Map showing settlement in the Canadas, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island to 1860.
If students compare a topographical map or a map of the agricultural regions of Eastern and Central Canada with this map, they will see that settlers who arrived after 1815 went to Upper Canada because the most desirable areas to the east were already occupied. Highland Scots were established in the Sydney and Inverness regions of Cape Breton Island, the Antigonish and Pictou regions of Nova Scotia, in much of Prince Edward Island, and in the valley of the Miramichi in New Brunswick. Descendants of settlers from New England had long been living in the Colchester, Annapolis Valley, and Western Shore regions of Nova Scotia and Sackville area of New Brunswick. The Lunnenburg German community was over 60 years old in 1815. Loyalists were settled in the St. John River Valley or in the valley areas between the St. John and Moncton, New Brunswick, as well as in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada. French-Canadians occupied much of the best land along the St. Lawrence and in the Gaspe. The regions remaining in Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were not as attractive as the fertile areas of Upper Canada, and opening this region became the work of the British immigrants of the early nineteenth century. If students trace the southern limits of the Canadian Shield, they will see that by 1860 this work was nearly completed and that most of the cultivable land in Upper Canada had been settled.
