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from Nimbus Publishing Ltd.

McNabs Island, located at the gates of Halifax Harbour, is well visible to anyone but not many know the history of the families who lived on this beautiful and, nowadays, abandoned island.

In this, his first book, Bruce Scott follows a chronological approach, from the 1920s and 1970s, showing lives and fates of several families that populated this island during that time. Having spent his childhood summers on McNabs Island, Scott offers an individual and personal collection of stories of his own family background and other families who lived and worked on McNabs Island.

The Last Farm on McNabs contains 40 photos and some hand-drawn images and maps. Sources were provided by the Halifax Municipal Archives, the Friends of McNabs Society and family members of the author. This mixture of personal and family photographs, notes, memories and archival collections provides a personal and unique perspective on the history of McNabs Island. The twelve rather short chapters, usually not longer than 15 pages, portray the lives of several families, but focus on the 50 years the author’s grandfather, Ernest Farrant, lived on the island. The story begins with how Farrant and his wife Annie settled down on McNabs island in the early1920s, which, at that time, was known to Haligonians as a popular recreational destination. It ends with the author’s recollections of his own early childhood on the island and the death of Ernest and Annie Farrant.

This book is an invaluable addition to any reader wanting to learn more about the lives and fates of the families, farms and businesses of this once lively but now isolated and uninhabited vast island at the mouth of Halifax harbour. ■

MATHIAS RODORFF is the research manager of the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University inHalifax, and the editor of theJournal of the Royal NovaScotia Historical Society.