It's a heck of an interesting scenario, if you ask me. Firstly, if Nova Scotia hadn't joined the United States, Halifax might be rather smaller than it is now; 500,000 people as of this year-but Boston might also have been somewhat more important. Also, the McDougall political family, which gave the Congress several Senators, and the White House a Vice President, might have remained obscure, and never come to prominence in Nova Scotia, or Massachusetts and New Hampshire for that matter.
And for those of my own German ancestors, who made their homes in Lunenburg, would they have ever left? Or would they have stayed, and become Canadian citizens?
Kind regards,
Robert (Felix) Eddy III
OOC: An interesting factoid, yours truly actually *is* a descendant of one of the earliest branches of the Eddy family, Samuel's to be more exact, as well as that of a real German-Canadian family that actually lived in Nova Scotia in that era.
OOC: Cool.
IC:
Ah, Halifax, where the puck drops at 6:05 PM (EST) on Hockey Night in North America.
I grew up in Connecticut, and, being a Hartford Whalers fan, I have a love/hate relationship with that city; on the one hand, I love going there; especially on business. The food, the local culture, Moosehead beer...
One of my business partners attended Halifax (The Frozen Ivy!

), and my spouse, Erin, and I, are Yalies, so, there's a friendly level of ribbing there, especially during the collegiate hockey season.
The 'hate' (such as it is) is for The Hated Sea Wolves.
When you only have the one major league sports franchise in your state, you tend to take it very seriously, and I do.
Very seriously. The clashes between 'The Whale and The Wolf' are well known in the annals of IHL history (since 1979, when the IHL finally gave us a promotion from 'The Best Minor Hockey City in The Nation!'), but the rivalry has gotten much more intense over the last decade, with both team's starting out at the bottom of the 'Adams Family', and now they're fighting for the top spot (with The Hated Habs, of course), such to the point that the traditional rivalry with the Boston Ruins has been eclipsed, and I never though that would happen.
One last note on the McDougalls, as someone who works in finance, The McDougall Act (of 1933, which laid the foundations for the modern American banking system) is a big reason firms like mine can not only operate, but also compete. It's one of the few rare instances where regulation hasn't hindered progress, but did what it was meant to do: Keep the large banks from forming perilously massive banks that would crush out the smaller banks. Can you imagine how catastrophic it would be, in a financial crisis, if there were, effectively, maybe five or six major banks that held the interests of 75-85% of the population?
I prefer less regulation to more, but sometimes, a little regulation is a good thing. Saves a lot of problems down the road.
I think the USA still would have won its independence, but it would have been a very different place, as would Nova Scotia, had the Fourteen Colonies been reduced to just Thirteen.
For one, Nova Scotia gave the USA full control of Acadia and New England, which would have an important impact on the early development of both the early USA and Canada. Take it away, you not only just dealt a blow to early American trade and industry, but have given British Canada an important shot in the arm.
AND the robust banking and financial services spawned by the growth of Halifax as a major commercial port. Halifax Financial started out as the Merchant Bank of Halifax. Now, it's not only a Power 20 bank, but also a Fortune 500 financial service provider. The Halifax shipyards have been, since independence, a vital source of commercial and naval vessels. Were it not for the added commercial shipping, fishing and (back then) whaling, (and the voices those interests added to Congress in the earliest days of The Republic), would Congress have disbanded the Continental Navy (already calling itself the United States Navy as early as 1776) like they dismissed the Continental Army after independence? Without the 'Strong Navy and Marine', as Benedict Arnold put it, U.S. commercial shipping would have been a magnet for pirates of every stripe and at the mercy of every nation that did have a standing navy in times of war.
The Barbary States were quick to test that navy, and the results proved to just about everybody, North, South and West that we needed a strong navy. Without a strong navy, could we have swatted revolutionary France in the Quasi-War? Could we have maintained our (relatively) peaceful neutrality during the Napoleonic era for as long as we did? If the Royal Navy hadn't seized the
Sylph (which was a merchantman owned by a resident of...Yarmouth, keeping with a theme here), we just might have escaped the Napoleonic era without getting hung up in a single armed conflict.
Without the USN, while not as powerful as the RN of the day, but more formidable than the British assumed, 1812 could have gotten ugly. If the USN wasn't strong enough to make the stand at the Virgina Capes, who knows what the British would have done with control of the Chesapeake.
As others pointed out, with Nova Scotia a part of British Canada rather than the USA, it would have dramatic impacts on the development of Canada, giving it more important ports and more land to settle Loyalists. Rather than being stuck to a belt centered on the St. Lawrence River, British Canada might have been less of a proverbial backwater in the British Empire. Maybe some of the Loyalists who headed to Africa or Australia would stick around if Canada was more than Ontario and a bunch of Frenchies in Quebec.
For that matter, if Canada had been more viable, would the British have given the area more focus? Might that have cost them elsewhere?
I tend to wonder if South Africa and Australia would be anything close to what they are today if British North America had been a more viable colony.
They were the clear beneficiaries of a less appealing Canada.
As for the USA, Nova Scotia gave us another important detail - it was yet another free state, and one whose members of the Constitutional Convention played a key role in the debates over slavery before we settled on the gradual abolition plan we did in OTL. With the balance between North and South a bit closer, and the lack of men like John Stark and Benedict Arnold in Philadelphia, might the supporters of slavery been more vocal, or even managed to prolong its survival?
Quite. Also, when slave states like Virginia and Maryland saw the potential for both wealth and growth in commerce, as demonstrated by Nova Scotia's model of 'Manufacture-Agriculture-Commerce', they began to change to the point where slavery eventually became far less important to their economies than immigrant labor from the British Isles and Europe.
It's like my high school history teacher said: Once Virginia became the 'Nova Scotia of The South', slavery was over; commercial shipping, financial services, shipyards and manufacturing in the Tidewater, mining and metal works in the West, banking, manufacturing and tobacco and hemp agriculture in the Piedmont and livestock and food crops in the Shenandoah. Only tobacco and hemp 'required' slave labor, but the writing was on the wall. Pull the plug on slavery and get it over with.
So, in that respect, I'd argue that Nova Scotia, in a way, not only helped establish abolition as a course of action, it also accelerated abolition in the process by giving a state like Virginia (largest and most politically powerful of the slave states) a viable (and prosperous) example of how to structure their economy for a post-slavery Republic.
What about
American Gaelic? Without that belt of Irish-Americans from Boston to Halifax under one flag, would the regional Gaelic dialect still have sprung up? I know the last few decades have been rough on it, but its still pretty cool to hear Gaelic spoken in smaller towns in the Northeast.
One of my favorite things about visiting Nova Scotia.
When I was younger (high school and college), I thought it made the U.S. seem a bit more worldly, but now that I've seen the rest of the country, I look at it as more so one of those things that makes the U.S. such a great place; like regional dialects and cuisines. It adds to the tapestry.
I think the bigger issue is long term.
Nova Scotia's made canada less viable and as has been stated helped lead to the gradual peaceful end of slavery, and with Canada being less viable the british folded on the 45 40 or fight...
Which looking back on it was a total bluff, which out that bigger north its unlikely america buys alaska from the russians. Which means Canada would have a west coast and Alaskan oil, gold and other reasources.
The Mexican american war probally still happens because Mexico was unstable going through one civil war after another and their territory was easy pickings.
So you get a smaller america, a richer canada with far more oil wealth and a giant civil war between free states and slave states that turns america into a third world country.
What a terrible thought!
A civil war...where one side is fighting to preserve the permanent bondage of an entire people.
The scars and divisions of such a thing would last for decades, possibly longer.
Dodged a bullet there.