Nova Scotia’s Historic Inland Communities: The Gathering Places and Settlements that Shaped the Province by Joan Dawson certainly covered the whole length of the province, from Yarmouth to Cape Breton Island. As long as there wasn’t a coastline in sight, Dawson wrote about the interior locales populated first by the Mi’kmaq then to those founded by European settlers. The author always acknowledged the First Nations and their history and used Mi’kmaq terms for rivers and other geographical features, followed by their French or English names. One can see how English adopted these original names and corrupted them, as with Shubenacadie for the Mi’kmaq Sipekne’katik.
Chapters covered the oldest communities first, such as Mi’kmaw gathering places and Acadian and French settlements. As the province was being populated by Europeans there was a worry that too many Catholics were moving in, so Protestants were sought from the continent. Loyalists from the American Revolution were invited to settle as well as emancipated blacks in the late eighteenth century.
One chapter was devoted to the rivers, roads and railways that brought the people deeper into the province, starting with the canoe routes of the Mi’kmaq, then to the crude rocky and stumpy roads, ending with the railroads that used to run.
Dawson wrote about the industries that kept many new settlements afloat such as milling, mining and manufacturing. I didn’t even know that several times in Nova Scotia’s history there were small and short-lived versions of their own gold rush. The settlements that grew around each new gold mine quickly depopulated once the gold was exhausted.
We learned of the leading settlers of these inland communities, their businesses and legacies. I found the read to be quite dry, unfortunately, since the stories all seemed the same. Dawson wrote a formal history that might bore readers expecting a popular account with the language to match. Not that I’m complaining, as I tend to favour histories that acknowledge the facts and leave the jokes behind. Nevertheless it took me four days to get through the 193 pages. Photos were included but I feel the histories could have been enhanced with more visual accompaniments.