Have you ever wondered how certain land features are named? Sometimes it is obvious, for example, if it is named after its shape or a person who lived there, but other times it can be quite mysterious. Today’s diary excerpt provides us with a little bit of insight into how a place can receive its name.

At the time of Valentine Gill’s survey of Shubenacadie Grand Lake, much of the Nova Scotian hinterland was undeveloped and did not have permanent settlements.

The Shubenacadie Canal Waterway used seven beautiful lakes and the iconic Shubenacadie River to link the Halifax Harbour to the Minas Basin. As he was surveying it, Valentine Gill could not help but notice the magnificence of Grand Lake, which is the largest of the seven:

Much like major infrastructure projects today, the area that the Shubenacadie Canal Waterway covers had to be surveyed. This was done in order to determine the viability of the project, and to map the route that the waterway follows. The first study of the waterway was commissioned well over 200 years ago, in 1797. To put that into perspective, the second US president, John Adams, was sworn in on March 4th, 1797. Unfortunately, little is known about this first survey