The Maritimes

The Mi'kmaq have lived across Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and eastern New Brunswick for thousands of years, with the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) along the Saint John River and the Passamaquoddy near the Maine border. In 1605 the French founded Port-Royal on the Annapolis Basin, the start of Acadia, a colony of farmers who diked the Fundy salt marshes. Britain won mainland Nova Scotia in 1713, while France kept Cape Breton, where it built the fortress of Louisbourg, and Île Saint-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island. Britain founded Halifax in 1749, and Foreign Protestants recruited in Europe settled Lunenburg in 1753. The Mi'kmaq and Wolastoqiyik signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British in the 18th century.

From 1755 British authorities deported the Acadians, who had refused an unconditional oath of allegiance, in what they call the Grand Dérangement: more than 10,000 people were forced onto ships and scattered to the American colonies, Britain and France, and thousands died; some eventually reached Louisiana. Many later returned, settling mostly in New Brunswick and on the edges of Nova Scotia.

After the American Revolution tens of thousands of Loyalists, including Black Loyalists, arrived, and New Brunswick was created in 1784. Highland Scots settled Pictou and Cape Breton. The age of sail and shipbuilding made the region prosperous, and the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 began the talks that led to Confederation. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined in 1867, Prince Edward Island in 1873. The Halifax Explosion of 1917 killed more than 1,700 people, and the Confederation Bridge linked Prince Edward Island to the mainland in 1997.

The Maritimes are a patchwork. Acadians, who make up about a third of New Brunswick's people, keep their French dialect, their star-marked tricolour flag, and National Acadian Day on 15 August, celebrated with the noisy Tintamarre parade; New Brunswick is Canada's only officially bilingual province. Cape Breton keeps Scottish Gaelic, fiddle music and step dancing alive, with ceilidhs through the summer and the Celtic Colours festival in October. Mi'kmaq communities hold powwows, and the 1999 Marshall decision on treaty fishing rights still shapes debate over the lobster fishery.

Nova Scotia also has a long-established Black community, descended from Black Loyalists, refugees of the War of 1812 and others; the demolition of Halifax's Africville in the 1960s drew a formal apology from the city in 2010. Prince Edward Island is forever linked to Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, set around Cavendish. Kitchen parties, church suppers and a strong sense of home are common ground, and people who left for work in Ontario or Alberta often return in summer. The sea sets the tone: memorials to lost fishermen stand in many harbours, and the schooner Bluenose, built in Lunenburg, is on the dime.

About two million people live in the three provinces: over a million in Nova Scotia, nearly 800,000 in New Brunswick and about 180,000 on Prince Edward Island. Halifax, with about 440,000 people in its municipality, is by far the biggest city. Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton, the capital, are New Brunswick's main centres, while Charlottetown and Cape Breton's Sydney are much smaller.

The economy rests on fishing and seafood processing, especially lobster, forestry, farming — potatoes on Prince Edward Island, apples and wine grapes in the Annapolis Valley — tourism, universities, government, and the naval base and shipyard in Halifax. The Irving family's businesses dominate much of New Brunswick. Coal and steel in Cape Breton have closed, and the region has long lost young people to western Canada, though immigration has grown populations strongly since the late 2010s.

Life is small-town even in the cities, with rush hours measured in minutes. Housing costs, long waits for family doctors, and the cost of heating in winter are the everyday issues, while hurricane Fiona in 2022 showed how exposed the coast is to storms.

Seafood leads. Lobster is eaten boiled with melted butter, and in rolls; Digby scallops, Malpeque oysters and cultured Prince Edward Island blue mussels are well known across Canada. Nova Scotian dishes include hodge podge, a summer stew of new vegetables in cream, and Solomon Gundy, pickled herring. Halifax claims the donair, a spiced beef kebab in pita with a sweet garlic sauce, as its official food.

Acadian cooking gives rappie pie, a baked dish of grated potato and chicken or clams, and fricot, a chicken-and-dumpling stew. New Brunswick picks fiddleheads, young curled fern shoots, in spring, and dulse, dried seaweed, comes from Grand Manan and the Fundy coast. Wild blueberries go into grunt, berries stewed under steamed dumplings, and Prince Edward Island potatoes are sold across the country.

Drinks include Moosehead lager from Saint John and Alexander Keith's from Halifax, Annapolis Valley wines, and Cape Breton single malt from Glenora. Ganong chocolates have been made in St Stephen since the 19th century.

Halifax spreads along one of the world's great natural harbours, with the Citadel on its hill, the waterfront boardwalk, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic with its Titanic and Halifax Explosion galleries, and Pier 21, the immigration museum. A short drive away is Peggy's Cove, its lighthouse set on smooth granite. The South Shore leads to Mahone Bay and Lunenburg, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with colourful wooden houses and the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. The Annapolis Valley holds Grand-Pré, a UNESCO-listed landscape and Acadian memorial, and Port-Royal.

On Cape Breton Island the Cabot Trail circles the highlands through Cape Breton Highlands National Park, with whale trips from Pleasant Bay and Cheticamp, and Louisbourg's reconstructed French fortress lies to the south-east.

The Bay of Fundy has the world's highest tides, with a range averaging about 16 metres. Its New Brunswick side offers Hopewell Rocks, Fundy National Park and the Fundy Trail; in Nova Scotia the Joggins Fossil Cliffs are a UNESCO site. Saint John, at the mouth of its river, has the Reversing Falls, where the tide pushes the river backwards, and its Victorian uptown. Prince Edward Island's red cliffs, dunes and beaches line its national park on the north shore, with Green Gables at Cavendish and Charlottetown's Province House nearby.