Not long before the Revolution, Britain's Thirteen Colonies in America were joined to their north by a fourteenth: Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia had been a French colony called Acadia to varying degrees beginning in 1604, but fell fully and finally to Britain with the second capture of the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1758, not two decades before the American Revolution. (Nova Scotia included present-day New Brunswick until 1784, and until 1769 included present-day Prince Edward Island.)
Nova Scotia by the time of the Revolution was not an established, developed commonwealth like the first thirteen, but a fledgling frontier colony being resettled by British subjects, the preponderance of those coming by design from New England. Little Nova Scotia was nonetheless base to a considerable part of the Royal Navy and later an entire regiment of the British Army meant expressly for enforcing loyalty to the Crown, so that the British government had a military influence in Nova Scotia unparalleled in the other colonies. Plus which Nova Scotia was not connected contiguously to the settled centers of those other colonies and was thus estranged from the revolutionary activity to the south.
Which is not to say Nova Scotia saw no revolutionary activity. A stack of hay bound for government forces in Boston was set afire, privateers raided the coasts with some frequency, and locals laid siege to Fort Cumberland, unsupported by the revolutionary Continental Army and thus unsuccessful. But the Nova Scotia Assembly had not dispatched a delegation to the Continental Congress, for the practical reason that the military presence of the Crown prohibited such a movement as that, and absent official Nova Scotian participation in the Continental Congress, then-General George Washington declined support for revolutionary efforts in Nova Scotia. They do say that judgment came to be Washington's greatest regret.
So Nova Scotia was largely left out of the Revolutionary War, and after the American victory and founding of the United States, carried on as a British colony.
Then came the 1860s, when Canada -- referring then to Ontario and Quebec -- looked to construct a counter to the United States on the North American continent, subsume the unhappy union of Upper and Lower Canada into some grander political arrangement, and aggrandize itself generally, and presumed to conscript the smaller British North American colonies into its cause. Nova Scotia wanted no part of this "Confederation", or union with Canada: in the Confederation year of 1867 Nova Scotians elected anti-Confederation candidates to 36 of 38 seats provincially and 18 of 19 seats federally, and 31,000 -- or 65 percent -- of Nova Scotia's electorate signed a petition declaring Nova Scotia's lumping into the Confederation scheme democratically illegitimate. But Nova Scotia was annexed to Canada by the British North America Act of 1867, against its express democratic will. As late as 1886, Nova Scotians elected a separatist provincial government with 26 of 38 seats, but to no avail.
Nova Scotia has been an Indian territory, a French colony, a colony divided between French and British, a British colony, a province of Canada as a British dominion, and a province of Canada as a fully-sovereign European-style state; so long as the world turns, there is no cause for supposing Nova Scotia's present iteration must be its last.
Nova Scotia had been a French colony called Acadia to varying degrees beginning in 1604, but fell fully and finally to Britain with the second capture of the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1758, not two decades before the American Revolution. (Nova Scotia included present-day New Brunswick until 1784, and until 1769 included present-day Prince Edward Island.)
Nova Scotia by the time of the Revolution was not an established, developed commonwealth like the first thirteen, but a fledgling frontier colony being resettled by British subjects, the preponderance of those coming by design from New England. Little Nova Scotia was nonetheless base to a considerable part of the Royal Navy and later an entire regiment of the British Army meant expressly for enforcing loyalty to the Crown, so that the British government had a military influence in Nova Scotia unparalleled in the other colonies. Plus which Nova Scotia was not connected contiguously to the settled centers of those other colonies and was thus estranged from the revolutionary activity to the south.
Which is not to say Nova Scotia saw no revolutionary activity. A stack of hay bound for government forces in Boston was set afire, privateers raided the coasts with some frequency, and locals laid siege to Fort Cumberland, unsupported by the revolutionary Continental Army and thus unsuccessful. But the Nova Scotia Assembly had not dispatched a delegation to the Continental Congress, for the practical reason that the military presence of the Crown prohibited such a movement as that, and absent official Nova Scotian participation in the Continental Congress, then-General George Washington declined support for revolutionary efforts in Nova Scotia. They do say that judgment came to be Washington's greatest regret.
So Nova Scotia was largely left out of the Revolutionary War, and after the American victory and founding of the United States, carried on as a British colony.
Then came the 1860s, when Canada -- referring then to Ontario and Quebec -- looked to construct a counter to the United States on the North American continent, subsume the unhappy union of Upper and Lower Canada into some grander political arrangement, and aggrandize itself generally, and presumed to conscript the smaller British North American colonies into its cause. Nova Scotia wanted no part of this "Confederation", or union with Canada: in the Confederation year of 1867 Nova Scotians elected anti-Confederation candidates to 36 of 38 seats provincially and 18 of 19 seats federally, and 31,000 -- or 65 percent -- of Nova Scotia's electorate signed a petition declaring Nova Scotia's lumping into the Confederation scheme democratically illegitimate. But Nova Scotia was annexed to Canada by the British North America Act of 1867, against its express democratic will. As late as 1886, Nova Scotians elected a separatist provincial government with 26 of 38 seats, but to no avail.
Nova Scotia has been an Indian territory, a French colony, a colony divided between French and British, a British colony, a province of Canada as a British dominion, and a province of Canada as a fully-sovereign European-style state; so long as the world turns, there is no cause for supposing Nova Scotia's present iteration must be its last.
