It provides local government to the eponymous historical county, except for the Town of Antigonish, and two reserves: Pomquet and Afton 23, and Summerside 38.

[5] Antigonish is from the Miꞌkmaq language and the meaning is uncertain.

Acadian colonists arrived in the early 1700s before being deported when the territory changed hands from the French Ancien Régime to the Kingdom of Great Britain.

[6] Following the American Revolutionary War, United Empire Loyalists arrived.

In second half of the 1800s, St. Francis Xavier University opened, and railways, telephones, electric lighting came to the area.