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Sydney is a city in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is the largest community on Cape Breton Island with a population of about 26,000 people. Since 1995, Sydney has been amalgamated into the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) with other municipal units in Cape Breton County.
Sydney is the home of the University College of Cape Breton (UCCB), which is the only university on the island. With the disappearance of the steel industry and coal mining in Cape Breton, Sydney has been undergoing economic decline for several decades. The local government is attempting to shift the city's failing industrial economy to one based on a diversified mixture of initiatives including, but not limited to, tourism. Some of the other initiatives include Information Technology, light manufacturing and development of Sydney's harbour facilities. Future offshore petroleum and natural gas exploration in the Laurentian Basin, southeast of Sydney, has been touted as a potential economic catalyst for the industrial Cape Breton area.
People born in Sydney include:
History
Sydney was founded by Col. Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres in 1785, and named in honour of Lord Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney (also the Home Secretary in the British cabinet at the time). Lord Townshend appointed Col. DesBarres to be the governor of the new colony on Cape Breton Island. Col. DesBarres landed a group that consisted primarily of poor English citizens and disbanded soldiers. A group of Loyalists from the state of New York, fleeing the aftermath of the American Revolution, were added to the immigrants upon their arrival in Nova Scotia.
The site DesBarres chose for the new settlement was known as Spanish Bay, an important harbour on Cape Breton Island.
This is about Sydney in Nova Scotia. See also:
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