Townies

Town of Annapolis Royal, Population 491.
Town of Lockeport, Population 531.
Town of Mulgrave, Population 722.
Town of Clark’s Harbour, Population 758.

Amherst, Antigonish, Berwick, Bridgewater, Digby, Kentville, Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Middleton, New Glasgow, Oxford, Pictou, Port Hawkesbury, Shelburne, Stellarton, Stewiacke, Trenton, Truro, Westville, Windsor, Wolfville and Yarmouth.

97,495 people in all, in 2016; Nova Scotia’s 26 Towns.

These 97,495 people, 10.5% of Nova Scotia’s population, have the benefit of local self government and for some reason have been allowed to keep their incorporations. Their own mayors, councilors, administrative infrastructure and legal heritage, all with a level of representation an order of magnitude higher than other communities. They could all be amalgamated with their respective counties, and yet they remain intact.

Dartmouth? A similar population, when combined with nearby Cole Harbor, to all of these towns put together, yet now relegated to the status of an “urban village”, its incorporation dissolved by fiat, its ability to innovate stolen from underneath of it, bereft of even town status or the powers and abilities that communities one tenth its size still have access to. Serfs, at the gates of a fiefdom – Halifax Regional Municipality, the City of Halifax also disconnected from its 1841 incorporation in the same 1996 municipal coup.

No one is stealing the institutions of these Townies, a good deal for these special, chosen people.

(Municipal Statistics Annual Report 2018)
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