Canard, Nova Scotia corner. Canard was known to the Mi'kmaq people as Apocheechumochwakade meaning "home of the black duck". Archaeological sites indicate that the Mi'kmaq used the river mouth for shad fishing. Canard was an important Acadian village known as Rivière-aux-Canards whose population settled on both sides of the river beginning in the late 1600s and totaled 750 people by 1750. The Acadian settlement included extensive dyked farm lands along the river, several mills, its own parish. The Acadian settlement was destroyed in the 1755 Bay of Fundy Campaign of the Expulsion of the Acadians. A severe storm in November 1759 broke the
Canard River took up the Acadian lands along the river in 1760. A government ship bringing supplies up the Canard River for the Planters, the brigantine "Montague" was wrecked in the lower reaches of the river in December 1760. The Planter settlement on the south bank of the river becoming known as Starr's Point and the settlement on the north becoming known as Canard. The Planters repaired the Middle Dyke and rebuilt the Grand Dyke in 1782. In 1825 they built the Wellington Dyke near the mouth of the Canard River protecting in total over 3,000 acres of farmland along the river