Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

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, 1863 to 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 / 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, 1923–2023

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