr. Hamm announced his retirement in late 2005 and was replaced by Rodney MacDonald after MacDonald won a closely contested leadership convention, defeating former finance minister, and the race's frontrunner, Neil LeBlanc on the first ballot and Halifax businessman Bill Black on the second. MacDonald is the second youngest premier in Nova Scotia's history.

The last election on June 13th 2006 turned out a result of 23 seats to the Progressive Conservatives, 20 to the NDP and 9 to the Liberals. This means that Nova Scotia now has a Progressive Conservative minority government.

Geography

The province's mainland is a peninsula surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, including numerous bays and estuaries. Cape Breton Island, a large island to the northeast of the Nova Scotian mainland, is also part of the province, as is Sable Island, a small island notorious for its shipwrecks, approximately 175 km (95 nm) from the province's southern coast. Nova Scotia is Canada's second smallest province in area (after Prince Edward Island), and no point in Nova Scotia is more than 56 km from the sea.

See also individual articles on Geography of Nova Scotia and below for a map.

Ten Largest Municipalities

Municipality	2001	1996
Halifax	359,111	342,851
Cape Breton	105,968	114,733
Lunenburg County	47,591	47,561
Kings County	47,159	47,486
Pictou County	46,965	22,671
Colchester County	35,641	35,161
Yarmouth County	26,843	25,467
East Hants	20,821	19,767
Annapolis County	18,429	18,937
Cumberland County	16,183	17,738

Map

Demographics

Population of Nova Scotia since 1851

Year	Population	Five Year % change	Ten Year % change	Rank Among Provinces
1851	276,854	n/a	n/a	3
1861	330,857	n/a	19.5	3
1871	387,800	n/a	17.2	3
1881	440,572	n/a	13.6	3
1891	450,396	n/a	2.2	3
1901	459,574	n/a	2.0	3
1911	492,338	n/a	7.1	4
1921	523,837	n/a	6.4	7
1931	512,846	n/a	-2.1	7
1941	577,962	n/a	12.7	7
1951	642,584	n/a	11.2	7
1956	694,717	8.1	n/a	7
1961	737,007	6.1	14.7	7
1966	756,039	2.6	8.8	7
1971	788,965	4.4	7.0	7
1976	828,570	5.0	9.6	7
1981	847,442	2.3	7.4	7
1986	873,175	3.0	5.4	7
1991	899,942	3.1	6.2	7
1996	909,282	1.0	4.1	7
2001	908,007	-0.1	0.9	7

Population

Nova Scotia is the seventh most populated province in Canada with an estimated 936,988 residents as of January 1, 2006. It accounts for 3% of the population of Canada. The population density is approximately 17.2 persons/km². Roughly 60% of the population live in rural parts of the province.

Employment

Unemployment is 9.5% of the work force, as of February 2006.

Per capita income

In 2005, per capita income was $28,114 (Can).

Gross Domestic Product

Nova Scotia GDP is presently approximately $31 billion (Can) annually.

Other facts

Nova Scotia is in the Atlantic Standard Time zone.

The schooner Bluenose, which appears on the back of the Canadian ten-cent piece (dime) and current Nova Scotia license plate was built in Lunenburg, a town on the South Shore.

500–1000 Nova Scotians today are fluent in Scottish Gaelic - nearly all live in Antigonish County or on Cape Breton Island. No native Nova Scotians speak Scots.

In 2004, Nova Scotia voted to invite Turks and Caicos Islands to join the province, should these Caribbean islands ever become part of Canada. This would bypass the problems with admitting Turks and Caicos as a separate province.

In November 1761, a furious storm sent the merchant ship Auguste to its doom, taking with it 114 people bound for France and all of their earthly possessions. One of seven survivors, Monsieur St. Luc de la Corne, made an epic trek of almost one-thousand miles in the dead of a Canadian winter back to his family in Montreal. Almost 250 years later, what is left of the Auguste and her valuable cargo of gold and silver lies on the bottom of Cape Breton's Aspy Bay. Underwater explorer, Joe Amaral, and his team have sifted through the sands of Aspy Bay looking for treasure and answers to what really happened during this devastating shipwreck. So far, they have found several cannon, lead sheathing from repairs to the ship, a few coins, and a spoon.

Halifax played a key role in the aftermath of the loss of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912, becoming the final resting place of many of her unclaimed victims. Three Halifax ships were involved in the grim task of recovering victims - many of whom were laid to rest in Fairview Cemetery. The Maritime Museum of Canada on the waterfront has a poignant exhibition of items recovered from the disaster, including the passenger list and one of the few deck chairs from the Titanic known to exist.

In 1621, King James I granted Sir William Alexander, the land between New England and Newfoundland as New Scotland (Nova Scotia). The Baronets of Nova Scotia were created, as a settlement.A piece of land now is under the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle to cliam thier Baronetage is deemed Nova Scotia under Scottish Law .The law has never been repealed .

External links

=Official links

=Other links

Diving in Nova Scotia - Ocean Playground of Canada

Nova Scotia | Former British colonies | British North America | Scottish colonies

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Nova Scotia