Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759-1800

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

The immigrants who came to Nova Scotia from other British North American
colonies following the defeat of the French in the Seven Years’ War
were called “Planters,” the old English term for colonists. In the
past two decades, academics have conducted original research on this
previously neglected group. Acadia University has established a Planter
Studies Centre. This volume includes the papers presented to the Second
Planter Studies Conference, which was held in October 1990 in Wolfville,
N.S.

These papers were delivered by academics and were designed primarily
for an audience of their peers. However, such selections as Gwendolyn
Davies’s “Poet to Pulpit to Planter: The Peregrinations of the
Reverend John Seccombe” and Nancy Vogan’s “The Musical Traditions
of the Planters” provide information that can be easily understood by
the lay reader. The 18 selections vary in subject matter and scope:
included are discussions of literacy in eighteenth-century New England,
economic fluctuations in wartime Nova Scotia, and the neutrality of Nova
Scotia in the American Revolution. The Mi’kmaq, slaves, Quakers,
Germans, and Scots-Irish are subjects of individual articles, while
women are the subjects of note in “The Image and Function of Women in
the Poetry of Affection in Eighteenth-Century Maritime Canada.”

A concluding section by noted academics on “Future Directions” in
Planter studies emphasizes the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
nature of the various papers and cites areas where future research
should be concentrated. This volume is highly informative, but several
detailed “academic” papers may cause difficulty for all but the most
interested and skilled reader.