With regard to joining Canada, Joseph Howe warned "Confederation with Canada would, if adopted, deprive the people of Nova Scotia of the inestimable privilege of self-government, and of their rights, liberty and independence, rob them of their revenue, take from them the regulation of trade and taxation, expose them to arbitrary taxation by a legislature over which they have no control, and in which they would possess but a nominal and entirely ineffective representation; deprive them of their invaluable fisheries, railways and other property, and reduce this hitherto free, happy and self-governed province to a degraded condition of a servile dependency of Canada." After all the revisionist Upper Canadian 1812 propaganda Nova Scotians' suffered through this past summer, I fear Howe couldn't have been any more correct. We should be listening to Howe now more than ever and distancing ourselves as much as possible from an irrelevant country that has had its back turned towards us since before day one. We were once referred to as the 14th colony, an opportunity that would have led us to much immigration, wealth and opportunity. Nova Scotia should be actively working to restore our links with our southern neighbours—our future prosperity depends on it. —Dartmouthy