The English population
In 1831, there were a total of 853 people in the Inverness Township, all of them Anglophones. Twenty years later, English Canadians owned one fifth of the land in the Halifax County, three quarters of the land in the municipality of Ireland, and about 95% of the Inverness Township and Leeds County. These two townships remained populated mainly with English Canadians until around 1900, at which point they began leaving the region in great numbers.
Between 1850 and 1945, many English Canadians decided to emigrate to Western Canada and the United States, the North Eastern United States, the Eastern Townships and Ontario. The Township lived through two periods of emigration which caused an important decline in the English speaking population. The first was a migration to the United States from 1840 to 1900, and the second, the urbanization and factory jobs that came after World War II. By 1911, the percentage of English speakers in the Inverness Township is down to 49% and its decline continues with the exodus of its youth.
