New France, and later, British North America, dotted the landscape of their colonies in the New World with military architecture that had its origins in Europe in ancient times, and through evolution, had developed into a geometric system of earthworks that could sometimes withstand the attack of cannons. Flying over Fort Beauséjour in 1975, as part of an experiment in aerial archaeology, I took this photo using infra red colour film. It gives the landscape a peculiar colour and the plan of the fort and the earthworks surrounding it are intensified by the unfamiliar colour. You see it with new eyes. The basic plan is like a five-pointed star with…

There was no end to my desire to study the topography of Chignecto in which I lived from 1967 to 1981. I drove in my car, rode my horse and walked on foot over many kilometers of ground much travelled by the Mi’kmaq, the French, the Acadians and the English in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Isthmus of Chignecto, joining New Brunswick to mainland Nova Scotia has witnessed the presence of human beings for over 12,000 years. When the French arrived there in the Seventeenth Century the Mi’kmaq had been there for over 2,000 years.   … Sikniktuk (or Chignecto) is located in Siknikt, one of the seven districts of Mi’kma’ki…

FIFTY YEARS AGO a remarkable woman of vision and energy, Catherine Hennessey, with the help and support of her late friends, Irene Rogers and Dr. John Maloney, conceived the idea of a decentralised museum system for the Province of Prince Edward Island. By 1973 HRH Queen Elizabeth officially opened Beaconsfield, the headquarters of the PEI Heritage Foundation. Catherine also worked without a stop all these years, in many capacities, to preserve and interpret the city of Charlottetown which was designed in 1768 according to classically-inspired principles of the British Enlightenment. It remains intact to this day and Hennessey’s role in this cannot be exaggerated. Eleven years ago the City of…

I had the pleasure of living in one of the most historically concentrated areas of the nebulous region of Acadia for fourteen years! From September 1967 until the end of December 1981 when I moved to Charlottetown, I lived in Sackville, and finally in Point de Bute. That period was the most stimulating time of my life in the areas of personal development, academic achievement, my birth as a good teacher and the skills I acquired as an historical topographer. It is also where my maternal French ancestors made their home in the Seventeenth Century, and helped reclaim the marshes. As I travelled about the Isthmus of Chignecto I became…

In my previous post I discussed how the name Acadia came into existence, being the corruption of the name Arcadia given by Verrazzano in 1524 to a large area of land in what is now Virginia. The name never went away and when the Dutch and the English colonised the New England coast in the following centuries, it simply seemed to move northeast until finally it stopped moving in what is now Nova Scotia. There are a couple of maps in the Sixteenth Century that show Arcadia but by the beginning Seventeenth Century Arcadia becomes modified into various derivations such as Cadie. By 1613 Champlain calls it Cadye in his…