Last night about fifty of us gathered at the Fort Anne parking area at 9:30 pm where we each received a candle lantern to carry on the graveyard tour. It was not the Halloween, scare-you kind of tour. It was led by internationally acclaimed heritage interpreter, Alan Melanson; he has been doing this tour for 23 years. A 10th generation Acadian, he uses the tour as an opportunity to talk about the history of Annapolis Royal and the Acadian culture. He also gets in a fair number of encouraging comments about historic preservation. He is a past president of the Annapolis Royal Historical Association and he is justifiably proud of their preservation record. It was also a lot of fun.
People came from all over Canada, the United States and Europe. We each were given one of the lanterns.
Alan Melanson, a historian and storyteller, in costume, leading us through the graveyard.
Today we crossed the Annapolis River basin to visit Port-Royal National Historic Site; it is also called the Habitation. Port-Royal was the 2nd European settlement in North America. First was Saint Augustine, Florida, by the Spanish, in 1562. Second, Port-Royal, 1605; and, third was Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. It was originally established as a fur trading venture. An original group, under the leadership of Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, arrived in 1604, but a severe winter and lack of provisions led to the death of almost half of the 79 colonists. In the spring of 1605, another group, accompanied by cartographer and explorer Samuel de Champlain, arrived to find a more suitable location.
After a summer of exploration and on the recommendation of Champlain, the colonists chose to settle on the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, at Port-Royal, a beautiful, sheltered harbor. The area lay within the traditional territory of the Mi'kmaq and the Mi'kmaq and the French began an enduring friendship and alliance. Membertou, the chief of the region, played a central role in forging this relationship. With the two peoples sharing knowledge and customs the French were able to survive. The Habitation survived until 1613 when it was attacked by a British raiding party from Virginia. This site was then forgotten and the French built a grander fort across the river at what became Annapolis Royal (yesterday's blog).
An American, Harriette Taber Richardson, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, frequently visited her cousin who lived in the Port-Royal area. Harriette, an amateur historian, heard the stories of the Acadians and of the first French settlement. One day, while she was out walking in the field across the road from her cousin's house, she found some artifacts from the original fort. She conceived the idea that The Habitation should be rebuilt by the descendants of the colonists who had destroyed the original in 1613. She organized the Associates of Port Royal in 1928. The Depression curtailed her initial efforts but she kept the idea alive until the Government of Canada undertook the project, as a kind of WPA effort, in 1938.
The Canadian government rebuilt the Habitation in 1939-1940 using descriptions and engravings from Champlain's works and detailed studies of the construction methods used in France at the time. It was the first large-scale reconstruction undertaken by the federal government, a milestone in the preservation movement in Canada.
Individual building surround an interior courtyard.
Costumed interpreters engage the public, especially children. This is Kyle, he is shaving pine boards to become shingles.
Sieur de Mons' residence.
Unemployed and retired shipbuilders were used to erect the buildings using no nails. All the joints are pegged. (Just ignore the sprinkler system pipe used to protect this wooden buildings.)
A moose hide decorated in the Mi'kmaq style. The Mi'kmaq would have used such a hide as a cloak.
The Habitation was built as a fur trading center. This is the Trading Room.
Another moose hide decorated by the Mi'kmaq.
The apothecary room.
A cannon on a platform that that faced the water. Notice the little cannon balls below the gun.
The kitchen. Somehow I think this reconstruction looks a lot better than the original Habitation.
A real pleasure of the day was meeting the five gentlemen picture below. We were walking out of the reconstruction together when I noticed that one man had on a T-shirt with the outline of the state of Louisiana on it and the name Dugas above the outline. We had noticed the name Dugas on the lists of the original Acadians who had been deported. Cheryl Dugas Ethier is the name of our Financial Advisor in Providence. On an impulse, we asked him if he was from Louisiana. It turns out that these five guys are descendants of deported Acadians who settled in Louisiana. They had come to the area on a long-dreamed of trip to see where their ancestors had come from. We then had a long conversation about the Louisiana Acadians and what their culture means to them. They were so friendly and open. Two of the men are brothers, one is their double first cousin (Their mothers were sisters and their fathers were brothers. They say that happens a lot where they come from.) The other two are good friends.
Left to right - Shane Dugas, Russell Breaux, John DelCambre, Mac Dugas and Ken Dugas. Five really nice guys!
After lunch we continued to the Bay of Fundy shore, about 15 miles northwest of Annapolis Royal, at the end of the road at Delaps Cove. At the Visitor Center yesterday we learned of a wilderness trail that would take us to a waterfall.
A portion of the trail goes along the coast. At one section, people had erected these versions of inukchuk. We stopped to build one too, it's in the lower right of the above picture.
The tide was out which means that the water was about 27' below hight tide. In this cove, the rounded rocks were all colored green and it looked like a bowl of peas. At high tide they would all be under water.
Bohaker Falls on the Delaps Cove Wilderness Trail.
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