Nova Scotia Guide

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 ability 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.

Halifax, set on a steep and spatulate promontory beside one of the world's finest harbours, has become the focal point of the Maritimes, the region's financial, educational and transportation centre, whose metropolitan population of over 500,000 makes it seven times the size of its nearest rival, New Brunswick's Saint John. This pre-eminence has been achieved since World War II, but long before then Halifax was a naval town par excellence, its harbour defining the character and economy of a city which rarely seemed to look inland.

Humdrum Dartmouth, across the harbour from Halifax, is often ignored by visitors as it lacks the more obvious appeal of its neighbour. Nevertheless, it is the province's second largest town, with 70,000 inhabitants, and although it's primarily an industrial centre the ferry ride over provides wide views of the harbour and downtown Halifax - and there are a couple of minor attractions to further justify a sortie. The Dartmouth ferry leaves the Halifax waterfront from beside the Historic Properties at the foot of George Street (Mon-Sat 6.45am-11.30pm; every 15-30min, plus June-Sept Sun noon-5.30pm; $1.65). The journey takes about ten minutes. The twin cities are also connected by two road bridges: the MacDonald, running just to the north of both city centres, and the Mackay, part of the outer ring road. Metro Transit bus #1 uses the MacDonald.