Windsor

Windsor is a small town located in south central Nova Scotia at the junction of the Avon and St. Croix Rivers. It is the largest community in western Hants County and was at one time the shire town of the county.

The region encompassing present day Windsor was originally known as Pesaquid, a Mi’kmaq term meaning “Junction of Waters”. This name referred to the confluence of the Avon and St. Croix rivers, which flow into the Minas Basin.

When the Acadians lived in the area, the town was raided by the New Englanders in 1704. The area played a significant role in the Deportation of the Acadians.

Windsor maintains a claim as the cradle of ice hockey, based upon a reference (in a novel by Thomas Haliburton) of boys from King’s Collegiate School playing “hurley”, on the frozen waters of ‘Long Pond’ adjacent to the school’s campus during the early 1800s. Students from King’s-Edgehill School still play hockey on “Long Pond”, a pond proclaimed by some as the “Cradle of Hockey”, located at the farm of Howard Dill. Windsor also boasts the oldest hockey arena in Canada, the Stannus Street Rink, which no longer hosts hockey games. The town’s current arena is Hants Exhibition Arena.