Nova Scotia is a province in The Maritimes region of Canada, located on the nation's east coast. With an estimated population of over 1 million as of 2026, Nova Scotia is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. Nova Scotia is also the second-most densely populated province in Canada, and the second-smallest province by area. The province comprises the Nova Scotia peninsula and Cape Breton Island, as well as 3,800 other coastal islands. The province is connected to the rest of Canada by the Isthmus of Chignecto, on which the province's sole land border, with New Brunswick, is located.
Nova Scotia's provincial capital and largest city is Halifax, which is home to over 45% of the province's population as of the 2021 census. Halifax is the twelfth-largest census metropolitan area (CMA) in Canada, the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada, and Canada's second-largest coastal municipality after Vancouver.
The land that makes up what is now Nova Scotia was inhabited by the Mi'kmaq people at the time of European colonization. In 1605, Acadia—France's first New France colony—was founded with the creation of Acadia's capital, Port Royal. The Scots, English, then British, fought France for the territory on numerous occasions for over a century afterwards, having gained it from them in the 1713 Peace of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Port Royal was renamed Annapolis Royal and the settlement served as the capital of Nova Scotia until the founding of Halifax in 1749.
In subsequent years, the British began settling "foreign Protestants" in the region and deported the French-speaking Acadians en masse. There was ambivalence in Nova Scotia over whether the colony should join the Americans in the war against Britain. During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), thousands of Loyalists settled in Nova Scotia.
In 1848, Nova Scotia became the first British colony to achieve responsible government. In July 1867, Nova Scotia joined in Confederation with New Brunswick and the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec), forming Canada.
Etymology
is Latin for and is the recognized Canadian English name for the province. Just prior to receiving this name, it was referred to as Nova Francia. Nova Scotia also appears on some older maps as New Caledonia. In both Canadian French and Canadian Gaelic, the province is directly translated as 'New Scotland' (; Gaelic: ). In general, Romance and Slavic languages use of 'New Scotland' to their language, while most other languages use of the Latin (which is the same as English) name, including the native language Mi'kmaq ().
The province was first named in the 1621 Royal Charter granting to Sir William Alexander the right to settle lands as a Scottish colony, including modern Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula.
History
Nova Scotia includes regions of the Mi'kmaq nation of Mi'kma'ki (), the territory of which extends across the Maritimes, parts of Maine, Newfoundland and the Gaspé Peninsula. The Mi'kmaq people are part of the large Algonquian-language family and inhabited Nova Scotia at the time the first European colonists arrived. Research published in 1871 as well as Silas Tertius Rand's work from 1894 showed that some Mi'kmaq believed they had emigrated from the west, and then lived alongside the Kwēdĕchk, the original inhabitants. According to these accounts, the two tribes engaged in a war that lasted "many years", and involved the "slaughter of men, women, and children, and torture of captives", and the eventual displacement of the Kwēdĕchk by the victorious Mi’kmaq.
European settlement The first Europeans to settle the area were the French, who sailed into the Annapolis Basin in 1604, but chose to settle at Saint Croix Island in Maine instead. They abandoned the Maine settlement the following year and, in 1605, established a settlement at Port Royal, which grew into modern-day Annapolis Royal. This would be the first permanent European settlement in what would later become Canada. The settlement was in the Mi'kmaw district of Kespukwitk and was the founding settlement of what would become Acadia.Nova Scotia Archives – An Acadian Parish Remembered . Gov.ns.ca (1 December 2009). Retrieved 12 July 2013.
In 1621, King James VI of Scotland granted a charter to allow a Scottish colony to be founded in North America. The charter which was granted by the King covered the area of the Maritime Provinces and the Gaspé peninsula, whilst the French had claimed territory in Acadia. The charter granted Sir William Alexander, a Scottish noble, powers to establish a system of government, full rights over fishing and minerals and the power to execute law in the new colony. A Scottish colony was eventually established in 1629 following the arrival of around seventy Scots to settle in the area known as "New Scotland".
"New Scotland" was captured by the French in 1632, with the Scots who had colonised the area forced to return to Scotland after the French occupation. Following a prolonged period of conflict between the Scots, French and English, Nova Scotia ultimately fell to British rule. As a result, many Scots grasped the opportunity to once again settle in Nova Scotia.
Warfare was common in Nova Scotia during the 17th and 18th centuries. During the first 80 years the French and Acadians lived in Nova Scotia, nine significant military clashes took place as the English, Dutch, French and Mi'kmaq fought for possession of the area. These encounters happened at Port Royal, Saint John, Cap de Sable (present-day Pubnico to Port La Tour, Nova Scotia), Jemseg (1674 and 1758) and Baleine (1629). The Acadian Civil War took place from 1640 to 1645. Beginning with King William's War in 1688, a series of six wars took place between the English and the French, with Nova Scotia being a consistent theatre of conflict between the two powers.
18th century
Hostilities between France and England, (from 1707, France and the Kingdom of Great Britain after the Acts of Union), in North America resumed from 1702 to 1713, known as Queen Anne's War. The siege of Port Royal took place in 1710, ending French rule in peninsular Acadia. The subsequent signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 formally recognized British rule in the region, while returning Cape Breton Island () and Prince Edward Island () to the French. Despite the British conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily occupied by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq, who confined British forces to Annapolis and to Canso. Present-day New Brunswick formed a part of the French colony of Acadia. Immediately after the capture of Port Royal in 1710, Francis Nicholson announced it would be renamed Annapolis Royal in honour of Queen Anne.
As a result of Father Rale's War (1722–1725), the Mi'kmaq signed a series of treaties with the British in 1725. The Mi'kmaq signed a treaty of submission to the British crown. However, conflict between the Acadians, Mi'kmaq, French and the British persisted in the following decades with King George's War (1744–1748).
Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755) began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports on 21 June 1749. A General Court, made up of the governor and the council, was the highest court in the colony at the time. Jonathan Belcher was sworn in as chief justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court on 21 October 1754. The first legislative assembly in Halifax, under the Governorship of Charles Lawrence, met on 2 October 1758.
During the French and Indian War of 1754–1763 (the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War), the British deported the Acadians and recruited New England Planters to resettle the colony. The 75-year period of war ended with the Halifax Treaties between the British and the Mi'kmaq (1761). After the war, some Acadians were allowed to return.
In 1763, most of Acadia (Cape Breton Island, St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island), and New Brunswick) became part of Nova Scotia. In 1765, the county of Sunbury was created. This included the territory of present-day New Brunswick and eastern Maine as far as the Penobscot River. In 1769, St. John's Island became a separate colony.
The American Revolution (1775–1783) had a significant impact on shaping Nova Scotia, with the colony initially displaying ambivalence over whether the colony should join the revolution; Rebellion flared at the Battle of Fort Cumberland (1776) and at the Siege of Saint John (1777). Throughout the war, American privateers devastated the maritime economy by capturing ships and looting almost every community outside of Halifax. These American raids alienated many sympathetic or neutral Nova Scotians into supporting the British.
By the end of the war, Nova Scotia had outfitted numerous privateers to attack American shipping. British military forces based at Halifax succeeded in preventing an American occupation of Nova Scotia, though the Royal Navy failed to establish naval supremacy in the region. While the British captured many American privateers in battles such as the Naval battle off Halifax (1782), many more continued attacks on shipping and settlements until the final months of the war. The Royal Navy struggled to maintain British supply lines, defending British convoys from American and French attacks as in the fiercely fought convoy battle, the Naval battle off Cape Breton (1781).
After the Americans and their French allies won at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, approximately 33,000 Loyalists, the King's Loyal Americans, allowed to place "United Empire Loyalist" after their names, settled in Nova Scotia, 14,000 of them in what became New Brunswick, on lands granted by the Crown as some compensation for their losses. The British administration divided Nova Scotia and hived off Cape Breton and New Brunswick in 1784. The Loyalist exodus created new communities across Nova Scotia, including Shelburne, which briefly became one of the larger British settlements in North America, and infused Nova Scotia with additional capital and skills.
The migration caused political tensions between Loyalist leaders and the leaders of the existing New England Planters settlement. The Loyalist influx also pushed Nova Scotia's 2000 Mi'kmaq People to the margins as Loyalist land grants encroached on ill-defined native lands. As part of the Loyalist migration, about 3,000 Black Loyalists arrived; they founded the largest free Black settlement in North America at Birchtown, near Shelburne. There are several Black Loyalists buried in unmarked graves in the Old Burying Ground in Halifax. Many Nova Scotian communities were settled by British regiments that fought in the war.
In 1786, during the tenure of Lt. Gen. John Parr as governor, the Colony of Nova Scotia transitioned to being the Province of Nova Scotia, with the populace gaining a higher degree of autonomy and self-governance.
19th century
During the War of 1812, Nova Scotia's contribution to the British war effort involved communities either purchasing or building various privateer ships to attack U.S. vessels. Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the war for Nova Scotia occurred when escorted the captured American frigate into Halifax Harbour in 1813. Many of the U.S. prisoners were kept at Deadman's Island.
Nova Scotia became the first colony in British North America and in the British Empire to achieve responsible government in January–February 1848 and become self-governing through the efforts of Joseph Howe. Nova Scotia had established representative government in 1758, an achievement later commemorated by the erection of Dingle Tower in 1908.
Nova Scotians fought in the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The 1860 Welsford-Parker Monument in Halifax is the second-oldest war monument in Canada and the only Crimean War monument in North America. It commemorates the 1854–55 Siege of Sevastopol.