Two features about the location of coal deposits in Nova Scotia should be noted: the proximity to available harbour facilities of most of the deposits and the communities that served them, and their concentration in the northern section of the province. In addition, the comparative distance of the coal-bearing areas from the provincial capital at Halifax is of some consequence. Early European settlement had focused in the southern and western portions of the main peninsula; activity in the north was restricted to the fishery and the strategic considerations that had surrounded the establishment of Fortress Louisbourg by the French. Settled some time after most of the major southern centres were well established, these northern communities were predominantly Scottish and Irish, rather than English or American in origin.
When the province's coal reserves were developed later in the nineteenth century, ethnic differences between the northern and southern districts of the province were further accentuated by a sharp division based on occupations. One result has been a continuing bifurcation of the province into those communities committed to the newer economies of coal and manufacturing, with their inevitable pull towards central Canada, and those in the southern sections of the province which have a more seaward orientation.
