Canard River

Canard River
Country	Canada
Basin features
Main source	Camp Aldershot
River mouth	Minas Basin sea level
Physical characteristics
Length	15 km (9.3 mi)

The Canard River is a river in Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada which drains into the Minas Basin of the Bay of Fundy between the communities of Canard and Starr's Point. It is known for its fertile river banks and extensive dyke land agriculture.

The river has its source in a number of small brooks which flow from the sandy pine woods of what is now the Camp Aldershot military base, near Steam Mill Village. The Canard River has a short length of 15 km but its lower reaches are wide and deep due to the enormous tides of the Minas Basin. The river was once tidal for most of its length but a series of dykes first built in the 1600s held back the tide which is now stopped near the river's mouth by the Wellington Dyke. The upper reaches of the river are often referred to by the dykes which once spanned the river - Upper Dyke and Middle Dyke.

The Canard river was known to the Mi'kmaq people as Apocheechumochwakade meaning "home of the black duck". The Mi'kmaq also used the mouth of the river for shad fishing.

Acadians settled along the river in the late 1600s and called it Rivière-aux-Canards after the French word for duck. They first built small dykes to claim salt water marshes for farmland at the upper reaches of the river near the communities now known as Steam Mill Village and Upper Dyke. A large cross dyke was built further down river at Middle Dyke. About 1750 an even larger cross dyke, over a mile long, was built near Port Williams. Known as the Grand Dyke it located where the current highway Route 358 crosses the river. By this date, the Acadian village on both sides of the river totaled 750 people and included the extensive dykeland farms along the river as well as several mills.

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Wikipedia