Tufts Cove is an urban neighbourhood in the community of
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is situated on the eastern shore of
Halifax Harbour
Halifax Harbour is a large natural harbour on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Halifax largely owes its existence to the harbour, being one of the largest and deepest ice-free natural harbo ...
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 northe ...
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.caEdward 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 Jacobi ...
. 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 the morning of 6 December 1917, the French cargo ship collided with the Norwegian vessel in the waters of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The ''Mont-Blanc'', laden with high explosives, caught fire and exploded, devastating the Richmond ...
on December 6, 1917 and was severely impacted by the blast and tsunami. The Halifax Remembrance Book lists 16 members of the Tufts Cove Co