History of Nova Scotia

After thousands of years of occupation by aboriginal peoples, the region came to the attention of Europeans, perhaps during the Viking voyages of c. ad 1000 and certainly by the late 15th century. The rich fisheries of the coast provided the major impetus for European involvement in the area. In the early 17th century, a group of French merchants led by Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts, and assisted by the explorer Samuel de Champlain, established trading posts in the region; one founded at Port Royal (near present-day Annapolis Royal) in 1605 was the first permanent European settlement in North America north of Florida. In 1621 the English king James I granted the area to a Scottish nobleman, Sir William Alexander. This led to a brief, unsuccessful Scottish settlement at Port Royal (1629–32).

For the next century and a half, the region was a focal point for French-English rivalry for control of North America. This struggle for control retarded European settlement of the region and greatly altered the lives of the French settlers, or Acadians. The territory passed back and forth between France and England until 1713, when one of the treaties of Utrecht conveyed mainland Nova Scotia to the English for the last time, although conflict continued for another 50 years. The French retained Cape Breton Island, where they built the powerful fortress of Louisbourg, which the English attempted to counter by the founding in 1749 of Halifax as the new administrative and military centre of their colony. In the 1750s the English expelled the Acadians from the region—an event romanticized and popularized by the New England poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his narrative poem Evangeline.

Offers of free land attracted immigrants from the British Isles, the Germanic states, and New England; these newcomers gave the colony its first substantial Protestant population. By the time of the American Revolution, New Englanders constituted roughly two-thirds of Nova Scotia’s population. In spite of some support for the revolution, the colony remained largely passive during the conflict, and approximately 35,000 loyalists immigrated to the province from the revolting colonies to the south. Meanwhile, Prince Edward Island had split off from Nova Scotia in 1769, and New Brunswick and Cape Breton followed in 1784; the last was reunited with Nova Scotia in 1820. In 1848 Nova Scotia became the first British colony in which the administration of government was responsible to the majority in the House of Assembly, the representative branch of colonial government. Despite opposition from some economic and political leaders, confederation with the colonies of New Brunswick and Canada (present-day Quebec and Ontario) was carried out in 1867.

As a separate British colony, Nova Scotia had prospered from its forestry, fisheries, and shipbuilding for the first two-thirds of the 19th century. Under the Reciprocity Treaty (1854) between the Canadian colonies and the United States, the north-south flow of commerce and Nova Scotia’s normal market and supply source in New England seemed secure. The colony benefited further from the increased demand by both the North and the South of the United States during the American Civil War. However, the termination of reciprocity in 1866 and changing continental and world trade patterns eroded much of Nova Scotia’s traditional economy. The linking of Nova Scotia with central Canada via the railway did not bring all the expected benefits to the region; rather, it helped to make the province more economically dependent on Quebec and Ontario. The late 19th century witnessed the extensive industrialization of parts of Nova Scotia, but in general the early 20th century saw the consolidation of financial and industrial power in Montreal and Toronto. The extensive out-migration of Nova Scotians, mainly to the New England states and western Canada, was a sign of the troubled economy.

During both of the 20th-century World Wars, Halifax played a key role in the transportation of men and supplies to Europe; the city experienced unprecedented prosperity as a result. During World War I, much of the city was destroyed when two ships collided in Halifax Harbour on Dec. 6, 1917. The collision resulted in the largest man-made explosion in history prior to the advent of the atomic bomb. More than 1,500 Haligonians were killed.

At the turn of the 21st century, Nova Scotia’s population and economy continued to experience modest growth. The large potential of offshore gas reserves and an expanding technology-based industrial sector augured well for the future of the province, as did the tourism industry. However, increasing difficulties posed by border security and the high cost of gasoline led to a decline in the number of American tourists visiting the province.

On April 18 and 19, 2020, Nova Scotia was the scene of the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, when a gunman, driving a fake police car, set numerous fires amid a 13-hour rampage that left 22 people dead and numerous others injured before he himself was shot and killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.