[bourinot] builders OF NOVA SCOTIA 33 



Henry Holland as early as 1813, and published by the Blackadars since 

 1837 ; a White was for some years a representative of the historic county 

 of Shelburne in the dominion parliament, and is one of the leading barris- 

 ters of the western district. 



The town of Sydney had just been founded by Lieutenant-governor 

 Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres, in 1784, as the capital of the new 

 colony of Cape Breton, when a body of loyalists arrived under the direc- 

 tion of Abraham Cuyler, who had been mayor of Albany in the state of 

 New York. Among these now settlers were Colonel Peters, Captain 

 Jonathan Jones, Eobertson, Lorway, MacAlpine, Moore, Crowdie, Grant, 

 Haire, Gesner, Gammell, Brown, Leonard, and others, whose descendants 

 are still to be found at Sydney, Bedeque, Louisbourg, St. Peters, and else- 

 where.' Probably two hundred and forty persons of this class settled 

 in the island. 



It is an interesting coincidence that on those very shores, which the 

 Acadian exiles of 1755 left in such misery, there landed the far greater 

 proportion of the Loyalists almost in the same spirit of despondency 

 which had been felt by their predecessors in misery less than thirty 

 yeais before. More than a century has passed since the occurrence of 

 those sad events in the history of America, and the Acadian provinces 

 which are so intimately associated with the sufferings of those exiles have 

 become prosperous and happy communities. On the meadows, won from 

 the sea by the Acadian farmers, there are now many happy homes, and 

 the descendants of the old French occupants of Acadia have villages and 

 settlements within the limits of the ill-defined region, which was known 

 as Acadie in the days of the French regime. In the beautiful valleys of 

 the St. John and Annapolis, by the side of many spacious bays and pic- 

 turesque rivers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick we find the descend- 

 ants of the Loyalists, living in content and even affluence — occupying the 

 highest positions of trust and honour. By the St. Lawrence and the 

 Canadian lakes we see also many thousands of people who proudly trace 

 their lineage to the same migration ; who have the same story to tell of 

 suffering and trial in the past, of courage and patience triumphant in the 

 end, of the wilderness made to blossom as the rose. In the records of 

 industrial enterprise, of social and intellectual progress, of political 

 development, we find the names of many eminent men, sj)rung from the 

 people, to whom Canada owes a deep debt of gratitude for the services 

 they rendered her in the formative period of her chequered history. If 

 the provinces of British North Amei-ica have been able at most critical 

 periods to resist the growth of purely republican ideas, and to adhere to 

 England, credit is largely due to the principles which the Loyalists 

 handed down to future generations after their migration of the last 



1 See " A History of the Island of Cape Breton." By R. Brown, F.G.S., F.R.S.S., 

 London, 1869. Also Bourinot's Cape Breton. 



Sec. II., 1899. 3 



