Atlantic Canada

The first part of North America to be discovered by Europeans, Canada’s four Atlantic provinces comprise a small group of islands and peninsulas on Canada’s eastern coast. Though low in population and economically weak, they possess a proud, centuries-old culture that combines a distinct mix of British, Scottish, Gaelic and French customs, creating a unique, tradition-oriented people. Almost everyone in Canada claims to find Atlantic Canada quaint and interesting — even if few are exactly scrambling to live there.
Note: In most parts of Canada, it ’ south common to use the term “ Maritime provinces ” or “ the Maritimes ” to refer to the provinces of Atlantic Canada. Within Atlantic Canada itself, however, the term “ Maritime ” is silent to exclude the province of Newfoundland, which has a reasonably different culture and identity from the rest of the Atlantic provinces, as we shall see .

Sunset at Peggy Cove, Nova Scotia.
Jay Yuan/Shutterstock

Geography of Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canada comprises a little collection of islands and peninsulas attached to the seashore of easterly Quebec and extending into — you guessed it — the Atlantic Ocean. together, they form a unrefined crescent bay known as the Gulf of St. Lawrence that connects the Atlantic Ocean to Quebec ’ sulfur St. Lawrence canal, which serves as Canada ’ s busiest easterly trade port .
The Atlantic Canadian landscape is one of Canada ’ s most recognizable, with pine forests, hills and dangerous rocky cliffs that have spawned — out of base hit concerns — an iconic lighthouse industry. Since the area is surrounded by water, coastal areas can be particularly cool, wet and fogged with cold, stormy winters ( raincoats are another proud Maritime picture ) and mild, pleasant summers. Interior, or inland regions, by line, tend to be well drier, and in winter months receive some of the largest snowfalls in Canada .
In contrast to the other provinces, the four Atlantic Canadian provinces are all quite little with sparse populations. Most can be driven across in only a pair hours .

meunierd/Shutterstock

Africadians

During the american Revolution, the british tried to play spare blacks against the rebels, promising former slaves continued exemption in the event of british victory. When that did n’t happen, Britain then encouraged black migration to Atlantic Canada, promising safe recourse. Though many blacks did settle in Nova Scotia, where they established african-american communities that remain present to this day, many others finally left Canada for the british colony Sierra Leone, as separate of a british campaign to move former slaves back to Africa .

History of Atlantic Canada

Like a lot of eastern Canada, the Maritimes in the first place belonged to the french. Established in 1604, the royal french colony of Acadia encompassed all the contemporary Atlantic provinces, and was one of the Empire ’ s most strategically utilitarian outposts as the gateway to North America. Of this fact nearby british settlers were extremely covetous, and the two powers fought back-and-forth wars over the colonies for most of the seventeenth century, with the Brits last securing see of most of the area in 1714, following the War of the Spanish Succession ( 1701-1714 ). Having acquired the region, Britain proceeded to deport all french colonists — besides known as Acadians — in what is still remembered as one of the most disgraceful episodes of canadian history. Though some Acadians would late migrate back, a draw of the deported wreathe up in Louisiana, and helped form that department of state ’ second alone culture. The lovable term “ Cajun ” is descended from “ Acadian, ” in fact .
Cleared of the french, the acadian colonies remained by and large vacant until the aftermath of the American Revolution ( 1775-1783 ) sent a huge migration of pro-British Loyalist refugees north, who turned the area into a thriving community of English loggers, fishermen and shipbuilders. By this luff, the british colonial bureaucrats had divided and renamed the territory into the four regions we know nowadays : Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. By the mid- nineteenth hundred, all four colonies had won a high degree of self-government, but were besides economically dead. The mind of forming a larger, autonomous colonial federation with Ontario and Quebec as a path to greater prosperity was proposed, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick formed two of Canada ’ s first four provinces in 1867. Bankrupt PEI jointed in 1871, but Newfoundland refused, and remained an autonomous, autonomous british colony until 1949 .
Throughout the twentieth century, all of the Atlantic provinces struggled with serious economic problems and remain the poorest regions of Canada to this day. The “ root causal agent ” of Maritime poverty is obviously quite a controversial and much-debated subject, but an undeniably divisor has been the worsen of many of their traditional industries, such as fish, forestry and shipbuilding .

The Tall Ships Nova Scotia festival in Halifax.
Matthew Jacques/Shutterstock

experience Antigonish/Flickr

Scottish Pride

Pipers marching in a Highland Games parade in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The annual Antigonish festival, which features traditional scottish activities like caber-tossing and highland dance, is the longest-running scottish sports festival in North America, dating back to 1863 .

Nova Scotia

A large peninsula shaped like the lobster claws it ’ s celebrated for, Nova Scotia is the biggest and wealthiest of the four Maritime provinces. home to Halifax Harbour, Canada ’ randomness independent Atlantic port, Nova Scotia was primitively known as a hub for shipbuilding and naval bases, angstrom well as a welcome point for many european immigrants, embodied by its celebrated Pier 21 — Canada ’ s answer to Ellis Island. In the twentieth century, the provincial economy was tied to two notoriously unsustainable natural resource industries — coal and fishing — and by the 1990s both had collapsed. today most residents work in tourism or the service sector .
Over 70 per cent of Nova Scotians live in coastal communities with half of the provincial population located in two big cities : Halifax, which is on the independent peninsula, and Sydney, on Cape Breton Island to the north. Nova Scotia ’ south geography is generally slope, with the easterly half of the state dominated by hills and forest-covered mountains, while the western half houses flat plains and farmland. The provincial seashore features rocky beaches covered with massive grey stones, washed smooth after thousands of years of lapping waves .
latin for “ New Scotland, ” Nova Scotia has been the historic home of a colorful nautical culture spread by immigrants from England, Scotland and Ireland. Well into the twentieth century, it was not rare to come across rural Nova Scotian families who spoke Gaelic as their first speech, and musicians like Ashley MacIsaac ( barn. 1975 ) and Natalie MacMaster ( b. 1972 ) have kept a classifiable Celtic custom of aggressive fiddle-playing alive and popular .

• Nova Scotia Tourism
• Government of Nova Scotia

The Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy.
Vincent St. Thomas/Shutterstock

Stephen Downes/Flickr
The towering Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption’s Cathedral in Moncton, a big Catholic church service built in the 1930s to service the city ‘s French-Canadian residential district.

New Brunswick

New Brunswick is a square, cragged state best-known for its southern seashore, the Bay of Fundy, which is home to the highest tides in the world, iconic “ pot rocks, ” and thriving communities of humpback whales and dolphins. Most New Brunswickers live in the cities of Saint John ( not to be confused with Saint John’s, which is in Newfoundland ) and Moncton. The provincial capital of Fredericton, unusually, sits a slightly distant third .
Unlike their compatriots in the early Maritime regions, many New Brunswick Acadians ( French-Canadians ) were allowed to return to their state following Britain ’ south batch deportation of french settlers in the 1750s, and to this day, northerly New Brunswick retains a significant population of French-speakers. In 1969 New Brunswick declared itself Canada ’ s first formally bilingual province, and it ’ s estimated more than 30 per penny of New Brunswickers speak french as their inaugural language — the largest percentage outside of Quebec .
With upwards of 85 per penny of the province covered by forest, logging and shipbuilding have been the traditional backbone of the New Brunswick economy, though both have steadily declined in holocene decades. today, the New Brunswick economy is known for being significantly dominated by the family-run J.D. Irving pot, which has come to control a huge align of industries, including lumber mills, gas stations, convenience stores, newspapers, and television stations .

• New Brunswick Tourism
• Government of New Brunswick

Lil’ Anne

It ’ s impossible to say anything about Prince Edward Island without besides mentioning Anne of Green Gables ( 1908 ), a bestselling novel by local anesthetic generator Lucy Maud Montgomery ( 1874-1942 ) that continues to define the island ’ south identity to this day. The record told the story of feisty Lil ’ Anne and her stereotypically Atlantic Canadian farm family, and former spawned many sequels and trade and double contests and indeed on. sol much of PEI ’ s tourism industry remains bound improving in the Lil ’ Anne mythology that it ’ s estimated that at least a third of all tourism gross flows from Anne-themed attractions .

Prince Edward Island

A small crescent island located in the gulf between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, PEI ( as it ’ randomness known ) occupies a bare 5,700 square kilometers of state and contains lone 140,000 people making it by far Canada ’ randomness smallest state. It has long struggled to achieve national attention as a leave, beyond jokes about its size .
PEI was originally short more than a float grove owned by absentee british landlords, who drove property values up therefore high no one could afford to live there. This single offspring dominated the island ’ s early history, with the colony first refusing ( 1867 ) and then agreeing ( 1873 ) to join Canada in an effort to get Britain to solve the problem. The population continued to remain low into the twentieth century ascribable to a general lack of industry beyond potato grow and fish .
due to its small size, about all of Prince Edward Island is developed and inhabited, with about a one-fourth of all residents living in the capital city of Charlottetown and the lie scattered about in small villages across the island. Sprawling green plains, red sandstone cliffs, deciduous forests, and antique clapboard houses have helped turn the state into a tourist mecca for those seeking quaint Atlantic appeal — which has, in turn, helped keep the provincial economy afloat .

• Prince Edward Island Tourism
• Government of Prince Edward Island

Colourful houses in St. John’s.
Elena Elisseeva/Shutterstock

Canada’s Last Province

Canada ‘s Prime Minister, Louis St. Laurent ( 1882-1973 ) and Newfoundland Governor Sir Gordon MacDonald ( 1885-1966 ) polarity a December 11, 1948 agreement making Newfoundland a province of Canada. To this day, the decision remains controversial among some who consider it a betrayal of Newfoundland history. There are all sorts of conspiracy theories about the politics surrounding the deal .

Newfoundland and Labrador

Newfoundland traces its founding all the way back to 1583, when the british explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert ( 1537-1583 ) claimed the rocky island as Britain ’ s first oversea colony. The british proceeded to go to great lengths to prevent people from actually living there, preferring to use the colony as a potent naval base through which they could control much of the lucrative american fishing industry. only in the nineteenth century did all-out village begin, and as the colony ’ s population of british settlers steadily grew, Newfoundland gradually gained political independence from Britain much the lapp way Canada itself did. systematically refusing to join Canada, Newfoundland spent the years from 1855 to 1934 as a autonomous dominion of Great Britain, with its own prime ministers, national anthem, flag, Olympic team, and the rest .
Hit particularly hard by the Great Depression ( 1929-1933 ), Newfoundland gave up its independence in 1934 and agreed to once again be directly administered by the british for 15 years, before last voting to join Canada in 1949. In the postwar earned run average, a depletion of fish stocks and a failure to develop other industries doomed the new province to a apparently ceaseless express of recession, with high unemployment, poverty and social welfare colony. alone in recent years, with the discovery of oil off the provincial slide, has Newfoundland finally begun to escape from its long shadow of economic dysfunction .
Despite having recently celebrated their sixtieth anniversary as a province of Canada, Newfoundlanders ( or “ Newfies ” as they are dearly, or sometimes foully, known ) inactive retain a number of unique cultural traditions from their retentive history of independence. They speak with different accents, use different slang, celebrate unlike holidays and eat many different foods than early Canadians, and retain a population that has far fewer immigrants and minorities than the rest of the country. Despite controversial government efforts to promote city living, the province ’ s minor population remains scattered around the island, with a very little minority of residents living in Labrador, a resource-rich collocate of northerly Quebec that Newfoundland has long fought to keep under its control .

• Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism
• Government of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Newfound and Labrador Heritage

Quick Facts

• The Atlantic Canada region consists of peninsulas and islands extending into the Atlantic Ocean.
• Historically, the Atlantic provinces have had a unique nautical culture associated with fishing and sailing.
• The Atlantic provinces had much more relevance to Canada in the past than they do today, given the size of provinces added since them.
• In recent years, the provinces have faced significant economic hardship and poverty.

Bluenoses

“Bluenose” is a nickname for person from Nova Scotia, though the origins are lost to time. It is besides the name of a excellently successful racing sailboat from the early twentieth century whose image is engraved on the canadian dime. Used for both cultivate and leisure, sailboats remain a popular picture of Atlantic Canada .

The Atlantic Provinces

• Nova Scotia: Population, 949,500 (2016 est.); capital, Halifax. Province of Canada since July 1, 1867.
• New Brunswick: Population, 756,800 (2016 est); capital, Fredericton. Province of Canada since July 1, 1867.
• Prince Edward Island: Population, 148,600 (2016 est.); capital, Charlottetown. Province of Canada since July 1, 1873.
• Newfoundland and Labrador: Population, 530,100 (2016 est.); capital, St. John’s. Province of Canada since April 1, 1949.

Gord McKenna/Flickr

St. Pierre et Miquelon

In the aftermath of the Seven Years War ( 1754-1763 ), Britain stripped France of all of its canadian territories but allowed it to retain a pair of bantam islands off the southwestern tip of Newfoundland. More than 250 years late, St. Pierre and Miquelon hush remain part of France. Today the rocky islands are home to about 5,000 proud french citizens who have created an haven of european culture in the Atlantic Ocean .