Medal - Dartmouth Museum Society Canada's Centennial

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Script: Latin

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CANADA'S • 1867 1967 CENTENNIAL
🞹TOWN OF DARTMOUTH🞹
INCORPORATED 1873
FOUNDED 1750
AM

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Dartmouth founded in 1750, is a Metropolitan Area and former city in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

The community was given the English name of Dartmouth in honor of William Legge, 1st Earl of Dartmouth who was a former Secretary of State.

Dartmouth and the neighboring metropolitan area of Halifax form the urban core of the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM). Both cities, along with the town of Bedford and the Municipality of the County of Halifax were dissolved on April 1, 1996 when they were amalgamated into HRM.
Prior to European colonization, the region around Dartmouth was inhabited the indigenous Mi'kmaq people, who had occupied the area for roughly a millennia. The Mi'kmaq called the area Ponamogoatitjg (Boonamoogwaddy), which has been varyingly translated as "Tomcod Ground" or "Salmon Place" in reference to the fish which were presumably caught in this part of Halifax Harbour. There is evidence that bands would spend the summer on the shores of the Bedford Basin, moving to points inland before the harsh Atlantic winter set in. From Dartmouth Cove, the Mi'kmaq would have followed an important canoe route inland via the Dartmouth lakes to the Sipekne'katik (Shubenacadie) waterway.

Establishing a Protestant settlement on shores of Chebucto (Dartmouth/Halifax) was a strategic British maneuver to control Acadia and defeat France in North America. The Mi'kmaq, Canadian Indigenous fighters and some Acadians launched several raids on the fledgling colonial settlement.

One of Halifax's last surviving Mi'kmaq communities was located at Turtle Grove near present-day Tuft's Cove but was devastated in the December 6, 1917 Halifax Explosion. Today the Millbrook First Nation has a small satellite reserve in Cole Harbour on the eastern edge of Dartmouth.