New Minas is a village located in the eastern part of Kings County in

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

Annapolis Valley The Annapolis Valley is a valley and region in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. It is located in the western part of the Nova Scotia peninsula, formed by a trough between two parallel mountain ranges along the shore of the Bay of Fundy. Stat ...

. As of 2011, the population was 5,135.

Geography

New Minas borders the town of

Kentville Kentville is an incorporated town in Nova Scotia. It is the most populous town in the Annapolis Valley. As of 2021, the town's population was 6,630. Its census agglomeration is 26,929. History Kentville owes its location to the Cornwallis River ...

to the west and the unincorporated community of

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

to the east. The town of

Wolfville Wolfville is a Canadian town in the Annapolis Valley, Kings County, Nova Scotia, located about northwest of the provincial capital, Halifax Regional Municipality, Halifax. The town is home to Acadia University and Landmark East School. The tow ...

is further east on the other side of Greenwich. New Minas is approximately 100 km northwest of Halifax. The village is located along the south bank of the

Cornwallis River The Cornwallis River is in Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada. It has a meander length of approximately through eastern Kings County, from its source on the North Mountain at Grafton to its mouth near Wolfville on the Minas Basin. The lower ...

occupying the lower slopes of the South Mountain. Nova Scotia's Highway No. 1 runs through the village forming the main street.

History

New Minas was founded in 1682 by

Acadians The Acadians (french: Acadiens , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the de ...

from the Grand Pré area, the largest of the settlements known as

Les Mines Les Mines was the name generally applied the Acadian settlements in the western Minas Basin in Nova Scotia. They included the villages of Grand-Pré, New Minas, Rivière-aux-Canards but usually excluded the villages at Pisiguit, Cobequid, and ...

or Minas after the French copper mines explored at

Cape d'Or Cape d'Or is a headland located near Advocate, Cumberland County, on the Bay of Fundy coast of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. The cape marks the north point of the entrance to the Minas Basin. Cape d'Or is a continuation of the North ...

at the entrance to the

Minas Basin , image = Lookout On Way to Cape Split - 25006718579.jpg , alt = , caption = Looking east across the Southern Bight of Minas Basin from The Lookoff , image_bathymetry = , alt_bathymetry = , ca ...

in the 1600s. As the Minas settlement grew, families moved westward up the Cornwallis River led by Pierre Terriot and founded a new settlement which came to be known to English surveyors as "New Minas". The Acadians knew their settlement as St. Antoine. It was built beside a tidal island in the bend of the river, later known as Oak Island. They repeated the pattern of the Grand Pré settlement by connecting dykes to Oak Island to turn tidal marshland into productive farmland. The settlement grew to include a mill, chapel and burial ground at Oak Island. However the Acadians were expelled and the settlement was destroyed during the Bay of Fundy Campaign of the

Acadian Expulsion The Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, the Great Deportation, and the Deportation of the Acadians (french: Le Grand Dérangement or ), was the forced removal, by the British, of the Acadian pe ...

in 1755.

New England Planters The New England Planters were settlers from the New England colonies who responded to invitations by the lieutenant governor (and subsequently governor) of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, to settle lands left vacant by the Bay of Fundy Campaign ( ...

resettled the area in 1760s as part of Horton Township but built their farms further from the river along the Old Post Road, later Nova Scotia's Highway No. 1. New Minas was the site of one of the first accounts of a UFO sighting in North America on October 12, 1796. The diary of a merchant in Liverpool, Nova Scotia named

Simeon Perkins Colonel Simeon Perkins (February 24, 1735 – May 9, 1812) was a Nova Scotia militia leader, merchant, diarist and politician. Perkins led the defence of Liverpool from attacks during the American Revolution, French Revolutionary Wars and the Nap ...

reported that stories were circulating of ships flying in the air which "were said to be seen at one Mr. Ratchfords in New Minas" by a young woman and two men who at sunrise saw as many as fifteen “ships in the air ... and a man forward with his hand stretched out.” Perkins continued, "the story did not obtain universal credit but some people believed it." New Minas remained a predominantly farming and agricultural community between the towns of Kentville and Wolfville. The

Dominion Atlantic Railway The Dominion Atlantic Railway was a historic railway which operated in the western part of Nova Scotia in Canada, primarily through an agricultural district known as the Annapolis Valley. The Dominion Atlantic Railway was unusually diverse for a ...

operated a gravel quarry at Oak Island in New Minas and served a growing number of food and bulk feed plants at New Minas in the mid 19th Century. However development increased with the construction of the Highway 101 expressway in the 1970s. With the village's low tax rate and the location between the population centres of

and

, New Minas soon saw a shopping centre and numerous big box retail outlets and fast food shops established to make the village the retail centre for the eastern Annapolis Valley.

Recent history

Over the past ten years, New Minas has been witness to a commercial boom which has seen many large retail outlets set up shop, while pre-existing retailers and many others have rebuilt into larger venues. One of the woes of the village is its heavy concentration of

minimum-wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Bec ...

, service industry jobs. Other similarly sized communities nearby have a much wider range of income opportunities: Wolfville is an area supported by higher-education jobs with

Acadia University Acadia University is a public, predominantly undergraduate university located in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, with some graduate programs at the master's level and one at the doctoral level. The enabling legislation consists of the Acadia ...

, and Kentville is an area which supports itself with an industrial park, hospital and an orientation toward professional centers. Due to New Minas having no hospital of its own, citizens must travel to Kentville by way of public transit or by use of their own vehicles to go to the hospital. In recent years, New Minas has been lampooned by many of its citizens and tourists as having notoriously poor side-roads. However, in the last 2–3 years, the Village of New Minas has been working on coercing the Province of Nova Scotia to focus on repairing these roads. New Minas played host to the film crew of the popular television show ''

Call Me Fitz ''Call Me Fitz'' is a Canadian television series produced by E1 Entertainment, Amaze Film & Television, and Big Motion Pictures. The half-hour comedy stars Jason Priestley as Richard "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, a morally bankrupt used-car salesman whose ...

''. Where the filming took place used to be the old home of the local

Kia Motors Kia Corporation, commonly known as Kia (, ; formerly known as Kyungsung Precision Industry and Kia Motors Corporation), is a South Korean multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. It is South Korea's second lar ...

, but the local branch had moved to the other end of the town, so the showroom was converted into Fitzpatrick Motors. Recently, a rotary was installed in the middle of New Minas to accommodate the increasing number of businesses and the new highway off-ramp from the nearby Highway 101 which has since finished construction as of 2018.

References

External links

* {{Subdivisions of Nova Scotia Communities in Kings County, Nova Scotia Villages in Nova Scotia General Service Areas in Nova Scotia