There was a strong local reaction on Friday to word that the Great Britain would exit the European Union.

British expatriates in Nova Scotia watched the referendum results come in with varying reaction.

Denis Dineen is originally from the Chelsea district in London and his British themed shop sells Cornish pasties. He was up early Friday morning to watch the vote come inand was shocked by the result.

“It’s not good, I would prefer us not to be in a situation where the country has to come out of the E.E.C.,” says Dineen.

Dineen believes the U.K. has far more to lose and nothing to gain by leaving the European system.

“Britain exports 230-billion pounds into Europe, it’s their largest trading partner by anywhere else in the world,” says Dineen. “It generates a lot of jobs.”

Dineen also doesn’t buy the argument that too many immigrants are pouring into Britain.

“I had a business in the U.K., I was running a manufacturing company, where we couldn’t get enough British people to work in our factories,” says Dineen. “We had to bring in some Portuguese workers, which worked out really well.”

On the Halifax peninsula, there’s a popular fish and chips shop run by Ken Francis, who has been in Canada for about ten years. He came here from Suffolk in England and says the E.U. has been costly for the U.K.

“We have no industry, manufacturing there in the U.K. right now,” says Francis. “As the Eastern block was coming in, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and all the rest of it, were getting all the subsidies.”

Francis says even trucking companies benefitted and the highways of Britain are full of trucks from Eastern Europe. He doesn’t believe hard borders will go up between England and Irelandor the Mainland.

“I mean, all they have to do is look to Switzerland,” says Francis. “Switzerland is a non-E.U. country in the middle of Europe, surrounded by E.U. countries and they have no problems.”

He also believes that fears about immigration were justified because the U.K. is on the verge of becoming overpopulated.

If there’s one thing both sides seem to agree on with any kind of certainty, it’s the uncertainty. It could be a decade before it’s known what leaving the E.U. really means for Britain.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ron Shaw.