Canada’s Post-Colonial Orphan Province: Cape Breton Island’s Quest for Autonomy

This note examines the substantive merit of Cape Breton Island’s (CBI) sovereignty claims and request for the repeal of the 1820 re-annexation of the Colony of Cape Breton by the Colony of Nova Scotia, pre-Confederation Canada, 1867. The annexation was without the consent of the Governor of the Colony of Cape Breton, nor consent of the residents and without Great Britain’s Privy Council approval. It was clearly an arbitrary and arguably capricious administrative action by the Crown, that was in bad faith and rife for judicial review. Under principles of restorative justice the challenge becomes how to politically and legally re-establish CBI as an independently self-governing entity within the Canadian Confederation, per its Constitution Acts, 1967-1982 .