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Nova Scotia

Chapter 2: INTRODUCTION
By Beckles Willson
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About This Book

A descriptive tour of a maritime province that blends history, geography, and economic survey with lively regional sketches. The author traces settlement origins and outlines natural resources and industries, including fisheries, coal, agriculture, mining, and shipbuilding. Individual chapters profile major towns, rural valleys, coastal communities, and historic sites while noting local institutions, customs, and the role of technical education. Illustrations and an appendix accompany practical observations aimed at visitors and prospective settlers, offering both travel impressions and usable information about daily life and economic opportunity in the region.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

INTRODUCTION

By HON. GEORGE H. MURRAY

PRIME MINISTER OF NOVA SCOTIA

All lovers of Nova Scotia will welcome this volume. I have read it with pleasure as recording the impressions a sojourn in this Province has made on a man of culture and acute observation.

It will prove valuable to those who wish to learn something of a portion of Canada that is not yet well known abroad. Those who purpose to emigrate to Canada will read this book with interest and to their advantage, and it will whet their appetites for more information regarding this Province.

Nova Scotia is a country that draws wealth from the ocean, the forest, the farm, the mine and the mill. Our industries are not exotic, but spring directly out of natural conditions. Although Nova Scotia has only about one-fifteenth of the population of Canada, the Province is the predominating factor in the Dominion in fish, coal, and steel. The material development of these industries and of agriculture gives scope to the energies of our people, and the establishment of a complete system of technical education develops the practical powers of the young men, enabling them to conduct and enlarge upon industrial undertakings both at home and abroad.

It has been said that there are two fundamental conditions of industrial well-being. The first is a fit people, and the second a fit country. Both are found in Nova Scotia. The people of Nova Scotia spring from the best blood of the British Isles. In a little over a century they have converted a land of forest into a country of sunny orchards, rich grain fields, glowing furnaces and comfortable homes. I would extend an invitation to our British kinsmen to come over and share in our prosperity.

Nova Scotia possesses a record of substantial achievement and remarkable progress, which inspires its people to greater and more earnest efforts for the future. At the same time we believe that the success of this Province in the years to come will be assured only by the enterprise, intelligence, and industry of its people. We realise that the supremacy of Nova Scotia will rest as much upon intellectual strength and educational training as upon the character and volume of industrial output.

Halifax, Nova Scotia,
June 21, 1912.