The Fortress of Louisbourg- Part 1

    Hi everyone. Happy mid-week to you. We have a mix of snow and rain in the forecast, and maybe even a couple of new inches of snow accumulating-at least that's what the weather people are saying.  And not quite so cold. I am  ready for this bitterly cold weather to disappear because I really want to get back out walking again. I tried the other day but after 10 minutes I couldn't feel my nose, so it wasn't much of a walk. 😖

    Today we're heading back to Nova Scotia, and instead of lots of beautiful nature views, I'm taking you to a living history museum on Cape Breton Island. You might remember me mentioning that we switched up our trip a bit and went on to learn  about some local history. 

    The Fortress of Louisbourg is the reconstruction of a fort and trading center that was built by the French starting in 1713. It represents French life in the fortress and the town with the same name during the years 1713 through 1758. In 1758 Louisbourg was besieged by the British  and after that time the buildings went into decay  or were destroyed. In the 1960's this historic reconstruction began. I  discovered this is the largest reconstructed living history museum in North America, which after taking us all day to visit (and it was a very good all day visit), I can believe it. 

    First here's the map of Cape Breton. If you look down in the bottom right corner just above the title of the map you can see where Louisbourg is. 

   And here's the view from the road as we approached. You can see the sun we had the day before when we visited Cape Breton Highlands National Park was gone.

   We started by walking around the town area and visiting the businesses and homes that were a part of it. We did go into most of the buildings that were open, and we even had an interesting lunch. I'll save those photos and stories for another post since this one is a bit long. In this post I'm just sharing  the views from our walk.

   We were lucky that day as it wasn't super crowded so we could actually interact with most of the people who were dressed and acting in character.

It was September when we visited; there were still some plants growing in the gardens.

    After we finished visiting the town,  we walked over to the fortress.  There we learned a lot  about the military history of the area and what it was like to be a French soldier in the garrison. Again, for the sake of brevity I'll share more about that in another post.

   This is one part of North American history that I never really learned much about. This glimpse into early to mid-eighteenth century life was fascinating. Even though  the King of France technically owned this town and fort, the people living here at this time didn't live lives all that different from those down in my home area of New England.  Even though the French didn't  ever really control New England, the British did.   New England  belonged to the King of England, with New France not that far away. I believe the border between these 2 nation's colonies was a bit different back in the early to mid-1700's also, being more of a fluid line, but after the 1758 battles  including here at Louisbourg, the British border moved further east and north.

  History is fascinating, but not being a historian I was struck by  how, during this time period when there was no United States nor a Canada,  we shared this colonial history. I also learned later in the trip that at the time of the American Revolution, 50% of Nova Scotia's population was made up of New Englanders. The British worried that when the rebels in New England (and elsewhere in the colonies) decided to rise up against the British, Nova Scotia would become the 14th colony to rebel. Did you know that? I was really surprised to read that since I always think of Canada and the US as being 2 separate nations, with Canada being where all the loyal British subjects were,  but then my  historical knowledge of that time is pretty vague . 

   And as a sort of aside, have any of you in the US watched or been watching the latest Ken Burns series on the American Revolution? It's another well done film series, and I'm learning a lot about how the US broke away from being a colony to being a country. Now I'd like to see an even earlier film series, one that takes the viewers back to even earlier colonial times, including the story of Louisbourg. 

   I learned a lot that day, and next time I do a Novas Scotia post I'll write more about this place.