French and Acadian Domestic Architecture: Part IV – Beaubassin and Beausejour
There are places in the world where the genius loci or spirit of the place is powerfully present to the point where your perception is deeply affected and your spirit, perhaps, is taken over by the landscape. Cumberland Basin, where the seventy-foot tidal excesses of the ninety-mile-long Bay of Fundy exhaust themselves, is such a place.
Beaubassin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaubassin
The French, who came up from Port Royal in the 1670s called it Beaubassin. As they come and go the Bay of Fundy tides create a roundish basin, with steep sloping sides composed entirely of deep greasy organic silt. Establishing landing places is almost impossible.
Here is the southern face of the Isthmus of Chignecto, barely 20 miles wide, that joins New Brunswick to Nova Scotia. On the other side is Northumberland Strait.
It is possible that the Acadian settlers who lived here felt that they were different from their fellows who lived in other parts of Acadia. For one thing, they were isolated at Beaubassin, but surrounded by unimaginable riches as far as the rest were concerned. On the west side of the basin was a vast flood plain dating back to prehistoric times, where the incoming high tides had, over the millennia, deposited and refreshed incredibly deep layers of potentially arable soil. It was the Acadians of Beaubassin who, by keeping the tides out with high dykes built up with a cribwork of wood and soil, created the Tantramar Marshes – thousands of acres of prairie that could be used for farming or as happened here, the raising of cattle on a large scale. The name Tantramar is said to come to come from Tintamarre – the Acadian word for the noise made by the migrating birds who gathered there in vast numbers.
The area is also rich in its proximity to the huge grindstone deposits down along the shore leading to Grindstone Island. In the other direction are the mines of Minas Basin, producing coal, limestone and metal ore.
The Isthmus of Chignecto is mostly brackish marshland with frequent ponds scattered here and there. However, rising out of the brackish mud were two long finger-like promontories or ridges, crying out to be settled. Between them, barely above the high tide mark, was a small Island that would catch the attention of the settlement’s first governor who, unlike the one at Port Royal, preferred to live isolated from his people.
Perhaps it is best if at this time I give you this map from a previous post from my series on Acadia that locates clearly all the principal sites that are usually mentioned in discussions of Beaubassin.
You can read a quick summary of the evolution of Beaubassin in the Wikipedia link I provide above, but I want to remind you of a few salient points in its establishment as a settlement.
In 1672 a farmer, shipbuilder and merchant from Port Royal called Jacques Bourgeois sold part of his holdings there and with members of his family moved up to Beaubassin ridge where he quickly established those vital community facilities – a sawmill and grist mill.
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bourgeois_jacques_2E.html
At about the same time Michel Leneuf de la Vallière de Beaubassin (The Elder), a member of the lower French aristocracy who had moved to Trois Rivières, established a centre for the fur trade in the midst of this ever-growing agricultural landscape. He was a busy man, always on the go, with active interests in farming, fishing, establishing settlements and also soldering. In 1676 Governor Frontenac in Quebec granted him 100 square leagues which became his seigneury at Beaubassin. The centre of this land grant was the small island between the two ridges and soon became known as Ile de la Vallière. It can still be seen, rising slightly out of the flat marsh, as you drive to the Nova Scotia Border. A road, called Brown Road will take you to it, but Google Maps suggests people now live there.
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/leneuf_de_la_valliere_de_beaubassin_michel_1705_2E.html
The Intendant Jacques de Meulles visited the settlement in 1685 and was very impressed by what he saw. There was pastureland to feed thousands of cattle, 22 habitations, all with their own cattle, sheep, and pigs, He regretted that not more of the land was put to use.
A church was built in 1686 and a parish was established by Abbot Claude Trouvé, this being vitally needed to provide for the spiritual needs of the community, an essential feature of all Catholic settlements all over the world.
We are blessed by a most extraordinary map drawn, it is presumed, by the great cartographer of the King, Jean-Baptiste Franquelin, under the direction of Jacques de Meulles himself after he had inspected all of Beaubassin and the far reaches of the Isthmus. Like all Franquelin’s maps it is a thing of beauty as well as a source of detailed information. The French National Archives has the map now and we will explore it, detail by detail, to get a sense of what Beaubassin and the Isthmus of Chignecto were like at the very birth of the fateful settlement that, less than a hundred years later, would witness the dissolution of Acadia and all its dreams.
Franquelin, Jean-Baptiste (1650-17..). Cartographe présumé, et Meulles, Jacques de (16..-1703). Commanditaire du contenu, Chignitou nommé depuis par les Francois Beau Bassin, ms, col. 47,5 x 86,5 cm. 1686. Bibliothèque nationale de France, bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb43657394n. Ce plan a été envoyé par M. de Meules int’ de Canada en 1686.
I provide you with a direct link to the French Archives so that you can explore it at your leisure. When you reach the site, press the zoom tab at the bottom of the page and you can explore every detail at very high magnification and, with screen capture, obtain copies of the parts you need for your studies.
First, in the kind of architectural cartouche he so liked to use, Franquelin provides a legend identifying every part of his map which has numbers on all the sites he considers to be important. Here is the legend, and a transcription for you.
Along with the major rivers, so vital for all travel and business, are the principal settlements. Curiously, on the Bay Verte side, he singles out for mention two rivers with extraordinary names – Chimougoüiche and Chimougoüichiche – the first being the French equivalent of what the Mi’kmaq called what would in time become Shediac. The second is more difficult, but I think it tries to say the Mi’kmaq equivalent of a place we now call Shemogue, but which those in the know call she-mo-gui. Over time these very long indigenous names were shortened by repetition and passing on by word of mouth. When they do appear in maps, they undergo quite amazing transformations from the 1680s to the 1750s.
To think about the domestic architecture of nascent Beaubassin it is best to turn to Franquelin’s map and focus on the area that would become the focus of work and events in the years to come.
Number 2 identifies the Missaguash River, still without a name, but leading inland to a place where a portage to Baie Vert was probably established for centuries. The French, guided by the Mi’kmaq, took it over. Number 12 identifies the Point of Saint-Croix, the very tip of the village of Beaubassin which is growing along the top of the promontory and will soon begin to flow down the sides to the edge of the marsh.
On the other un-numbered promontory, we have the site of what will be called Beausejour – such a lovely name – and in time the site of the fort whose blasted bastion signalled the end of Acadia in 1755. Numbered 1, of course, is the seigneury of Michel Leneuf de la Vallière de Beaubassin (The Elder), located on the slight rise in the marsh between the two villages. It was called Ile de la Vallière and in this drawing, has three buildings on it. De la Vallière was a very busy man and having secured this tasty seigneury in a new and promising village, by 1790 was off to work on his various projects. So, his period of residency was brief. One must note that he sent to Beaubassin as his agent a very young man whom we have come to know as Michel Haché dit Gallant. He was given many responsibilities and seems to have been a man of many talents, interesting in shipbuilding and owning a ship which he used for coastal trade and communication. He is the one who moved to Port la Joye in Ile Saint-Jean in 1720 and whose house I helped excavate. This is described in the Ile Saint-Jean post in this series on French architecture.
Here is an aerial photograph that I took of the site of Beaubassin in 1975. A great part of the village was archaeologically intact to some degree but remembering always that the archaeological imprint of these houses built en picquet was never deep and easily destroyed by the plough.
This is a hand-coloured plan of the village based on an infra red photograph taken by the RCAF in 1954. Infra red film is used by archaeologists because it is so sensitive to heat emanating from the ground that sometimes archaeological features, like cellars, show up clearly. Using the RCAF photo Nova Scotia archaeologists were able to identify many building sites arranged around what appeared to be the logical place for the main street of Beaubassin.
And do we have a view of Beaubassin that would give us some clues as to what the houses in the village looked like? We don’t, because in the early 1750s the French burnt down the village, including its two churches at the approach of the English who were moving in for the kill.
Here is an interesting note of the variety of architecture archaeologists in 1968 thought could have existed there before it was destroyed.
The most thorough account of the 1968 archaeological work appears in Marcel Mousette’s (1970) Parks Canada report on the ceramics of Beaubassin. Based on ceramic evidence, he identified four definite Acadian contexts associated with depressions mapped by Cameron or in situ structural remains. Two of these were Acadian domestic homes, wooden buildings constructed on a fieldstone foundation with a wooden floor above a cellar. In a summary discussion of the archaeological and documentary evidence for pre-1755 Acadian dwellings, LaVoie noted the Beaubassin evidence attests “to the same type of construction elsewhere in Acadia” (2003:9). Both the glass and clay pipe analysis support the four Acadian contexts and provide corroborating dates for the pre-1750 site occupation. Although dispersed or lost, much of the 1968 excavation record has been located, digitized, and incorporated within the current field record format.
On the original site of Beaubassin the English built a temporary offensive fort, which they called Fort Lawrence, after their commander, and down the hill, along where the main street of Beaubassin had been, built all the necessary structures to house, feed and equip and invading force.
John Hamilton, soldier and cartographer, drew this detailed, carefully labelled sketch of the new village that had suddenly sprung up on the ashes of the old to support the British invasion.
John Hamilton, The North West View of Fort Lawrence in Chignectou, Pen and ink on paper. King George III Topographical Collection, Shelfmark K, Top 119; Item number: 72. The British Library.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winckworth_Tonge
Here, there is no French or Acadian domestic architecture. All is English.
Let us backtrack…
AN EXTRAORDINARY VISITOR AND AN AMAZING DESCRIPTION OF BEAUBASSIN
By great good fortune we have a detailed eye-witness account of a 1731 visit to Beaubassin by a doctor from Beverly, Massachusetts called Robert Hale. He was a fascinating man of many interests and careers and at that time he came up on the schooner Cupid to deal with business interests in Annapolis Royal and Beaubassin. His journal of that voyage was published by the Essex Institute in 1906 and I managed to obtain a photocopy of the original. Because it is so deeply informative in the most vivid way, I have transcribed for you parts of those pages (230-234) that deal with his visit to what he called “Checnecto.” For those of you not familiar with Eighteenth Century spelling – which was loose and inconsistent – and typographical conventions such as using the letter “f” called the tall s for “s” you may have difficulties at first entering into the narrative. That will pass and soon he will have you in his spell.
… There is abundance of Muskettoes here so that in a Calm hot day, tis almost impofsible to live especially among the Trees. There is no fuch thing as an Oak, Walnut, or Chestnut Tree in thefe parts, & the Land so poor, that no other Trees grow to be above a foot or foot and half over & very few so large. Spruce & Birch is the chief of ye Wood, which the Land is covered with & wr there are no Marshes, the people don’t pretend to fettle. All the whole Bay above Cape Checnecto is called by yt name, & the little Villages of 3 or 4 or half a Score Families have other Denominations. This Bay feems to mee to be as Subject to Strong winds as (Near Annapolis) it is to Calms, for befides that the Shores are washed higher, & that the people build all their Houfes low, with large Timber & fharp Roofs (not one houfe being 10 feet to the Eves) you fee in abundance of Places, fpots of Land of phaps 2 or 3 Acres in a Spot, which have not a Tree Standing, only perhaps here & there a trunk of a large tree, 10, 15 or 20 feet high, but the Ground all covered with trees blown up by the Roots & multitudes of young trees 10 or 15 feet high all of near an heighth. I cou’d not find yt ye Water flows at Checnecto above 8 or 10 fathom at most, wc is about 50 or 60 feet.
1 P. M. I took my Boat with 2 hands designing to go about 2 Leagues up the River to the nearest French Houfes (my Pilott being an Interpreter) but as I had got about ye middle of ye Bay the Fogg came in very thick, & wee row’d an hour and a half before wee faw Land, & then wee discover’d it on the oppofite shore about 3 Leagues above our Vefsel. Soon after wee got on, the Fogg clear’d up & wee faw near our Boat an Indian Wigwam on the Beach, & at about 2 Miles diftance a Small Village of 3 or 4 French Houfes called Worfhcock & lyes up Tantamar River, to which wee went, & the French entertain’d us with much Civility & Courtefy & when we came away one man would needs accompany us to our Boat, & conduct a nearer way over the Marfhes than that by which wee came.
8 P. M. When wee came to our Boat (which wee left at highwater, wee found her aground near 1/4 of a Mile, but as the Shore was all descending, Muddy & very Soft & Slippery with our Guide’s Help wee made a Shift to Launch her, and it being by thif Time young Flood wee put away , for Meshequesh, a Small Village about 2 Leagues farther up the River, tho’ indeed it is the largest in this Bay but as it was now dark wee were obliged to keep in with the- Shore lest wee shou’d mifs the Crick, up which wee wore to go about 3/4 of a Mile to the Town; but the wind blowing very hard & right on upon the Shore, wee were put to much difficulty, & once got upon a Rocky flat a confiderable diftance from the Shore where wee had like to have Stove our Boat to pieces, but at length wee espied the Creek & thrust our Boat in & soon had Smooth Water, & about 11 P. M. wee got up to the Town, to the Houfe of one William Sears the Tavern Keeper, who let us in & gott water to wash our Legs & feet (bedaubed with Clay in coming ashore) & other Refrefhments.
Mond. 28. 5 A. M. I rose & after Breakfast walk’d about to fee the place & divert myself. There are but about 15 or 20 Houses in this Village, tho’ it be the largest in the Bay, besides 2 Mafs Houfes or Churches, on one of which they hang out a Flagg Morning & Evening for Prayers, to the other the Priest goes once a day only, Habited like a Fool in Petticoats, with a Man after him with a Bell in one Hand ringing at every door, & a lighted Candle & Lanthorn in the other.
… This Night wee lodg’d at Sears’s again & at supper were regaled with Bonyclabber, soop, Sallet, roast Shad, & Bread & Butter, & to day wee din’d with Mr Asneau at his Brother’s upon roast Mutton, & for Sauce a Sallet, mix’d with Bonyclabber Sweetned with Molasses. Just about Bed time wee were furpriz’d to fee fome of ye Family on their Knees paying yr Devotions to ye Almighty, & others near them talking, & Smoaking &ca. This they do all of them (mentally but not orally) every night & Morning, not altogether, but now one & then another, & fometimes 2 or 3 together, but not in Conjunction one with the other. The women here differ as much in yr Cloathing (besides wearing of wooden Shoes) from thofe in New Engld as they do in Features & Complexion, wc is dark eno’ by living in the Smoak in ye Summer to defend ymfelves against ye Muskettoes, & in ye winter against ye Cold. They have but one Room in yr Houfes besides a Cockloft, Cellar, & Sometimes a Closet. Their Bedrooms are made fomething after ye Manner of a Sailor’s Cabbin, but boarded all round about ye bignefs of ye Bed, except one little hole on the Fore-side, just big eno’ to crawl into, before which is a Curtain drawn & as a Step to get into it, there ftands a Chest. They have not above 2 or 3 chairs in a houfe, & those wooden ones, bottom & all. I saw but 2 Muggs among all ye French & ye lip of one of ym was broken down above 2 inches. When they treat you with ftrong drink they bring it in a large Bason & give you a Porringer to dip it with. The Gait of ye pple is very different from ye Engglish for the women Step (or rather straddle) further at a step than ye Men. The Women’s Cloaths are good eno’ but they look as if they were pitched on with pitchforks, & very often yr Stockings are down about their heels.
…
3 P. M. Wee endeavour’d to haul off our Vefsel intending to go out this Tide, in doing which wee ran aground 4 times fometimes on one fide of the Creek and fometimes on the other, however at last wee got her into the Road but the Wind blowing half a Storm right against us, wee dropp’d Anchor.
…
Hale – Journal of a Voyage to Nova Scotia … 1731
There is a feature of the small, dark, smoke-filled house that Hale describes in detail, and which is worthy of further discussion. Many of the French settlers brought with them a kind of enclosed bed which Hale describes thus:
Their Bedrooms are made fomething after ye Manner of a Sailor’s Cabbin, but boarded all round about ye bignefs of ye Bed, except one little hole on the Fore-side, just big eno’ to crawl into, before which is a Curtain drawn & as a Step to get into it, there ftands a Chest.
There are many survivals of this kind of bed in France which was used well into the Twentieth Century. Here is a picture of what such a bed, with its chest of drawers in front of it, looked like. (These 2 photos are from an Italian site to which I have lost the link.)
And here is another. They could be quite fancy because they were, after all, the marriage bed going back many generations.
This small painting by the Dutch master Pieter de Hooch (1629-84) shows a simple interior with a lit clos built into a corner. It gives a fine feeling of atmosphere for the time. A mother is going through her child’s hair looking for lice, a common practice well into the Twentieth Century.
Pieter de Hooch – Interior with Mother delousing her Child, oil on canvas, 61 x 52.5 cm, circa 1660, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
These beds were called by various names. As well as lit clos, there were called lit emmuré and in our region – and I remember this from my childhood – the bed was called a cabane or ship’s cabin.
The Military Topographic Artists
The only pictures we have of the houses in the area of Beaubassin are those built across the river at Beauséjour. It is only because of the crucial military importance of that site officially not in Acadia that pictures of the settlement survive from 1755 when forts had been built and military topographers drew views of both settlements. These lovely sketches in the British Library by an English officer called John Hamilton give you an exceptionally fine view of the village of Beauséjour with the marsh and Misaguash River in the foreground.
Hamilton’s first sketch is a wide panorama that includes the village of Weskawk (Westcock) on the extreme left, and the most comprehensive view that we have of the whole settlement of Beaubassin, including Bute à Roger on the extreme right. It is said by early Acadian historians that an Irishman called Roger Muessey or Caissy or Quessey brought the first apple trees from Port Royal when he settled on the hill still called Butte à Roger. So perhaps Champlain’s stock migrated north to Beaubassin.
Hamilton, John, VIEW/ of the Point of/ Beausejour/ and BUTE/à Roger/ with a distant View of/ Weskawk by J. Hamilton/ 1755. pen and black ink with monochrome wash, sheet 29.5 x 52.4 cm. King George III Collection, Maps K. Top.119.71, British Library, 1755.
Here is the legend.
In this second sketch Hamilton shows us the north end of Ile de la Vallière where the seigneury has long ago disappeared. In the distance on the crest of the hill is the splendid five-bastion Fort Beausejour which I discussed in an earlier post. It is an elegant drawing.
John Hamilton, View of BEAUSEJOUR from ye S.E. 1755, pen and black ink with monochrome wash, sheet 32.9 x 50.8 cm, George III Collection, British Library.
On the Missaguash River in the foreground are fine sketches of men in rowboats and Mi’kmaq in canoes. They are sensitively drawn, even though they are secondary ornament to the bigger composition.
In this third prospect of Beauséjour done by John Hamilton, he concentrates on depicting all the houses in the village. I include details of it because they are our primary clear source of information about the domestic architecture of Beaubassin.
Unsigned [probably by John Hamilton], View of the French Fort at Beau=sejour: 1755, pen and black ink with monochrome and pink wash, sheet 33.7 x 53.5 cm, George III Collection, British Library. 1755.
On the very right of the drawing are the houses of the village of Beausejour.
Except for one larger house on the left they all see aligned in the same direction, have a door and a single window and chimnies both in the centre and on the end. They conjure up Robert Hale’s 1731 description of his visit to Beaubassin quite vividly.
Here is a detail from the middle of the drawing that shows us the hospital with an enclosed yard, the former church in the left middle ground, now a warehouse and the splendid new church with a tall spire which the English call the cathedral.
This church is still an enigma to me, even more so after I came across this pen and ink drawing of the fort and the church on a page of a manuscript that is now in the McCord Museum in Montreal.
Detail of a plan of the western part of the Chignecto Isthmus showing Beauséjour Fort and the surrounding area, About 1750, Ink on paper, 30.5 x 18.2 cm. From a manuscript by Sieur Louis de Courville, Histoire du Canada depuis l’année 1749 jusqu’à 1760, page 100. Gift of Mr. David Ross McCord, M1673.1, © McCord Museum.
You see the fort ready for war, a very large church that seems to have had aisle(s) on the side, thus needing the row of windows or clerestory on top. What is equally fascinating are the various types of houses behind the church and in front of the main road going up into the isthmus of Chignecto.
To conclude this examination of the isthmus of Chignecto, its settlements and houses, I include this very large engraved map of the isthmus done in 1755, sixty-nine years after the glory of Franquelin with which I began this post. Next month it will be cheerfully stolen by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to the King, and published on August 16, 1755. Such stealing was common in those days because copyright laws were only being dreamed about. These two great maps are critical sources of information about what was going on in the Isthmus of Chignecto at that time.
You can download it from the Library of Congress following this link:
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014588182/
You can download Jefferys version of it here:
https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:6t053n859
Le Rouge, Georges-Louis, L’ISTHME/ DE L’ACADIE/ BAYE/ DU BEAUBASSIN. / en Anglois/ SHEGNEKTO./ Environs du Fort/ Beausejour/ A PARIS chez le Rouge/ rüe des Augustins/ levé en juin 1755. / Totum opus aqua forti, pro conatu Le Rouge. Etching, 46 x 32 cm., Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE D-13360, btv1b8491032t, June 1755.
In this detail you can clearly see the ridges of Beaubassin, now Fort Lawrence, and Beausejour, now Fort Cumberland. Beaubassin harbour is clearly delineated, with all its perils, and the Tantramar Marshes, now very well exploited, with fields of fodder crops and herds of cattle, are all marked out.
A Necessary Shocking Interlude!
The Chignecto Marine Transport Railway
It may come as a shock to you that I insert this brief account of late Victorian industrial archaeology, but no discussion of the Isthmus of Chignecto, even one as remote in time as ours, can ignore this event.
Even in the Franquelin map – at the beginning of Chignecto time – there is a need expressed for water transport across the isthmus. A canal is proposed, you may recall. In the centuries after that the desire to eliminate the mass of Nova Scotia and the danger of Sable Island in commercial voyages from the Atlantic seacoast to the depths of the Saint Lawrence River had never faded from peoples’ minds.
As early as 1875 a maritime engineer famous for his completion of the infamous Sao Paolo Railway in Brazil wrote letters to the press proposing a way to solve the Isthmus problem: he would lift ships out of the water at Beaubassin, set them on double railways tracks, and take them across the marshy isthmus and set them down at the Tidnish Terminal using a pair of custom-built locomotives.
The miracle is that, between September 1888 and August 1891 he completed over 90% of this project, comparable it seems, to the building of a pyramid. And then, with a change in Federal government, it all crashed, and in the next generation fell to the ground, was looted for stone and forgotten by most.
Here is the Beaubassin, or Amherst Terminal, as it was called, almost ready to have the huge pistons installed that would raise ships to the level of the double tracks. And there is the engine room and boiler house to generate the energy to do all this.
In time it all collapsed, and if you were to excavate the foreground of this photo, you would find, completely, intact, the lifting dock shown here nearing completion.
In the 1970s I spent 10 years researching this story and collecting every possible image related to it. I walked hundreds of kilometres exploring the 17-mile route across the isthmus of Chignecto.It is all still with me, and I could not leave the isthmus of Chignecto, following the chronology I set for this blog, without expressing the deepest regrets that, in this context at least, I can’t tell you this story. Perhaps another time.
With a sigh let us finish this post by returning to Beaubassin in its last tragic moments in 1755. The war has been lost; the French and Acadians have mostly been ethnically cleansed. The only activity that will be seen into our times will be the exploitation of the Acadian lands by Yorkshire, Baptist and Loyalist settlers. A railroad will pass through. The sea walls keep rising as the Bay of Fundy carries more water to Beaubassin.
After the struggle, Winckworth Tonge, a British military engineer, bought Ile de la Vallière and named it Tonge’s Island, and stayed on and was influential in the politics of the time.
Winckworth Tonge (1727 or 1728-1792) – A DRAUGHT/ of the ISTHMUS/ which joyns Nova Scotia/ to the Continent/ with the Situation of/ the ENGLISH and/ FRENCH FORTS &/ the Adjacent BAYS/ and RIVERS/ by W Tonge/ Chignecto Fort Lawrence 1755. British Library.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winckworth_Tonge
He drew a very handsome map of the territory of Beaubassin and illustrated it with a lovely view of Fort Beausejour, rather in the manner of Hamilton, and finished off his map with one of the last great British Rococo cartouches that would be produced by the mapmakers of British North America.
The cartouche, still in the Rococo frame popular from the 1720s, forms the basis of the design upon which the cartographic information is engraved.
But Tonge will not stop there. He creates a drama – the drama of Chignecto where, on the right, the British conqueror shakes the hand of the Mi’kmaq in accord, or pays him with trade goods for the beaver he has thoughtfully brought along. Spruce trees grow on top of the mound against which the data shield is placed, and for the crowning element, a bird – a raptor! – is tearing apart a fish, perhaps symbolic of the former glory of the French fisheries in the area. Everything connects. The eagle is an ancient heraldic device used on shields and coats of arms. In England the eagle was often represented with its wings extended so that the tips pointed upward, in contrast to continental models.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_(heraldry)
As a further sign of change, young trees grow and cut stumps sprout again. Everywhere there is young growth and roses climb around and bloom. It is the beginning of a new era.
And what of Fort Beausejour? It will be completely rebuilt to British standards. A number of design projects still exist from that time. Tonge gives us the last view of Fort Beausejour, and the houses that surround it, that we will ever see. It is sad to contemplate that story of dream and catastrophe.
A man – is it Tonge? – holds the Red Ensign on Ile de la Vallière, which very soon will be known as Tonge’s Island – the name it has today.
And what else remains today? Fort Beausejour rebuilt as Fort Cumberland. It would be attacked by the Americans during their war of Revolution.
Photo by Kendall Wheaton, 1975.
Now there is nothing but serenity, an elegant landscape of the Enlightenment, covering one of the most callous and shameful episodes in Canadian Colonial history.
Resources
______________________ A Catalogue of the Winthrop Pickard Bell Collection of Acadiana, Mount Allison University, Sackville, 1972.
______________________ Le Mobilier Structurant, Fiche21, 2019-05-04, Taken from this now inactive link: www.culture.gouv.fr/Bretagne/actualite/itpe/images/fiches/Fiche21.pdf
______________________ Les Cahiers du Patrimoine: Neuville Architecture Traditionnelle, Ministère des Affaires culturelles, Direction générale du Patrimoine, Québec, 1976.
Arsenault, Bona, Histoire des Acadiens, Editions Leméac, Ottawa, 1978.
Arsenault, Georges, translated by Sally Ross, Acadian Traditions on Candlemas Day: Candles, Pancakes and House Visits, The Acorn Press, Charlottetown, 2012.
Arsenault, Georges, compiler, Bibliographie acadienne, La Société Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, [Summerside], 1980.
Arsenault, Georges, Complaintes Acadiennes de L’Ile-du-Prince-Edouard, Les Editions Leméac Inc., Ottawa, 1980.
Arsenault, Georges, La Chanson du Pays, La Société Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, Summerside, 1983.
Arsenault, Georges, “The Acadian Settlements of Pinette and Pointe Prime,” published in Keepsakes and Memories: Our Belfast. Origins and times of the people of Belfast, Prince Edward Island. Edited by Susan Hornby. Belfast, Belfast Historical Society, 2009.
Babineau, Rene, editor, Lejeune O.M.I., le R. P. L., Tableaux Synoptiques de l’Histoire de L’Acadie …, 1918, Fascicule Spécial (1500-1760), L’Action Sociale Ltée, Québec, n.d.
Beanlands, Sara J., Annotated Edition of Rev. Dr. Andrew Brown’s Manuscript: “Removal of the French inhabitants of Nova Scotia by Lieut. Governor Lawrence & His Majesty’s Council in October 1755.” A Thesis Submitted to Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History September 2010.
Insert pdf
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Belleisle – Lavoie master thesis
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