Musical Yankees and Tories in Maritime Settlements of Eighteenth-Century Canada

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The development of a cultural life in the Maritime settlements of eighteenth-century Canada was closely tied to events in the American colonies. Throughout the seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth century, both France and England were interested in the Canadian Maritime region, which included the present-day provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland.' Many New Englanders regarded Nova Scotia their northeastern frontier and as a vitally important stepping-stone to the valuable North Atlantic fisheries and to the St. Lawrence region.2 The French, on the other hand, considered Nova Scotia to be the eastern base of military defense and a commercial enterprise.3 Both countries, therefore, wanted this region for their own commercial purposes. As early as 1654 Puritan Massachusetts launched an attack on Port Royal in Nova Scotia and temporarily captured it. After several subsequent battles the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave Cape Breton to the French, but the rest of Nova Scotia was controlled by England. New Englanders still wished to drive the French completely out of the Maritime region and wanted it to be New England's outpost. Nevertheless, when the great French fortress of Louisbourg was built on Cape Breton Island, New England merchants eagerly supplied the French with building materials and food, temporarily and conveniently forgetting about their hatred of the French and Catholicism. By 1743, of the 175 vessels arriving at Louisbourg, 78 were from New England and Nova Scotia.4 Two years later, in 1754, the American colonists assisted in capturing