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Welcome to New Edinburgh
This lovely area found behind the village of St. Bernard, captures the hearts of many who visit here. The village of New Edinburg has more than one name like many of Clare’s villages and although the village has a quaint, quiet feel to it, it was once destined to be a great metropolis.

According to Alphonse J. Deveau, a local historian and author of many Acadian history reference books, the loyalists who surveyed this particular stretch of land were Scottish and chose to explore the shores of St. Mary’s Bay. The newcomers had been impressed by the landscape along the Sissiboo River and selected the territory at the right of the mouth of the river for their future large city. Given that the surveyers were Scottish, they chose the capital of Scotland as the name for their newly acquired land and added “New” to its title.

The Loyalists were to be dissapointed in their plans to make New Edinburg the great metropolis of Digby County and would leave to settle elsewhere in the area. This change in plans allowed Acadians to reach out into other parts of the county for land.

The new French residents preferred the name “En-bas-de-la-rivière” or “Below the River” to the original Loyalist label. Today both names are used interchangeably but it is more common to find “En-bas-de-la-rivière” among the speech of French residents.

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