North Sydney (Scottish Gaelic: Suidni A Tuath or Am Bàr) is a former town and current community in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Located on the north side of Sydney Harbour, along the eastern coast of Cape Breton Island, North Sydney is an important port in Atlantic Canada, serving as the western terminus of the Marine Atlantic ferry service. It acts as the marine link for the Trans-Canada Highway to Newfoundland and is often termed "The Gateway To Newfoundland" for that reason. Marine Atlantic ferries currently operate from North Sydney's terminal to the ports of Channel-Port aux Basques and Argentia. The Crown Corporation is one of the largest employers in the area. History North Sydney was settled around 1785 by European and Loyalist settlers. It emerged as a major shipbuilding centre in the early 19th century, building many brigs and brigantines for the English market, later moving on to larger barques, and in 1851 to the full-rigged Lord Clarendon, the largest wooden ship ever built in Cape Breton. Wooden shipbuilding declined in the 1860s, but the same decade saw the arrival of increasing numbers of steamships, drawn to North Sydney for bunker coal. By 1870 it was the fourth largest port in Canada dealing in ocean-going vessels, in part because the Western Union cable office had been established here in 1875. The community was incorporated on 24 April 1885 as a town within Cape Breton County. The railway came to Cape Breton Island in 1891. At this time there were 2,513 people in North Sydney, as compared to 2,417 in Sydney. In 1898 North Sydney was chosen by the Reid-Newfoundland Company as the Canadian mainland terminal for a ferry service to Newfoundland; in June of that year the SS Bruce sailed from Port Aux Basques as the first ship to make that run. World wars During the First and Second World Wars, North Sydney played an important role in the relay of information from Europe to both Ottawa and Washington, D.C. Its Western Union Cable office was where coded messages arrived from overseas, and were then relayed on to the rest of North America. On the morning of November 10, 1918, the office received a top-secret coded message from Europe stating that effective at 11 am on the next day (November 11, 1918), all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air. This meant that the people