Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia: Lets start at the beginning. Not the beginning beginning like the Big Bang and the dawn of the universe and the unfolding of all of matter but at the beginning of Canada. Or even earlier: Nova Scotia in the early part of the 19th century. More Related to this Story, according to Globe and Mail. Back then, the Maritimes werent the convivial hotbed of cozy cable-knit sweaters, interesting facial hair, pint-clinking and interminable fiddle music we ve become accustomed to through beer and fish-stick commercials. Like: did you know that 1815 was colloquially referred to as The Year of the Mice ? Its true! Packs of mice decimated crops, arriving in such abundance that their waterlogged corpses were lining the coast. These hardships were rewarded in 1816, called The Year Without Summer which sounds like something out of Game Of Thrones , during which an abiding winter frost proved a significant hassle for agriculturalists who had just spent the last year shooing packs of rodents into the ocean. As one merchant noted, in the years following the War of 1812, an sic universal gloom had settled over the province and This summer, John Semley asks the tough questions of our nation: Are we Canadians really a funny people? And, if so, how did we get that way? Each week, for 10 weeks, he will explore a new facet of our history in humour. For the previous instalment, click here . The front lines of funny: Exploring how Canadians became so hilarious, one book at a time (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.