Tourism Numbers: Margaree Valley and Highland Cattle

tourism numbers: These folks find their hopeful signs where they can in the aforementioned tourism numbers but also in the fact that 4,515 immigrants arrived in Nova Scotia in 2017, a number that was down from the banner previous year because of the 1,500 Syrian refugees who arrived here in 2016, according to The Chronicle Herald. Not all of these newcomers stick around. The kind of man or woman who breaks into a joyous Bhangra dance upon learning that a couple of wealthy Americans are building a rustic resort complete with a brewery, lodge and music venue and crawling with sheep and highland cattle on 900 acres of fallow farmland in Cape Breton's Margaree Valley. As a report released this week by the Public Policy Forum points out, Nova Scotia's immigrant retention rate from 2011-2015 was 72 per cent, compared to 56 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador, 52 per cent in New Brunswick and a lowly 18 per cent in Prince Edward Island. Or you can do some rough math and say, hey, that's 3,250 new Nova Scotians even though that's about half the annual number of immigrants the Ivany Report called upon to counteract our aging population and worrisome rate of out-migration and take some solace from that. Now, you can be distressed by the fact that no province outside of Atlantic Canada has a retention rate below 80 per cent. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.