Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century

Lachlan MacKinnon is the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Post-industrial Communities and an associate professor of History at Cape Breton University. He is an active member of the Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time research partnership, and has published extensively on topics related to deindustrialization, labour history, and historical memory. His recent book, Closing Sysco: Industrial Decline in Atlantic Canada’s Steel City, examined the structural decline of the steel industry in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Andrew Parnaby is an associate professor of History and dean of Arts and Social Sciences at Cape Breton University. He is the author of many articles and books, including Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from Fenians to Fortress America, with Reg Whitaker and Gregory S. Kealey, which received the Canada Prize in the Social Sciences by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2013.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century

Part 1: Formations

1. Empire, Colonial Enterprise, and Speculation: Cape Breton’s Coal Boom of the 1860s
Don Nerbas

2. “The Grand Old Game”: The Complex History of Cricket in Cape Breton to 1863-1914
John G. Reid

3. Bridging Religion and Black Nationalism: The Founding of St. Philips African Orthodox Church and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Hall in Whitney Pier, 1900–1930
Claudine Bonner

4. An Invisible Minority: Acadians in Industrial Cape Breton
Ronald Labelle

5. The Disposition of the Ladies: Mi’kmaw Women and the Removal of Kun’tewiktuk / I King’s Road Reserve, Sydney, Nova Scotia
Martha Walls

Part 2: Legacies

6. C. B. Wade, Research Director and Labour Historian, 1944–50
David Frank

7. “Everybody Was Crying”: Ella Barron, Dutch War Bride in Amsterdam and Ingonish, Cape Breton, 1923–2020
Ken Donovan

8. Twenty-First-Century Uses for Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia Gaelic Song Collections: From Language Preservation to Revitalization and the Articulation of Cultural Values
Heather Sparling

9. Industrial Crisis and the Cape Breton Coal Miners at the End of the Long Twentieth Century, 1981–86
Lachlan MacKinnon

10. The Great Spawn: Aquaculture and Development on the Bras d’Or Lake
Will Langford

11. From Artifact to Living Cultures: Cape Breton’s Tourism History and the Emergence of the Celtic Colours International Festival
Anne-Louise Semple and Del Muise

Afterword: Cape Breton as Microcosm of Capitalist Modernity
Alvin Finkel

List of Contributors