EASTERN SHORE REGION I
NOVA SCOTIA'S NEWEST ACADIAN REGION
Torbé ( Tor Bay)
Officially recognised in 2021, and already one of the most emotionally powerful Acadian destinations in Nova Scotia.
BEST SEASON
June to September
FROM HALIFAX
~2.5 hrs via Hwy 104 & Hwy 16
LOCATION
Between Sherbrooke and Canso
RECOGNITION
Officially recognised as Acadian region in 2021
REGION
Guysborough County
In 2021, something remarkable happened on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore, a community that had always known it was Acadian finally received official recognition of that identity. Torbé, tucked between Sherbrooke and Canso along the breathtaking Eastern Shore of Guysborough County, became Nova Scotia's newest officially recognised Acadian region.
The recognition was not a beginning, the Acadian families of Torbé had been here for centuries, their stories carried through generations in the same way the rest of Acadia carries them: through memory, through food, through the water, and through stubborn, joyful refusal to disappear. But official recognition gave the community new tools: a French-language school opened the same year, a Cultural and Community Centre is in development, and cultural programming has expanded rapidly. Today Torbé stands out in the Acadian world not despite being new — but because of the energy that recognition unleashed. Come and feel it.
ABOUT THIS COMMUNITY
What Makes Torbé Unique
An Acadian region being rebuilt in real time
Elsewhere in Nova Scotia, you visit Acadian heritage. In Torbé, you watch it being renewed. In October 2021, after nearly twenty years of advocacy led by Jude Avery and la Société des Acadiens de la région de Tor Baie, the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse welcomed Torbé as a member region — by unanimous vote. That same year, the community's first French-language school opened its doors. A cultural centre is in development, and cultural programming grows each year. Roughly 500 Acadians live along this stretch of coast today. Torbé is the only Acadian region in the province where visitors arrive at the beginning of a chapter rather than the end.
The families who refused to move again
Torbé's Acadian story is not one of return, but of a second exile. Deported in 1755 and imprisoned in Halifax until 1763, these families first resettled at Chezzetcook — then Loyalist pressure on the land pushed them to look elsewhere. In the 1770s they petitioned the government for land at Tor Bay. The names on those first petitions — Boudreau, Roi, David, Mannette, Petitpas, Pellerin, Richard — are the names still on the mailboxes in Larry's River, Charlos Cove and Port Felix. In 1815, the visiting bishop of Québec urged them to abandon this isolated shore and join the Acadians at Arichat. Nearly all of them refused. Torbé exists because of that refusal.
A working coast since 1607
Long before the first Acadian settlement, this shore was already a place of work and encounter. In the summer of 1607, Samuel de Champlain and Marc Lescarbot met the Basque captain Savalette here — he had been fishing and drying cod in these waters for decades — along with the Mi'kmaq whose ancestral territory lines this coast. Torbé therefore holds one of the earliest documented meetings between Europeans and First Nations in Canada. Four centuries later, the sea still sustains the community: the wharves, the lobster traps and the moored boats are not scenery, they are an economy that never stopped.
WHAT TO DO & SEE
What to Do in Torbé
Place Savalette, Port Félix
Visit this historic site Parks Canada–managed site overlooking the Eastern Shore ocean, where evocative paintings and bilingual interpretation panels commemorate the remarkable 1607 encounter between Samuel de Champlain, Basque captain Savalette, and the Mi'kmaq people. Combine with a walk along the Port Félix shoreline.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Everything you need to know
KEEP EXPLORING
Other Acadian Communities in Eastern Shore
Pomquet
Acadian Village I Beach & Dunes I Heritage Trail
The smallest of Nova Scotia's Acadian regions, founded in 1774 by five Acadian families from France. A 2.5-kilometre beach with thirteen rare dunes, a 19th-century interpretive home at Chez Deslauriers, and a 4-kilometre coastal heritage trail await those who leave the main road behind.