Myself and /u/gpodolec wrote answers in response to Canada's refusal to join the thirteen southern colonies in their bid for independence here. I would highly recommend checking out E. Mancke, Fault Lines of Empire, which is a comparative study of the colonies of Massachusetts and Nova Scotia from 1760-1830, and works to explain the political trajectory of Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia was sparsely populated, as the 1767 census lists less than 14,000 persons. The only colony with a lower population was Vermont at 10,000. Every other colony that would join in rebellion had two to thirty times as many people (Maine & Virginia being the extremes; McCusker, Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Ed., 5:651; Mancke, p. 35). Nova Scotia's population would explode in the years following the revolution with the relocation of Royalists, but c. 1770, the colony was a fledgling. The colony was made up of Acadians, English, Germans, and Catholic Irish, and farmers from New England. The last group was the largest after the removal of the Arcadians, but do not seem to have had the sympathies of their cousins down south. The colony had a responsive government in London, as new investors received massive grants of tens of thousands of acres. The governor's requests, including a bill to forbid the entry of disabled or lame persons from entering the colony were passed without debate (TNA, PC, 2-114). Nova Scotia was subject to the taxes of the British Empire, but the colony lacked the long history of political and fiscal independence enjoyed by the merchants of Massachusetts. Massachusetts had significantly more capital and investments in shipping that made the restrictions of Empire were a burden - Nova Scotia did not suffer in the same way.