“The formal opening of the Nova Scotia Underwear Company’s new plant yesterday was an occasion long to be remembered,” reported the Windsor Tribune in its edition of June 9, 1916.

Reading about the opening in the June 1916 issue of The Busy East of Canada magazine, we find that the Nova Scotia Underwear Company has taken over the premises of the failed Dominion Cotton Mills Company, located just inside the Windsor town limits. In turn, in 1891the Dominion Cotton Mills Company had purchased a cotton processing plant on the site that was built in 1884. This plant, which was designed for carding, spinning and weaving cotton fabrics, and the Dominion Cotton Mills both failed due to what the Busy East described as “challenging economic conditions.”

Despite these early setbacks, the Nova Scotia Underwear Company’s president, J. E. Wood, was optimistic about his firm’s future in Windsor. While these were “times of national stress” Wood said (a reference to World War One raging in Europe) his Company expected to prosper by contributing “directly through the supply of underwear for the use of men in the trenches and already had done so to the extent of many thousands of dozens.”

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Despite plenty of documentation, it’s usually difficult to determine how some of the road names in Kings County originated. But there are exceptions. Take Canard Street, for example, a 10 kilometre stretch of Highway 341 (from Porters Point to Upper Dyke) which likely was named because it runs parallel to the Canard River and along the northern edge of the Canard Dykes. For generations, residents along this highway have called it Canard Street and no matter what it says on highway maps, that’s what it is.

Not so obvious to people not familiar with our history is the origin of Middle Dyke Road. A visitor here might ask, “What’s a dyke and if there’s a Middle Dyke Road why isn’t there an upper dyke road and a lower dyke road?” After you explain about dykes and Acadians and aboiteaux you could tell the visitor that there is an Upper Dyke village and according to a map Kentville historian Brent Fox has in his book on the Wellington Dyke, the field or dyke just below it is called the Middle Dyke. Hence, I assume, this is the origin of the road’s name.

It’s likely that the original Middle Dyke Road was a two-kilometre stretch running north from Chipman Corner to Canard Street, crossing that area of the Canard River where the Acadians made an aboiteau. Today, Middle Dyke Road runs south to cross Church Street, Belcher Street and the Cornwallis River, and runs north to Canard Street and Sheffield Mills.

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