John DeMont, The Long Way Home ***

The Long Way Home is exactly the kind of book I want to buy and read on vacation: "A Personal History of Nova Scotia" that covers the history of the place I'm visiting and shows how that history is reflected in the present. Surprisingly, I came across the book in Montreal rather than Halifax.

In addition to learning the highlights of (European) Nova Scotian history -- the competition between the French and English, the Acadian Expulsion, the influx of Loyalists, the impact of the two World Wars, fishing, shipbuilding, and coal mining -- I saw how the psyche of residents has been shaped by the short-lived nature of most of its booms. Its location gives it key advantages that led to it being "from the European view of things, the oldest part of Canada," but people and industries tend to move on after just a few years. The town of Shelburne, for example, grew to nearly 17,000 residents around the time of the American Revolution, but most of the people were gone by the 1790s. Nova Scotia's "defining myths and stories are mostly about loss and sheer determination."

I got what I wanted from the book, even though DeMont's prose and the organization are merely serviceable.