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MEMBERTOU, N.S. —

Inverness County has the happiest people in Nova Scotia.

A recent survey conducted by the same researchers who compile the UN’s annual World Happiness Report concluded that residents of the scenic seaside community on the western side of Cape Breton reported they are the most satisfied with their lives.

Out of the 55 communities and neighbourhoods surveyed, Richmond and Victoria counties ranked in the top five, according to Engage Nova Scotia CEO Danny Graham, who will share the happy news Friday during the One Cape Breton—Unama’ki Leadership Summit in Membertou.

Danny Graham

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality ranked above the provincial average, said Graham, who noted that Nova Scotians on average are more satisfied with life than people in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, and that Canada was the ninth-happiest country in the last UN report.

“And the happiest part of Nova Scotia is Cape Breton Island,” said Graham.

Now Graham and the other summit participants are going to try to find a way to harness all that happiness and use it to move Cape Breton forward. One of the first steps will be a survey of 40 per cent of the households in the CBRM so the same researchers can break down the happiness levels in the different communities.

“We’re not saying that things are peaches and cream in Cape Breton, because they’re not for everybody, but in the words of the Bank of Nova Scotia, we may be richer than we think and we just need to see that and understand that,” said Graham, who was raised in Sydney and is former leader of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party. He is also the son of former senator Al Graham.

“Let’s address the challenges we have — and they’re significant — but let’s not lose sight of the golden egg that we’re sitting on, and the golden egg relates to the quality of this place and the quality of the relationships that people have. The natural beauty. These are things that research will tells us make for a happy and fulfilled life.”

The two-day summit, which kicked off with a reception Thursday evening is a partnership led by Engage Nova Scotia, the Cape Breton Partnership and the island’s five municipalities and five Mi’kmaq communities. Representatives from both chambers of commerce, Cape Breton University and the Nova Scotia Community College’s Marconi campus will also participate.

This is the first time the summit has been held in a Mi’kmaq community, and Chief Terry Paul is the ideal host. The concept of having leaders from different communities meet to work collaboratively for the greater good is nothing new to the Mi’kmaq people.

In fact, Malagawatch, Inverness County, was often the gathering spot where elders and chiefs from Quebec, northern Maine, New Brunswick, P.E.I., Newfoundland and St-Pierre-Miquelon would congregate to talk about how to responsibly share hunting and fishing areas so everyone was provided for.

“This is how we survived over that period of time, and from what I’ve read, we were pretty happy people — very healthy people,” said Paul, who used the word Mi’kmaq word “netukulimk,” which basically encompasses the idea of sustainability.

“We’ve been operating as a Mi’kmaq government since time immemorial. It’s been thousands of years that we gathered for what I feel was a Mi’kmaq government where we had our leaders get other community leaders together to talk about the distribution of areas where families and groups of families can provide for themselves.”

Terry Paul

Paul, who refers to any challenges or complaints as “happy problems,” said the Mi’kmaq people have always understood that the secret to happiness is in those relationships with people and the land.

“Our name, our original name Mi’kmaq, means our people, so we have our people involved,” he said. “We care very much for our children and our extended family and then the community, but we also care about what’s around us. I guess that’s the difference. We believe that everything is living so we have a lot of respect for that. For example, when we go fishing or we go hunting, we give praise to the one that provided that for us out of respect and also a thank-you for allowing us to provide for ourselves.

“This is a practice that we have. It’s understood. We don’t even talk about it anymore. When a hunter goes out and gets a moose, we have agreed already that we will pay for the butchering of the animal and have it all packaged and everything, and the first people that get it in our community is the elders and then after the elders it’s the rest of the communities and the families, but there’s usually more than enough to feed all families in the community because there’s always more than one moose.”

Under Paul’s leadership Membertou has gone from facing bankruptcy and more than $1 million in debt to becoming one of the largest employers in Cape Breton. He said his decisions as chief have been guided by the netukulimk principles, and that’s been key to Membertou’s success.

“Without that we wouldn’t be as successful as we are. Myself, I’m amazed with what we’ve done. That goes to show that by working together and having the same vision and being on the same page with what we want to do, we get where we want to go a lot faster and in a lot better way, in a very much organized way.”