Career
He was a veteran of the Third Seminole War. In Fall of 1858, he moved from Tampa Bay to Brevard County where he settled on the Sebastian River. He lived in a palm thatch hut near the mouth of the river.
He, along with Editor Marr, hunted, fished and raised onions in a small garden.
He started to cultivate citrus, but was impatient and abandoned that project Canova went to Saint Augustine to enlist in the Confederate Army in 1861.
In 1885 he wrote Life and Adventures in South Florida, in which he lamented the demise of wildlife in the Indian River area.