“It was that time of year in Nova Scotia when after the bleak east winds of April and May the sun breaks forth with almost tropical heat, when trees, shrubs, and grasses have a lush green only to be matched in Ireland, when the open spaces by the water are speckled white with wild strawberry blossoms, when huckleberry, blueberry and lambkill bushes are in bloom;  when the forest floor is bright with lady’s-slipper, bluet, sarsaparilla, starflower, and false Solomon’s-seal, when violets bloom along the brook sides and the swamps are a blue fire of iris, when small fruit has begun to form on the Indian pear branches and the leaves of young poplars make a silver flutter against the sober background of the pines. More important to the settlers, it was a time when the cod had moved in shore from the Banks, when haddock and pollack were schooling in every sea creek and salmon were swarming up the streams.”

Thomas Raddell, Halifax: Warden of the North