The Municipality of the County of Inverness is a county municipality on

Cape Breton Island Cape Breton Island (, formerly '; or '; ) is a rugged and irregularly shaped island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The island accounts for 18.7% of Nova Scotia's total area. Although ...

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...

, Canada. It provides local government to about 17,000 residents of the historical county of the same name, except for the incorporated town of

Port Hawkesbury Port Hawkesbury (Scottish Gaelic: ''Baile a' Chlamhain'') is a municipality in southern Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. While within the historical county of Inverness, it is not part of the Municipality of Inverness County. Their sl ...

and the Whycocomagh 2

Miꞌkmaq The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Mi'kmaw'' or ''Mi'gmaw''; ; , and formerly Micmac) are an Indigenous group of people of the Northeastern Woodlands, native to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces, primarily Nova Scotia, New Bru ...

reserve, both of which are enclaves. Public services are provided in the areas of recreation, tourism, administration, finance, and

public works Public works are a broad category of infrastructure projects, financed and procured by a government body for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community. They include public buildings ( municipal buildings, ...

History

The county was named after

Inverness Inverness (; ; from the , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness") is a city in the Scottish Highlands, having been granted city status in 2000. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highland ...

in the

Scottish Highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...

from where many immigrants came. The boundaries were defined when

was divided into districts in 1823. In 1996, the county was amalgamated into a single municipality with the exception of Port Hawkesbury.

Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

deposits exist between Port Hastings and Cheticamp. The

Inverness and Richmond Railway The Inverness and Richmond Railway was a railway that operated on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia from 1901 to the 1980s. It is now a rail trail for snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, and human-powered transport called the Celtic Shores Coastal ...

, from Port Hastings to

, was built around 1900 to transport coal. Coal mining was unprofitable, and small scale local operations ended in 1992. The railway was abandoned in the 1980s and is now a

snowmobile A snowmobile, also known as a snowmachine (chiefly Alaskan), motor sled (chiefly Canadian), motor sledge, skimobile, snow scooter, or simply a sled is a motorized vehicle designed for winter travel and recreation on snow. Their engines normally ...

and

all-terrain vehicle An all-terrain vehicle (ATV), also known as a light utility vehicle (LUV), a quad bike or quad (if it has four wheels), as defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is a vehicle that travels on low-pressure tires, has a seat ...

trail marketed as The Celtic Shores Coastal Trail. The settlement of Marble Mountain is named for

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

deposits there that were quarried until 1921. MacLeod Resources quarried red marble in River Denys, with a $2-million expansion in 2009 that saw the installation of finishing and polishing equipment. Operations shut down in December 2011 due to insufficient

working capital Working capital (WC) is a financial metric which represents operating liquidity available to a business, organisation, or other entity, including governmental entities. Along with fixed assets such as plant and equipment, working capital is consi ...

Geography

The municipality covers the entire western coast of Cape Breton Island. The rugged western coast borders the eastern extremity of the

Gulf of Saint Lawrence The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a gulf that fringes the shores of the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, plus the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, possessions of France, in ...

, while the eastern side borders

Bras d'Or Lake Bras d'Or Lake (Mi'kmaq language, Mi'kmawi'simk: Pitupaq) is an irregular estuary in the centre of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. It has a connection to the open sea, and is tidal. It also has inflows of fresh water from rivers, ma ...

. The land rises to the north, culminating at the

Cape Breton Highlands The Cape Breton Highlands (, ), commonly called the Highlands, refer to a highland or mountainous plateau across the northern part of Cape Breton Island in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Considered a subrange of the Appalachian mountai ...

. As well as Port Hood, site of the municipal offices, populated areas include the fishing ports of Mabou and Judique, and former mining centre Inverness. The municipality contains an

Acadian The Acadians (; , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, most descendants of Acadians live in either the Northern American region of Acadia, ...

enclave at the ports of Saint-Joseph-du-Moine and Chéticamp.

Demographics

In the

Canada 2016 Census The 2016 Canadian census was an enumeration of Canadian residents, which counted a population of 35,151,728, a change from its 2011 population of 33,476,688. The census, conducted by Statistics Canada, was Canada's seventh quinquennial censu ...

, the municipality had a population of 13,190 and 8,842 dwellings, a population drop of 4.3% from 2011. The municipality accounts for 1.5% of the population of Nova Scotia.

Economy

Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting account for 32% of the economy. Other major sectors are construction, retail, accommodation, and food services. More than 80% by value of Nova Scotia's fishery is in Inverness. The main species are shellfish such as

lobster Lobsters are Malacostraca, malacostracans Decapoda, decapod crustaceans of the family (biology), family Nephropidae or its Synonym (taxonomy), synonym Homaridae. They have long bodies with muscular tails and live in crevices or burrows on th ...

crab Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura (meaning "short tailed" in Greek language, Greek), which typically have a very short projecting tail-like abdomen#Arthropoda, abdomen, usually hidden entirely under the Thorax (arthropo ...

, and

scallop Scallop () is a common name that encompasses various species of marine bivalve molluscs in the taxonomic family Pectinidae, the scallops. However, the common name "scallop" is also sometimes applied to species in other closely related famili ...

. Ranching and animal production is the main agricultural activity. In terms of employment by sector, it is: Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting 12%; retail 12%; health care 12%; manufacturing 10%; accommodation and food services 9%. Fifty-seven per cent of the municipality's expenses go towards public housing, more than double the provincial rural average. In 2020 the municipality received about $1.9 million in infrastructure funding from the government and local groups.

Infrastructure

In 1955 the

Canso Causeway The Canso Causeway () is a rock-fill causeway crossing the Strait of Canso, provides access by road to the Atlantic Ocean, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence or Cape Breton Island to the Nova Scotia peninsula. Its crest thickness is , carrying t ...

brought what would become the

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (Canadian French, French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the A ...

(

Nova Scotia Highway 104 Highway 104 in Nova Scotia, Canada, runs from Fort Lawrence at the New Brunswick border near Amherst to River Tillard near St. Peter's. Except for the portion on Cape Breton Island between Port Hawkesbury and St. Peter's, it forms the ...

and Nova Scotia Highway 105) through the southern part of the municipality. Tracks of the

Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway The Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway is a short line railway that operates in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. CBNS operates of main line and associated spurs between Truro in the central part of the province to Point Tupper ...

cross the causeway, but it has not seen much train traffic since 2015. Policing is provided by the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; , GRC) is the Law enforcement in Canada, national police service of Canada. The RCMP is an agency of the Government of Canada; it also provides police services under contract to 11 Provinces and terri ...

Education

The

Université Sainte-Anne Université Sainte-Anne is a French-language university in Pointe-de-l'Église, Nova Scotia, Canada. It and the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick are the only French-language universities in the Maritime Provinces. History Université Sa ...

in Pointe-de-l'Église, along with the

Université de Moncton The Université de Moncton is a Canadian French-language university in New Brunswick. It includes campuses in Edmundston, Moncton, and Shippagan. The university was founded in 1963 following the recommendations of the royal commission on hig ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

are the only

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

universities in

Atlantic Canada Atlantic Canada, also called the Atlantic provinces (), is the list of regions of Canada, region of Eastern Canada comprising four provinces: New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. As of 2021, the landma ...

References

{{Authority control Inverness County, Nova Scotia