"More a Matter for Medical Men": The King's Road Reserve Relocation and Public Health in Early 20th-Century Sydney, Nova Scotia.

This article focuses on the forced removal and relocation of the King's Road Reserve, a Mi'kmaw urban reserve in Sydney, Nova Scotia, between 1915 and 1926, illustrating how public health discourses and medical expert testimony were employed by settlers and government officials to justify Indigenous dispossession in Canada. The 1911 amendment to the Indian Act, section 49A, enabled the removal of urban reserves without land surrender if deemed in the public and Indigenous interest by an Exchequer Court judge; the King's Road case was the first application of this law. Despite evidence from medical experts that the reserve was sanitary and that improvements were possible, settler interests in urban development and real estate prevailed, leading to the reserve's relocation to Membertou Reserve after prolonged Mi'kmaw resistance. The case highlights the intersection of eugenic and betterment ideologies with colonial policies aimed at assimilating Indigenous peoples while prioritizing settler economic growth.