Nova Scotia
Almost an island, Nova Scotia is a little province on the Atlantic coast with a long history and a rich culture.
Shaped by its rugged coastline and honed by the sea, over the centuries it has served as a haven for blacks arriving as freemen or escaped slaves and for Scots, Germans, and Loyalists from the American Revolution, but its earliest colonial history was enriched by the Acadians and scarred by their brutal deportation.
This multicultural mix, dating back 400 years, may account for Nova Scotia’s rich musical climate, which includes the Gaelic ceilidh – gatherings wild with fiddles and step dancing – and the folk songs of sailors and the sea.
Salty ports dot the coastline, and their extravagant Victorian mansions - many of them now bed-and-breakfasts – bespeak the wealth of shipwrights and merchants who traded with the world a century and more ago. Today, Nova Scotia maintains its unique outlook: worldly, warm, and sturdily independent.
