Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/96

68 the year in which the Canadas were finally ceded by France to Great Britain following the convention at Paris.

L'isle St. Jean was created a separate British province in 1770, and thirty years later was given the name of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent.

The year 1783, in which the boundary between the United States and Canada was fixed, witnessed a historic exodus from the new-born republic. Thousands of colonists whose sympathies were with the Crown came by ship to New Brunswick and laid the corner-stone of the city of St. John. In the following year New Brunswick was divorced from Nova Scotia and made an independent province, and a short time afterward Fredericton became the seat of New Brunswick government. Immigrants from Old and New England continued to arrive in Nova Scotia and permanent settlements were established whose names still abide. From 1776 to 1784 and during the Napoleonic wars Halifax was the centre of considerable naval and military agitation. In 1793 a provincial regiment was enlisted and precautions were taken for the defence of the capital against a sea attack by the French.

In 1794, Prince Edward, son of George IV, arrived in Halifax. In his capacity as commandant of the local garrison, he undertook the reconstruction of the citadel whose foundations underlie the present fort. In 1800 Halifax had a population