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This doctoral thesis concerns the Acadian teachers in the public schools of the eastern counties of Nova Scotia between the years 1811 and 1864. The early Acadian public school teachers provided the Acadians, the French speaking population, in Nova Scotia, instruction in their own French language even under legal constraints to do otherwise. The region covered in this dissertation includes the counties found on Cape Breton Island and the counties of Antigonish and Guysborough on the mainland portion of the province between 1811 the year of adoption of the first Education Act in Nova Scotia concerning public education and concludes with the 1864 Education Act which created a homogenous unilingual school system in English. Acadian education would progress from small groups of children taught by itinerant school masters and visiting mission priests to formal one-room school houses where numbers were sufficient. Lay teachers being found in the communities would perpetuate the French language following their own education at the few available institutions for training. The work of these Acadian public school teachers, even when legislation prohibited it, resulted in the survival of the Acadian French communities in eastern Nova Scotia. In the preparation of this thesis, original sources were used including school reports, school commissioner reports, and colonial census records, private journals of the bishops and priests as well as those of community members. The original sources are invaluable as a record of the year to year work of the Acadian public school teachers where there are few other documentary sources remaining of their work. While the origins of the public schools in Nova Scotia has been documented as well as Acadian schools, this is the first look at the Acadian public school teachers who worked in the various communities of eastern Nova Scotia and their backgrounds. / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)

This doctoral thesis concerns the Acadian teachers in the public schools of the eastern counties of Nova Scotia between the years 1811 and 1864. The early Acadian public school teachers provided the Acadians, the French speaking population, in Nova Scotia, instruction in their own French language even under legal constraints to do otherwise. The region covered in this dissertation includes the counties found on Cape Breton Island and the counties of Antigonish and Guysborough on the mainland portion of the province between 1811 the year of adoption of the first Education Act in Nova Scotia concerning public education and concludes with the 1864 Education Act which created a homogenous unilingual school system in English. Acadian education would progress from small groups of children taught by itinerant school masters and visiting mission priests to formal one-room school houses where numbers were sufficient. Lay teachers being found in the communities would perpetuate the French language following their own education at the few available institutions for training. The work of these Acadian public school teachers, even when legislation prohibited it, resulted in the survival of the Acadian French communities in eastern Nova Scotia. In the preparation of this thesis, original sources were used including school reports, school commissioner reports, and colonial census records, private journals of the bishops and priests as well as those of community members. The original sources are invaluable as a record of the year to year work of the Acadian public school teachers where there are few other documentary sources remaining of their work. While the origins of the public schools in Nova Scotia has been documented as well as Acadian schools, this is the first look at the Acadian public school teachers who worked in the various communities of eastern Nova Scotia and their backgrounds. / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)

This thesis examines the changing geography of agriculture in Nova Scotia between 1851 and 1951. Its aims are to establish and explain the patterns of farm settlement and agricultural production in Nova Scotia during a century of enormous change. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the economy and society of Nova Scotia became closely integrated with those of the rest of continental North America. Improvements in ocean and inland transportation reduced the time and costs of movement over vast distances, and changing aspirations and opportunities accompanied the shift from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban society. Particular attention is devoted to the influences on agriculture of these changes. Three settlement zones are identified — fishing, lumbering and farming — and patterns of farm production and trade are examined in three time eras: the 1850s, the 1890s and the- 1940s. Representative farming districts and sample farms are examined to illustrate how regional patterns manifested themselves at the community and farmstead scales. Although mixed farming emphasizing livestock production prevailed in most districts of Nova Scotia during the century under investigation, agricultural holdings varied enormously in size, market orientation and crop and livestock mix in all three settlement zones. In the mid-nineteenth century few districts in the fishing and lumbering zones produced agricultural surpluses; indeed most failed to produce enough food to feed their populations. Agricultural production was concentrated in a farming zone that stretched across Nova Scotia's northern tier of counties, and small zones of specialty production were already visible in the landscape (potatoes in the Annapolis-Cornwallis Valley, wheat and grains in Pictou and Sydney/Antigonish Counties). Farm surpluses entered the small domestic markets of the colony, or they were exported to New England and to nearby colonies which were more dependent on fish and timber than was Nova Scotia (Newfoundland, Saint Pierre and New Brunswick). Agriculture contributed to provincial exports at a level similar to that of forestry and three times that of mining. Between 1851 and 1891 the number of farms in Nova Scotia doubled to 60,122, and the amount of improved land increased by 240 per cent (to almost 2,000,000 acres). By the 1890s Nova Scotia's fishing and lumbering zones were far more self-sufficient in agricultural products than four decades earlier, and some hardscrabble commercial farms were regularly supplying the mines and woodworking establishments that had been established in these zones. In the farming zone new specialty products appeared (apples in the Annapolis-Cornwallis Valley, milk and cream in the districts of Hants and Colchester Counties close to railway lines), farmers continued to contribute to provincial exports at a level similar to that in the mid-nineteenth century (even though total trade had expanded considerably between 1851 and 1891), and due to the growth of the province's urban system during the last quarter of the nineteenth century the domestic market was a more important outlet for provincial farm surpluses than had been the case in the mid-nineteenth century. However, as a consequence of growing interregional connectivity Nova Scotian farmers were experiencing stiff competition from distant, well-endowed agricultural regions in local and external markets and farm families adjusted their operations to the changed circumstances. Dairying, fruit and poultry farming expanded while the production of beef cattle, sheep, potatoes and most grains declined. Marginal operations were abandoned. Between 1891 and 1941 the number of farms in Nova Scotia fell by almost half and a larger proportion of the 24,000 farms remaining in the province in 1951 (25 per cent fewer than in 1851) were "subsistence", "part-time" or "idle" operations than in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, the gross value of agricultural production remained remarkably stable during this period despite declines in farms and farmland. Remaining commercial farms were more capital-intensive and specialized than in the nineteenth century and they were more concentrated in the central and western portions of the farming zone where the best soils and climatic conditions for agriculture were found. Peri-urban dairying zones encircled Nova Scotia's several urban/industrial regions. Although provincial farmers continued to contribute to exports in the twentieth century, by 1950 the relative position of agriculture in provincial exports had declined considerably, and the domestic markets were the most important outlets for surplus agricultural products. Yet Nova Scotian farmers supplied only about one-third of the food consumed in the province and the population remained dependent upon distant agricultural regions. This is essentially a case study of one important segment of Maritime Canada. However, it demonstrates a process of rural change that was repeated in nearby New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and in parts of New England, Quebec and Ontario. Changes in the efficiency of ocean and inland transportation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed the costs of transporting food from distant regions and the resulting interregional competition in domestic and external markets forced adjustments on farms in all of these areas. In general, as interregional competition increased, there was a gradual shift from the production of high bulk, non-perishable commodities for export to perishable, low bulk, high value commodities for sale in local markets. Distant specialty production regions — in Western Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Central and South America - became the principal sources of supply of many agricultural staples for consumers all along the eastern fringe of the North American continent, and rural outmigration and farmland abandonment accompanied rising farm productivity and agricultural specialization in nearby agricultural regions. As the twentieth century wore on, farms in Nova Scotia increasingly concentrated on products that retained a competitive advantage in domestic markets because of their perishability (fluid milk, cream, poultry eggs, market garden vegetables, apples and berries). This cycle of agricultural expansion in the nineteenth century, followed by a rapid loss of farms and farmland in the twentieth century, and the increasing concentration of capital-intensive, specialized farming in a few nodes with physiographic or market advantages over distant producing regions, was common to many long-settled agricultural regions in eastern North America. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the British North American colonies interpreted Parliament's success in removing arbitrary governmental practices and establishing a balanced government as a victory for local representative government. Within these colonies, merchants secured their influence in local government in order to protect their profits and trade networks. The New England merchants that resettled in Nova Scotia in the 1750s successfully established a local government founded upon their rights as British subjects. The attempt by the British government to centralize the imperial administration in 1763 and the perceived threat of reintroducing arbitrary rule by Parliament was a direct threat to the colonial governmental system. Although Nova Scotia chose loyalism in 1775-1776, this decision did not stem from isolation or a differing political philosophy. In fact, it was their cultural and political similarities that led Nova Scotia and New England to separate paths in 1776. Nova Scotia merchants controlling the Assembly were able to confront and defeat attempts that threatened their influence in local politics and on the local economy. With the threat to their authority defeated and new markets opening for the colony, the Nova Scotia merchant class was able to preserve the status quo in local government.

The original intention of this thesis was to study the opinions and activities of the Maritime colonies during the War of 1812, in an attempt to explain the colonies' almost neutral position throughout the hostilities. The Maritime attitude has already been explained in terms of economic ties binding the colonies' interests with those of New England. This thesis was therefore directed by a desire to ascertain whether or not such economic interests constituted the dominating influence in Maritime policy or whether there existed equally important influences of a political and social nature. The conclusion attributes Maritime reaction in 1812 to a combination of economic, political, and social factors shaping the colonies' activities during the preceding twenty years. In the course of defining these factors, however, the emphasis shifted from the war itself to the preceding two decades which emerged as a period of experiment and adjustment—a period of confused adolescent fumbling toward the larger powers and responsibilities of adulthood. Into the midst of these struggles the War of 1812 was projected, to be greeted by the Maritimers as an interruption meriting attention only in so far as it could contribute to their provincial interests. In this thesis, therefore, the War of 1812 is presented as but the epilogue illustrating the trend of Maritime interests and policy during the period 1790-1810. It is not the intention of this thesis to view Maritime history strictly in terms of a cyclical development paralleling the human life cycle. However, the contradictory character of the Maritime scene during this period, as the colonies see-sawed between dependency and self-sufficiency in their claims, resembles the confusion of adolescence and the title of Colonial Adolescence was chosen for lack of a better description of this transitional phase. In the study of the Maritime colonies' transitional struggles, this thesis seeks to illustrate how the social-economic complex of a community moulds and is reflected in its political life. Although the period 1790-1814 was one of isolation and individualism for the colonies, the majority of Maritime communities faced similar problems in their struggles for stability and identity. Geography had rendered them an economic unit; the British administration had endowed them with similar political organizations; and settlement had produced similar social problems. This thesis, therefore, treats its subject in terms of basic economic, political, and social situations as they were faced in the Maritimes, with whatever variations each colony might offer. The three chapters dealing with these situations constitute the core of the thesis. In the first chapter an attempt has been made to set the scene of British politics and administration, for it was in this context that the colonies pursued their objectives influenced at all times by the changing fortunes of British politics. The study throughout tends to concentrate upon the mainland colonies of Nava Scotia and New Brunswick, partly because the developments of this period were centered here, since Prince Edward Island remained a backward variant; and partly because the nature of sources dictated such an approach. Research was concentrated mainly upon the Colonial Office records pertaining to Maritime affairs during this period. These included the official correspondence passing between the Colonial Office and the colonial governors, in which the policy of the British administration and its colonial deputies is outlined and colonial reaction commented upon. Also included were the journals of Assembly and Council, shipping statistics, petitions and memorials from individuals and associations in the colonies reflecting something of colonial opinion, needs and activities. These records were supplemented by secondary sources, drawn upon for an outline of British and North American activities and policies; to a more limited extent colonial newspapers and private papers provided contemporary comment on the Maritime scene—but the Maritimers do not emerge from these researches as an articulate lot. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the history of the Mi'kmaq people inhabiting Kmitkinag (Nova Scotia) and Unimaki (Cape Breton Island) from before contact to 1760. While contact precipitated change in Mi'kmaq society, the process was gradual, the result of the particular historical circumstances in which interactions between the two societies evolved. In the late seventeenth century, the Mi'kmaq established an alliance with the French Crown, made possible by previous social and economic relationships between Mi'kmaq families and French traders, fishermen and settlers. As European settlement increased and imperial rivalry in North America intensified in the eighteenth century, tensions emerged in the alliance, revealing the cultural differences between the Mi'kmaq and France's subjects. The thesis demonstrates that economic and political factors were more important than national identity in influencing the texture of Mi'kmaq-European relations.

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The years 1815 to 1867 marked the first protracted period of peace in Nova Scotia’s colonial history. While the immediate effects of peace were nearly disastrous, these years ultimately marked a formative period for the province. By the eve of Confederation, various social, cultural, political, economic, and technological developments had enabled Nova Scotia to become a mature province with a distinct identity. One of the manifestations of this era of community formation was the emergence of a cosmopolitan-oriented music culture. Although Atlantic trade routes ensured that Nova Scotia was never isolated, the colonial progress of the pre-Confederation era reinforced and entrenched Nova Scotia’s membership within the Atlantic World. The same trade routes that brought imported goods to the province also introduced Nova Scotians to British and American culture. Immigration, importation, and developments to transportation and communication systems strengthened Nova Scotia’s connections to its cultural arbiters – and made possible the importation and naturalization of metropolitan music practices. This dissertation examines the processes of cultural exchange operating between Nova Scotia and the rest of the Atlantic World, and the resultant musical life to which they gave rise. The topic of music-making in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia has seldom been addressed, so one of the immediate aims of my research is to document an important but little-known aspect of the province’s cultural history. In doing so, I situate Nova Scotia’s musical life within a transatlantic context and provide a lens through which to view Nova Scotia’s connectivity to a vast network of culture and ideas. After establishing and contextualizing the musical practices introduced to Nova Scotia by a diverse group of musicians and entrepreneurs, I explore how this imported music culture was both a response to and an agent of the formative developments of the pre-Confederation era. I argue that, as Nova Scotia joined the Victorian march of progress, its musicians, music institutions, and music-making were among the many socio-cultural forces that helped to transform a colonial backwater into the civilized province that on 1 July 1867 joined the new nation of Canada.

The years 1815 to 1867 marked the first protracted period of peace in Nova Scotia’s colonial history. While the immediate effects of peace were nearly disastrous, these years ultimately marked a formative period for the province. By the eve of Confederation, various social, cultural, political, economic, and technological developments had enabled Nova Scotia to become a mature province with a distinct identity. One of the manifestations of this era of community formation was the emergence of a cosmopolitan-oriented music culture. Although Atlantic trade routes ensured that Nova Scotia was never isolated, the colonial progress of the pre-Confederation era reinforced and entrenched Nova Scotia’s membership within the Atlantic World. The same trade routes that brought imported goods to the province also introduced Nova Scotians to British and American culture. Immigration, importation, and developments to transportation and communication systems strengthened Nova Scotia’s connections to its cultural arbiters – and made possible the importation and naturalization of metropolitan music practices. This dissertation examines the processes of cultural exchange operating between Nova Scotia and the rest of the Atlantic World, and the resultant musical life to which they gave rise. The topic of music-making in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia has seldom been addressed, so one of the immediate aims of my research is to document an important but little-known aspect of the province’s cultural history. In doing so, I situate Nova Scotia’s musical life within a transatlantic context and provide a lens through which to view Nova Scotia’s connectivity to a vast network of culture and ideas. After establishing and contextualizing the musical practices introduced to Nova Scotia by a diverse group of musicians and entrepreneurs, I explore how this imported music culture was both a response to and an agent of the formative developments of the pre-Confederation era. I argue that, as Nova Scotia joined the Victorian march of progress, its musicians, music institutions, and music-making were among the many socio-cultural forces that helped to transform a colonial backwater into the civilized province that on 1 July 1867 joined the new nation of Canada.