The character of NOVA SCOTIA has been conditioned by the
whims of the North Atlantic weather, a climate so harsh in
wintertime that the seaboard Nova Scotian colonists of the
eighteenth century earned the soubriquet " Bluenoses " for
their abil-ity to stand the cold. The descendants of these hardened
sailors do not typify the whole province, however. 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
the tour, 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 pleasant college town of
Wolfville and another 90km back to Halifax.
Nova Scotia's other outstanding circular tourist route is the
Cabot Trail . Named after the explorer John Cabot, who is
supposed to have landed here in 1497, it encircles the northern
promontory 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 - museums, Highland Games and bagpipe-playing competitions
- and in South Gut St Ann's , on the Cabot Trail, there's
even a Gaelic college. The final attraction of Cape Breton is the
reconstructed eighteenth-century French fortress of
Louisbourg , stuck in splendid isolation on the southeast
coast.
Southwest Nova Scotia is reasonably well served by bus ,
with daily connections running between Halifax and Yarmouth via
both the south shore and - less frequently - the Annapolis Valley.
There are also frequent buses from Halifax to Baddeck, Sydney and
Truro, for connections on to New Brunswick and PEI. VIA Rail
services run between Halifax and Truro, then continue on to New
Brunswick and Québec. Elsewhere, however, you'll need a car
, particularly if you're keen to see anything of the wilder
sections of the Cabot Trail. Car ferries link Yarmouth with
Bar Harbor and Portland in Maine; North Sydney with Newfoundland;
Caribou, near Pictou, with PEI; and Digby with Saint John, which
often makes a useful short cut.