Place:Nova Scotia, Canada

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Nova Scotia (Latin for New Scotland; ; ) is a Canadian province located on Canada's southeastern coast. It is the most populous province in the Maritimes, and its capital, Halifax, is a major economic centre of the region. Nova Scotia is the second smallest province in Canada, with an area of 55,284 km². Its population of 934,405 makes it the fourth least populous province of the country.

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

The province includes 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 a new capital at Halifax in 1749. In 1867 Nova Scotia was one of the founding provinces of the Canadian Confederation, along with New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (which became the separate provinces of Quebec and Ontario).

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

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.

Some believe that the Vikings may have settled in Nova Scotia at some time, though there is little evidence of this and the claim is disputed by historians. The only authenticated Viking settlement in North America is L'Anse aux Meadows, which establishes the fact that Vikings explored North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus.

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. [1]. The first European settlement in Nova Scotia was established in 1604. The French, led 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. Also, French Fisherman established a settelment at Canso the same year.

In 1620, the Plymouth Council for New England, under King James I (of England) & VI (of Scots) designated the whole shorelines of Acadia and the Mid-Atlantic colonies south to the Chesapeake Bay as New England. The first documented Scottish settlement in the Americas was of Nova Scotia in 1621. On 29 September 1621, the charter for the foundation of a colony was granted by James VI to Sir William Alexander and, in 1622, the first settlers left Scotland.

This settlement initially failed due to difficulties in obtaining a sufficient number of skilled emigrants and in 1624, James VI created a new order of Baronets; admission to this order was obtained by sending 6 labourers or artisans, sufficiently armed, dressed & supplied for 2 years, to Nova Scotia, or by paying 3,000 merks to William Alexander. For 6 months, no one took up this offer until James compelled one to make the first move.

In 1627, there was a wider uptake of baronetcies, and thus more settlers available to go to Nova Scotia. However, in 1627, war broke out between England and France and the French re-established a settlement at Port Royal which they had originally settled. Later that year, a combined Scottish and English force destroyed the French settlement, forcing them out. In 1629, the first Scottish settlement at Port Royal was inhabited. The colony's charter, in law, made Nova Scotia (defined as all land between Newfoundland and New England) a part of mainland Scotland, this was later used to get around the English navigation acts. However, this did not last long: in 1631, under King Charles I, the Treaty of Suza was signed which returned Nova Scotia to the French. The Scots were forced by Charles to abandon their mission before their colony had been properly established and the French assumed 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. English colonists captured Acadia in the course of King William's War, but England 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 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, Roman 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 foreign Protestants (some French and Swiss but mostly German) at Lunenburg in 1753. 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 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 went 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 part 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 and the Province of Canada.

In the Provincial election of 1868, the Anti-Confederation Party won 18 out of 19 Federal seats, and 36 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:

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-confederation became known, would rear its head again in the 1880s, and transform into the Maritime Rights Movement in the 1920s. Some Nova Scotia flags flew at half mast on Canada Day as late as that time.

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