Acadia for 56 years from 1913 to 1969, charting the coastline of almost every part of Eastern Canada including pioneering surveys of Hudson Bay.

[4] The ship was powered by steam provided by two coal-fired Scotch boilers being fed to a triple expansion engine turning one screw, creating 1,715 shaft horsepower (1,279 kW).

[6] The ship was designed to operate along Canada's northern coast, and had additional 7⁄8-inch (22 mm) steel plating and strengthened framing.

[6] Acadia was designed in Ottawa by Canadian naval architect R. L. Newman for the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Newcastle-on-Tyne in England.

[16] She saw extensive use prior to 1917 surveying the waters along Canada's Atlantic coast, including tidal charting and depth soundings for various ports, also performing pioneering Canadian oceanographic research in 1915 and 1916.

[17] After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Acadia was among the government vessels used to patrol the Bay of Fundy during the winter months, sailing between Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and Grand Manan.

[19] From 1917 until the end of the war, she conducted anti-submarine patrols from the Bay of Fundy along Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast and through the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

Though in the winter months of 1922–1923, the ship was detailed with icebreaking duties along the coast of Nova Scotia and in major coastal ports on the way.

[23] The vessel was recommissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy on 2 October 1939 during World War II, once again becoming HMCS Acadia and given the pennant number Z00 on the Atlantic coast.

From May 1940 to March 1941 she saw active use as a patrol ship off the entrance of Halifax Harbour, providing close escort support for small convoys entering and leaving the port from the harbour limits at the submarine nets off McNabs Island to the "Halifax Ocean Meeting Point".

[4] The name HMCS Acadia continued in use as a Royal Canadian Sea Cadets training centre at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia beginning in 1956 until its closure in 2022.

[31] Acadia's badge consists of a young woman's head and shoulders wearing a 1755-period cap and a scarf all done in white situated on a field of blue with a golden semé-de-lis.

[24] A major post-war assignment was updating and expanding the nautical charts of Newfoundland and Labrador after the former colony had joined Canada in 1949.

In the 1950s, the wooden carvings of the provincial coat-of-arms were removed during a refit and were lost in a fire when the shed they were stored in burned.

[5] In 2017–2018, the poor condition of Acadia made Canadian national news, with demands for government intervention to stop the ship's deterioration.

[36] Acadia is the only known vessel still afloat to have survived the Halifax Explosion in 1917 and serve in the Royal Canadian Navy in both world wars.

[34] Named after the famous Viking, Erik the Red was a tabby cat, born about 1997, that served on Acadia as the rodent control officer.