Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia

By Mike Parker

Nonfiction: The Maritimes, History, Mining

176 pages, $21.95, 6 3/4" x 9 3/4" Paperback
(Includes 164 photographs)

ISBN: 978-1-897426-04-3

Available in April 2009

Pottersfield Press || Chapters || Amazon

Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia tells the fascinating stories of abandoned communities, not haunted buildings and paranormal encounters, although the occasional resident spirit does make an appearance.

The story of gold mining in Nova Scotia is one of Canada's oldest, yet it is the province's best kept heritage secret. More gold was mined worldwide in the 1800s than during the previous 5,000 years. Since Canada was one of the world's largest gold producers, auriferous tales and legends abound from that era of motherlodes found and fortunes lost. Nova Scotia heralded the first of its three gold rushes 37 years before men braved the Yukon's Chilkoot Pass heading to the Klondike. Adventurers from the world over were drawn to Nova Scotia's burgeoning nineteenth-century gold districts, as was a motley crew of day labourers, farmers, fishermen, ruined mechanics, drunkards and gamblers.

An air of mysticism shrouding ghost towns holds a fascination for historians, social scientists, treasure and relic hunters, geocachers and nostalgia buffs. Mike Parker tells the stories of characters and con men, industry and labour, prosperity and recession. Although abandoned gold mining settlements are the book's central theme, ghost towns built upon coal, iron ore and copper are featured as well. Scores of exhaustively researched images, supported by informative, entertaining text, tell the story of a great heritage that has been nearly erased from our history books.

Born and raised in Bear River, Nova Scotia, Mike Parker has been called Nova Scotia's Storyteller, a reference to the diversity of themes covered in his many books of popular history. The best-selling author has been researching and writing about his native province for more than 20 years. This is his twelfth book. Mike is affiliated with the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary's University as a research associate. He is a graduate of Acadia University and a long-time resident of Dartmouth.