Tufts Cove is an urban neighbourhood in the community of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is situated on the eastern shore of Halifax Harbour in the North End of Dartmouth. The neighbourhood boundaries of Tufts Cove are approximately from Albro Lake Road in the south to Highway 111 in the north, and from Victoria Road in the east with the harbour to the west.
History
The cove was the site of a
Mi'kmaq
The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Miꞌkmaw'' or ''Miꞌgmaw''; ; ) are a First Nations people of the Northeastern Woodlands, indigenous to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as the no ...
community called Turtle Grove, first recorded in the 18th century and likely inhabited for generations. A painting from the 1790s shows a Mi'kmaq family at the cove, while an oil painting from around 1837 by William Eager shows a Mi'kmaq encampment. A notable resident in later years was the Mi'kmaw leader and ethnologist
Jerry Lonecloud
Jerry Lonecloud (July 4, 1854 – April 16, 1930) Biographi.ca was an entertainer,
.
The cove was named for Gersham Tufts, who came to Dartmouth in 1749 with
Edward Cornwallis
Edward Cornwallis ( – 14 January 1776) was a British career military officer and was a member of the aristocratic Cornwallis family, who reached the rank of Lieutenant General. After Cornwallis fought in Scotland, putting down the Jacob ...
. Shortly after arriving, he received a Crown land grant to settle the area. Tufts was a carpenter by trade who resided in Halifax, while his children settled the land in Dartmouth. The farms of the early settler community grew in the early 19th century as industry spread north from the town of Dartmouth. The entrance to the cove was crossed by a railway trestle in the 1880s connecting to the short-lived railway bridge across the Narrows. The tracks were relocated to the head of the cove in the 1890s when the bridge collapsed. The arrival of industry put pressure on the Turtle Grove Mi'kmaw community as settlers sought to remove them from the cove.
The village was close to ground zero of the Halifax Explosion on December 6, 1917 and was severely impacted by the blast and tsunami. The Halifax Remembrance Book lists 16 members of the Tufts Cove Community as dead; although this does not include all the Mi'kmaw dead. The settler community was badly damaged and the Mi'kmaw community of Turtle Grove was completely destroyed. Nine bodies were recovered from Turtle Grove and there were eleven known survivors but the records of those living in Turtle Grove were incomplete. Jerry Lonecloud lost two daughters and one of his eyes. The survivors were recorded in Lonecloud's journal. The Turtle Grove settlement was never rebuilt after the explosion. The survivors were settled in other Nova Scotian reserves.
Eventually, Tufts Cove became known for its working class community, who were mostly employed at the ropeworks on Wyse Road, local shipyards, and other factories in the area. During the 1950s, Tufts Cove experienced rapid residential development, including the development of Shannon Park, a large military housing complex built beside the cove.
Mi'kmaq_people_at_Tufts_Cove,_Nova_Scotia,_Canada,_ca._1871.jpg , Mi'kmaq people at Turtle Grove, ca. 1871
File:Damage to Tufts Cove School after Halifax Explosion, Tufts Cove, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1917-1918.jpg , Tufts Cove School after Halifax Explosion
Present day
The dominant feature of Tufts Cove is the
Tufts Cove Generating Station
__NOTOC__
Tufts Cove Generating Station is a Canadian electrical generating station located in the Dartmouth neighbourhood of Tufts Cove in Nova Scotia's Halifax Regional Municipality.
A thermal generating station, Tufts Cove was constructed in ...
, whose smokestacks tower over the area. The construction of the plant required the purchase and subsequent destruction of a large number of the neighbourhood's homes by Nova Scotia Light and Power Company, Limited in 1964. The plant is now operated by
Nova Scotia Power
Nova Scotia Power Inc. is a vertical integration, vertically integrated electric utility in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is privately owned by Emera and regulated by the provincial government via the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB). Nov ...
Inc., a subsidiary of
Emera
Emera Incorporated is a publicly traded Canadian multinational energy holding company based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Created in 1998 during the privatization of Nova Scotia Power, a provincial Crown corporation, Emera now invests in regulated ele ...
Inc.
Shannon Park
Shannon may refer to:
People
* Shannon (given name)
* Shannon (surname)
* Shannon (American singer), stage name of singer Shannon Brenda Greene (born 1958)
* Shannon (South Korean singer), British-South Korean singer and actress Shannon Arrum Wil ...
eventually closed in 2004. Disposal of the land is being planned by the
Government of Canada
The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-i ...
's Canada Lands Company. Mi'kmaq from the Millbrook Reserve near Truro have applied for a portion of the former Shannon Park military housing development beside the cove.