Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

American-born Nova Scotia teacher and writer Lesley Choyce has written a
subjective, selective, and often colloquial account of his adoptive
province’s history. Academic it is not. Documentation extends no
further than a short bibliography, and the first-person pronoun appears
frequently, along with personal opinions about particular historical
events or personalities.

Choyce begins his story some 560 million years ago in the geology of
prehistory, and ends in the present, with the politics of downsizing and
talk (again) of Maritime union. The history he presents is a highly
selective one. Of the three prime ministers Nova Scotia produced, only
one is mentioned. Rather, Choyce writes (and writes well) of fishermen,
black refugees, coal miners, privateers, rumrunners, “The Plight of
Nineteenth Century Nova Scotia Women,” and, with respect and sympathy,
the Mi’kmaq. His book seems designed for readers with short attention
spans; the 45 chapters are divided into more than 180 titled sections,
which average less than one and a half pages each. It is, however, a
highly readable and very interesting account, and one comes away from it
with an enriched knowledge of Canada and an enormous respect for a
people whose history Choyce describes as “a long legacy of hardship
and despair” and whose lives have, indeed, been shaped by the often
cruel sea.