Port Hawkesbury, NS, Town, pop 3701 (2001c), 3809 (1996c), 3991 (1991c), area 8.35 km2, inc 1889, is located on the eastern side of the Strait of Canso. The town gained Canada-wide recognition in the 1960s as the planned showcase for large-scale industrial development. Federal and provincial funds were intended to transform and modernize the Canso area. The ice-free and deep-water facilities were ideal and had attracted French, New England and other fishing interests centuries earlier.
Some farming and a local forest industry supported the livelihood of the dominant Scottish population. As an early 19th-century ferry terminus and later a railway centre, the town suffered the loss of these activities from the building of the Canso Causeway in the mid-1950s at nearby Port Hastings. A pulp mill was built in 1960 at nearby Point Tupper relieving unemployment. Subsequent construction of an oil refinery created a boom-town atmosphere but planned economic diversification failed to materialize, and today the refinery stands silent.