Place Names

There have been various spellings over the years – Bouche, Bouchet, Bushee and Boucher, and various explanations for the name. One version is that it is derived from the French bouche (blocked or closed) because the harbour entrance is almost blocked by an island.

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In the late 1700’s the place was called “Back Settlement of Tracadie” and was the home of Irish immigrant families including the Boyles. In 1868 the name was changed by Act of the Legislature to Merland to honour Father Vincent de Paul Merle, the founding Trappist monk at the nearby monastery.

The Mi’Kmaw name was “Tulugadik” or “Tulukaddy” or “Telegadik” meaning “the settlement”, “place of residence” or “camping ground” and these became anglicized as Tracadie. In 1787, men of the following surnames received land grants at Tracadie: Barrio, Bennois, Bonnevie, Deslauriers, Fougere, Girouard, Gothro, Mayet, Mills and Petitpas

Settlement of this community began in the 1820’s. The place was so called because the majority of its residents were Mathes (Matties).

The name derives from a monastery founded as Point Clairvaux by French Trappists monks in 1825. The monastery was abandoned in 1919 and reopened in 1938 by the Augustinians. It is now called Our Lady of Grace monastery and occupied by Augustinian Sisters.

Named after either Robert Grosvenor, a lord of the Admiralty or Field Marshall Thomas Grosvenor. Land was granted here in 1828 to John Tate and Robert and Thomas Kinney.

This community was first known as Little Teacadie because the cove was smaller than at Big Tracadie. The name was changed to Linwood by an Act of the Nova Scotia Legislature in 1884 after the village of Linwood in Renfrewshire, Scotland.

As the population migrated away from the harbour in the 1800’s, the outlying settlement was referred to as the “Back Settlement of Harbour au Bouche”. In 1887, the Nova Scotia Legislature changed the name to Frankville.

Cape Jack (bordered by water on two sides) was noted by J.W. DesBarres when mapping the Gut of Canso in 1781 for the British naval fleet but the area did not take on an identity as a place of residence until the 1800’s as the population of the area began to flourish.

Settled around 1785 and named for pioneer settler Alexander Auld. For a time, the area was known as the Gut of Canso and referred to on an 1812 map as Porcupine Cove.