Tag Archives: kentville

BLOODY HOLLOW – AN 1890s ACCOUNT OF A MASSACRE IN WEST END KENTVILLE (September 6/22)

Dates vary and there are several tales about a skirmish that took place in west-end Kentville in the 18th century.

It may have been more than a skirmish. Some historical writers say that a massacre actually took place in Kentville involving the Mi’kmaq and French on one hand, and British troops or militia forces out of New England on the other. This occurred at a place known in folklore by various names – Bloody Hollow and Moccasin Hollow, for example.

But did it really happen? Was there a massacre or nothing more than a minor fracas that never made the military records? Further, did historians who wrote about the event base it on folklore or facts?

The answer is that it depends on what or who you believe.

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Louis Comeau – The Man Who Saved Kentville (August 23/22)

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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