A comprehensive history of Kentville has never been written. Much of what is documented on the town exists in fragments, in folklore and historical glimpses.
You won’t find documented anywhere, for example, that Kentville was a quiet village in a corner of Horton township when the railway arrived.
It isn’t written anywhere that Kentville boomed, more than doubling in size a few years after the railway arrived. You won’t find it recorded that the NS Sanatorium and Camp Aldershot added extra spurts to the town’s growth.
You can find plenty of Kentville trivia – such as the folktale that the town owes its location to a Mi’kmaq/Acadian crossing on the Cornwallis River, or that the Duke of Kent passed by, circa 1794, to give the town its name.
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