In 1724 a quantity of coal from Cape Breton Island, at that time a French possession, was exported to Boston. Cape Breton Island was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and is part of modern Nova Scotia. The supply of coal from Cape Breton Island to Boston in 1724 was the first ever export of a mineral substance from Canada. Coal had been discovered in Nova Scotia in the 1670s, at a site close to what later became the city of Sydney (which, like Sydney Australia, was named after Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, 1732-1800).
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