Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index 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. 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. History Sydney was founded by Col. Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres in 1785, who was appointed by Lord Sydney of England to be the governor of a new colony on Cape Breton Island. 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. The newly founded settlement was named after Lord Sydney, and Spanish Bay became Sydney Harbour. This is about Sydney in Nova Scotia. See also Sydney, Australia. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.