The Fort that Cod Built

Yesterday we visited the reconstructed Fortress of Louisbourg (pronounced Lou ee boor with just the suggestion of a “g” at the end). We almost didn’t go because it was a fairly long drive towards the north end of Cape Breton Island and this is a holiday weekend in Canada, so we were afraid of crowds. We are learning…Canada has less than one eighth the people of the U.S. so a Canadian crowd outside Toronto or Vancouver is not a thing to worry about. Besides, the place is huge, it is the largest historical reconstruction in North America.

We took a shuttle over a mile to the entrance. Our shuttle group got a brief introduction inside this building which was the only of the buildings outside the gates to be reconstructed. Notice the sod roof.

We were greeted at the gate by a man in a 1744 French uniform. I later asked another docent about the uniform colors, since I expected red to be British. But in the French army at the time the red uniform was for the commander of the gun. He would have had a blue coat to go over this. I may have the terminology wrong (the docents were all extremely knowledgeable and gave us a ton of information) but it was about like a sergeant.

We entered across an actual moat and through the Dauphin Gate, the main land gate.

Bud is standing on the far side of the lift bridge across the moat. In the foreground you can see the counterweights and one of the two chains with handles that allowed them to pull up the bridge.

Once inside the gate you got to see part of the fortifications.

The main visage of this fortified town faced the sea. The French came here in 1713 after loosing Acadia (mainland Nova Scotia) and Newfoundland to the British. They still held Quebec, Isle Sainte-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and this island, Cape Breton Island which they called Isle Royale. They were looking for a site to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and to protect their cod fisheries.

There were better sites for defense, as low lying hills overlooked the fortress with only marshy lands to act as a deterrent to attack. But there were no better sites for cod fishing. The harbor was lined with beaches, a scarcity along this coast, and needed to dry the fish. And it was close enough to the cod banks to allow the fishermen to make 3 or 4 trips a day. According to the docent, the fishermen were backed by the King who wanted lots of cod to feed the people in France, and they overrode the military.

Despite the good defenses on the seaward side, the British did take this place, twice. The first time was in the spring of 1745 when they recruited 4,000 New Englanders with promises of wealth. The men were dropped off in the marshes and hauled cannon on sledges through the wetlands to a position on the hills. They began to bombard the fort. Meanwhile, the British Navy blockaded the port so no supplies could get in. In 46 days the French surrendered. The British required the New Englanders to stay to keep the French from coming back. They were crowded and poorly provisioned and a quarter of them died. Three years later the fortress was returned to France in exchange for some land in Europe. One docent said that was the real start of the American revolution.

Then in 1758 the British attacked again, this time with 13,100 troops and 150 ships with 14,000 crew. The fortress held out for 7 weeks.

Looking around it is almost impossible to comprehend that after the second surrender the British razed the fortress to keep it from ever being used by the French again.

The walls and fortifications were blown up and the buildings were dismantled and carted off to provide much needed materials for buildings elsewhere. When the fortress was made an official historic site in the 1920’s there was nothing left but foundations.

But there were people who thought it should be reconstructed. In the 1950’s the project began. They requested any information that the Government of France could provide and got 17,000 documents on microfiche.

These included detailed street plans…

and architectural details of all the government buildings.

When anyone of property died there was an inventory made of their possessions and these were included in the documents.

Teams of archaeologists, architects, builders and craftspeople worked together. In 1961 construction began. Much of the labor, skilled and unskilled, came from the now unemployed coal miners in the area.

Several years and 26 million dollars later they created a place of living history.

A place where you can see the craftsmanship of the people of the time, in this case the Mi’kmaq First Nation.

Their surroundings are recreated with accuracy…

and you can get up close and personal.

And there were people demonstrating the old crafts. This wasn’t just a display of tatting. A woman was actually making this lace. Unfortunately she was on break when we were there.

We spent four hours enthralled with it all and would have stayed longer but our feet gave out!