North Shore

Another day, another National Historic Site! Actually, we visted THREE of them today. We headed out from Halifax along the northwestern shore of Nova Scotia to Annapolis Royal and the sites of Port-Royal and Fort Anne, located across the Annapolis River from one another on an inlet of the Bay of Fundy. Port-Royal was a short-term fully enclosed habitation and trading site established by a small group of French men in 1605 as a test for a larger permanent settlement. While the exact site location still hasn't been identified, a detailed physical description and plan drawings were recorded by the cartographer Samuel de Champlain. Champlain came to Port-Royal after exploring the coast as far south as Cape Cod, and described the Annapolis River site as the best he had seen on the eastern seaboard. Hey, wait a minute- what's wrong with the Cape?? Champlain's accurate maps and (less accurate) descriptions of Cape Cod, including the locations of Wampanoag settlements, are still used today to help locate and identify cultural sites. Port-Royal is billed as the first European settlement north of St. Augustine (Spanish were there in 1565!), although Jamestown in Virginia is better known as the first (1607) permanent European settlement.

 

The Champlain plans were used as the basis for a reconstruction of the Habitation (that's what it's called) in the 1930s that was initiated by a rich lady from Cambridge, MA who summered in Annapolis Royal. This shouldn't surprise me because old rich white ladies with nothing better to do have been the driving force behind lots of historic preservation in North America! See, they're not so bad. 

Once again, the Mi'kmaq history prior to the Euros arriving was front and center in the signage and informational panels. In this case, the only reason the settlement survived was because the Mi'kmaq befriended the first group of men and maintained an active trading relationship with them to provide them with materials they needed to survive the winters. Sound familiar New England readers??      

We got there fairly early so the site wasn't very crowded and we spent some time talking to the head Parks Canada interpreter. One thing led to another and soon enough we were talking about archaeology. Completely unprompted, she told us that she's very good friends with the archaeologist who appears on the Curse of Oak Island and that she watches it regularly. Ok, I'm gonna out myself and admit that the show, which follows an absolutely ridiculous and destructive search for buried treasure on the island off the coast of Nova Scotia, is one of my guilty pleasures and I've been hoping we can stop there on the trip. Forget about the historic site- I just wanted the inside scoop on the show! The conversation drew a second interpreter over who said they watch because they know the archaeologist but also because there is some actual interesting history on the island. I left feeling like I'd just had a six degrees connection with a reality TV star! I also left knowing that tomorrow I'll be swinging by the entrance to the private island for a money shot...

Next stop was the site of Fort Anne, a defensive work that became the first National Historic Park in all of Canada. Our friend at Port-Royal told us archaeologists were working 7 days a week here to salvage a portion of the site being affected by erosion, but there was no sign of anyone when we arrived. The history of the fort was more interesting to me than the physical site, but the water views were amazing.

The fort's position on a protected river with access to the Bay of Fundy made the land so valuable that the Mi'kmaq, English, and French all fought to control it and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more than 12 battles took place and the fort was taken seven times back and forth by the British and French.    

Despite the British presence, this part of Nova Scotia is considered to be the Nova Scotia birthplace of Acadian culture- distinctive from French- and that leads us to the last historic site we visited, the Landscape of Grand Pre which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. I didn't really understand what this place was until we got there. I thought it was the remnants of a 1600s Acadian village with some associated fields, but it's actually a 3,000 acre area of Bay of Fundy tideland that was dyked back in the seventeenth century to create farmland for that village, and that is still today protected by the same dyke system (upgraded with more modern materials and reinforced due to climate change). They did that in the 1600s! At the place where the world's largest tides happen! Crazy!

Back in Halifax we strolled the boardwalk again before and after dinner and it was still filled with people, even though the festival/fireworks crowd yesterday was larger. Live music, food vendors and outdoor bars hopping, and people just hanging out. Halifax is Happening.