Antigonish is from the Miꞌkmaq language and the meaning is uncertain. The first humans arrived in the area about 2500 years ago. 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. In the 1770s Scottish emmigrants of the Highland Clearances arrived. 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. At this point the population was close to what it is today.