Nova Scotia
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| Nova Scotia Nouvelle-Écosse, Alba Nuadh |
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| Motto: Munit Hae et Altera Vincit (Latin: "One defends and the other conquers") |
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| Capital | Halifax | ||||
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| Largest city | Halifax | ||||
| Largest metro | Halifax Urban Area | ||||
| Official languages | English | ||||
| Government | |||||
| Lieutenant-Governor | Mayann E. Francis | ||||
| Premier | Rodney MacDonald (PC) | ||||
| Federal representation | in Canadian Parliament | ||||
| House seats | 11 | ||||
| Senate seats | 10 | ||||
| Confederation | July 1, 1867 (1st) | ||||
| Area | Ranked 12th | ||||
| Total | 55,283 km2 (21,345 sq mi) | ||||
| Land | 53,338 km2 (20,594 sq mi) | ||||
| Water (%) | 1,946 km2 (751 sq mi) (3.5%) | ||||
| Population | Ranked 7th | ||||
| Total (2008) | 935,962 (est.)[1] | ||||
| Density | 17.49 /km² (45.3 /sq mi) | ||||
| GDP | Ranked 7th | ||||
| Total (2006) | C$31.966 billion[2] | ||||
| Per capita | C$34,210 (11th) | ||||
| Abbreviations | |||||
| Postal | NS | ||||
| ISO 3166-2 | CA-NS | ||||
| Time zone | UTC-4 | ||||
| Postal code prefix | B | ||||
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| Website | www.gov.ns.ca | ||||
| Rankings include all provinces and territories | |||||
Nova Scotia (IPA: /ˌnəʊvəˈskəʊʃə/) (Latin for New Scotland; Scottish Gaelic: Alba Nuadh; French: Nouvelle-Écosse) is a Canadian province located on Canada's southeastern coast. It is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. 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 935,962[3] makes it the fourth least populous province of the country, though second most densely populated.
Nova Scotia's economy is traditionally largely resource-based, but has diversified since the middle of the 20th century. Industries such as fishing, mining, forestry and agriculture remain very important and have been joined by tourism, technology, film, music, and finance.
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, Newfoundland and the Gaspé Peninsula. 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).
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[edit] Geography
The province's mainland is the Nova Scotia peninsula surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, including numerous bays and estuaries. Nowhere in Nova Scotia is more than 67 km (40 mi) from the ocean.[4] Cape Breton Island, a large island to the northeast of the Nova Scotia mainland, is also part of the province, as is Sable Island, a small island notorious for its shipwrecks, approximately 175 km (109 mi) from the province's southern coast. Nova Scotia is Canada's second smallest province in area (after Prince Edward Island). Nova Scotia is also Canada's most southern province even though it does not have the most southern location in Canada. That is held by Ontario. Northern Ontario keeps the central region of Ontario farther north than Nova Scotia.
[edit] Climate
Nova Scotia lies in the mid temperate zone and, although the province is almost surrounded by water, the climate is closer to continental rather than maritime. The temperature extremes of the continental climate are moderated by the ocean.
Described on a provincial vehicle licence plate as Canada's Ocean Playground, the sea is a major influence on Nova Scotia's climate. Nova Scotia is known to have cold winters and warm summers. The province is surrounded by three major bodies of water, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the north, the Bay of Fundy to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south and east.
Rainfall varies from 140 centimetres (55 in) in the south to 100 centimetres (40 in) elsewhere. Nova Scotia is also very foggy in places, with Halifax averaging 196 foggy days per year[5] and Yarmouth 191.[6]
The average annual temperatures are:
- Spring from 1° to 17°C
- Summer from 14° to 39°C
- Fall about 5° to 20°C
- Winter about -21° to 5°C
Because of the ocean's effect on the weather Nova Scotia is the warmest of the provinces in Canada. Nova Scotia also has a fairly wide but not extreme temperature range, a late and long summer, skies that are often cloudy or overcast; frequent coastal fog and marked changeability of weather from day to day. The main reasons of Nova Scotia's climate can be related to four basic factors:
- The effects of the westerly winds
- The interaction between three main air masses which converge on the east coast
- Nova Scotia's location on the routes of the major eastward-moving storms
- And the modifying influence of the sea.
Because Nova Scotia juts out into the Atlantic, it is prone to tropical storms and hurricanes in the summer and autumn. There have been 33 such storms, including 12 hurricanes, since records were kept in 1871—about once every four years. The last hurricane was category-one Hurricane Kyle in September 2008, and the last tropical storm was in Tropical Storm Noel in 2007.
[edit] History
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 the continent 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 more than a century later in 1604. The French, led by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts established the first capital for the colony Acadia at Port Royal that year at the head of the Annapolis Basin. Also, French fishermen established a settlement 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 William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling and, in 1622, the first settlers left Scotland. This settlement initially failed because of 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 six labourers or artisans, sufficiently armed, dressed and supplied for two years, to Nova Scotia, or by paying 3,000 merks to William Alexander. For six 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 end of the war. The territory was recaptured by forces loyal to Britain during the course of Queen Anne's War, and its was 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 over 12,000 Acadians in what became known as the Grand Dérangement, or Great Expulsion.
At the same time the British Crown began bestowing land grants in Nova Scotia on favored subjects to encourage settlement and trade with the mother country. In June 1764, for instance, the Boards of Trade requested the King make massive land grants to such Royal favorites as Thomas Pownall, Richard Oswald, Humphry Bradstreet, John Wentworth, Thomas Thoroton and Lincoln's Inn barrister Levett Blackborne.[7] Two years later, in 1766, at a gathering at the home of Levett Blackborne, an adviser to the Duke of Rutland, Oswald and his friend James Grant were released from their Nova Scotia properties so they could concentrate on their grants in British East Florida.[8]
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 8,000 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 Black Loyalists, about a third of whom soon relocated themselves to Sierra Leone in 1792 via the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, becoming the Original settlers of Freetown. 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