Friends in Canada

Did you know that Canada was one of the earliest mission fields of the Church? In June 1832, when the Church was only two years old, Latter-day Saint elders organized a branch in Earnestown, located about 100 miles north of Toronto, the capital of Ontario. In 1833 the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, his good friend, visited Canada and made a number of converts.

Among the early Church members in Canada were John Taylor, who became the third president of the Church, and Mary Fielding. Mary later married Hyrum Smith and became the mother of Joseph F. Smith, sixth Church president, and grandmother of Joseph Fielding Smith, tenth president of the Church.

After the Mormon pioneers left Nauvoo and moved west, most of the Canadian converts also emigrated to the Rocky Mountains. In later years missions were established in both western and eastern Canada and there are now 12 stakes, five missions, and 233 wards and branches scattered across this country.

Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia. The headquarters of one of the missions in Canada is in nearby Dartmouth. This is an especially interesting and beautiful part of the world. The sea nearly surrounds Nova Scotia and in the Bay of Fundy, northwest of Halifax, ocean-tides rise higher than probably anywhere else in the world, sometimes cresting at more than 50 feet. Engineers are studying ways to harness the mighty Fundy tides to generate electric power.

Sable Island, which is formed entirely of sand and is about 100 miles off the southern coast of Nova Scotia, is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic because it has caused so many shipwrecks.

Nova Scotia, meaning New Scotland, is one of the four original Canadian provinces. It was given its name by the first British settlers who arrived there from Scotland in 1629.

The people who live in Nova Scotia call themselves bluenoses. This nickname was first used by the loyal Britains who left the United States after the Revolutionary War and settled in this area. It is thought this nickname might have had its origin because of the “bluenose” potato grown there and shipped to other parts of the world. The pride of Nova Scotia’s navy is a ship called the Bluenose.

Nova Scotia is a leader in Canada’s huge fishing industry and its inland streams as well as its coastal waters provide good fishing for commercial use or just for fun.