• Canada Guide

  • Introduction to Canada
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Canada Guide

The Maritime Provinces

Nova Scotia

The character of Nova Scotia has been conditioned by the whims of the North Atlantic weather, a climate so harsh in wintertime that the Nova Scotian colonists of the eighteenth century earned the soubriquet "Bluenoses" for their ability to stand the cold. The descendants of these hardened sailors do not, however, typify the whole province. The farmers of the Annapolis Valley and their Acadian neighbours were quite distinct from the mariners of the Atlantic coast, and different again were the mixed bag of emigrants who came to work the coal mines and steel mills of central Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island from the 1880s – differences that remain noticeable today.

To get the full sense of Nova Scotia you have to do a tour, and the logical place to start is the capital, Halifax, which sits beside a splendid harbour on the south coast. With its excellent restaurants, lively nightlife and handful of historic attractions, the city can easily fill a couple of days. To continue, it's best to take in the beguiling fishing villages of the southwest shore, amongst which handsome Lunenburg and solitary Lockeport stand out. Between them is Liverpool, where you turn inland for both the remote forests and lakes of Kejimkujik National Park and, beyond, on an arm of the Bay of Fundy, the delightful little town of Annapolis Royal. Heading east from here along the Annapolis Valley, it's a further 110km to the amenable college town of Wolfville and another 90km back to Halifax.

Nova Scotia's other outstanding circular tourist route is the Cabot Trail. It encircles the more northerly half of Cape Breton Island, where the mountainous landscapes of Cape Breton Highlands National Park constitute some of eastern Canada's most stunning scenery. Cape Breton Island – and the strip of Nova Scotia coast bordering the Northumberland Strait – attracted thousands of Scottish highlanders at the end of the eighteenth century, mostly tenant farmers who had been evicted by Scotland's landowners when they found sheep-raising more profitable than renting farmland. Many of the region's settlements celebrate their Scots ancestry and Gaelic traditions in one way or another.