Great Village, Nova Scotia

Great Village is a rural community of approximately 500 people located along Trunk 2 and the north shore of Cobequid Bay in Colchester County, Nova Scotia. It is considered locally to incorporate the areas of Highland Village to the west and Scrabble Hill to the north northwest.

What was to become Great Village was first settled by French-speaking Acadians around 1630, who built dykes in the marshes, reclaimed land, and created a village called "Petit-Louis" or "Vil de Cadets". They were expelled, along with the rest of the Acadian population of Nova Scotia, by Governor Lawrence in 1755. This event, known as the Expulsion of the Acadians, saw the Acadians dispersed among the American colonies, Louisiana, England and France. They left behind memorials in the names of nearby rivers (anglicised in modern times into Portaupique and Debert).

The next settlers, whose descendants were to remain, came in the spring of 1762: Protestants of predominantly Ulster origins, brought over by formerly-Nova-Scotia-stationed and by then former-British-army-Captain Alexander McNutt, himself an Ulsterman. Many of these settlers re-used the burnt-out storage cellars of the expelled Acadians as the foundations for their first homes.

"The vessel 'Hopewell' reached Halifax carrying Irish settlers on October 9, 1761, and landed passengers where they remained over the winter. Early next spring arrangements were made to hire a vessel to take these people to the 'District of Cobequid' where the best lands and greatest quantities of marsh in that part of the country were assigned to them, and furnished them with provisions out of the Provincial Funds. Many of these settlers took up land in what is now Londonderry district. Tradition is that twenty families located along the Bay Shore between Isgonish River and Bass River."

The original grants of land of the Township of Londonderry were prepared in 1765, but because of the British government's explicit prohibition against the granting of Nova Scotia land to Irish, they were not made official until February 10, 1775.

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