Visit to a reconstructed French Fort at Louisbourg in Nova Scotia

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
Thought i would share some pictures with you of a Fort that was destroyed again by my ancestors in around 1758 or there abouts.

What i thought was incredible was how the Canadian gov in the 60's used the project as a retraining scheme for unemployed miners on the island. Hundreds of miners were retrain in everything from stone carving , blacksmith and woodworking you name it to be able to recreate exact replicas of everything that was in the Fortress at the time of its original existence and use by the French. They went to unbelievable lengths from an archaeological point of view to ensure accuracy in everything ensuring that the recreation was exactly the same and produced using the same methods no improvements or modernization.

I thought i took a load more pictures but here are some of what caught my eye.

Piece of furniture with some lovely embellishment carvings. A reminder that we can make our work very attractive and interesting with a little extra effort. Check out the detail on this recreated piece.


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In the chapel they had benches , what suprised me was just how sturdy they were with no stretchers relying on the heft of the wood and the thickness of the tennon on the leg to do the job and it sure does.

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There were cannons and muskets that they actually fire in demonstration at the fort. All were re-casted and in the case of muskets re-manufactured to exact detail.

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Another piece of flatwork with some interesting shape and patters to the draws
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And i could not pass the opportunity to see a boat being built indoors .


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There is much more in the form of all the buildings and furniture in some cases they had to recreate a mechanical rotiserie shown here

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This is just a tiny sample of the many things they had to remake including paper etc to bring the Fortress to life. Its staffed by locals who have been chosen and dress in period clothing and uniform and speak both French and English but also engage with the public to tell the story as if you were back in their time.

An example of this i found out when interacting with a soldier guard near the Church and he asked me where are you from, to which i answered Ontario, he said where is that? I looked at him puzzled knowing full well that he knew where it was but then he said there is no Ontario here only Upper and Lower Canada . LOL I had a good chuckle as it really took you back in time.

They also had a bakery baking bread in the exact same manner and sold fresh bread you could buy. Explaining before the sale the rations a soldier would get back in the day and how long it would be expected to last him.

Really interesting place to visit if you like learning about history. Takes at least a whole day there is a load to see as its a entire village and garrison buidings that have been recreated each is unique in its own way and kitted out to suite owner and period.

We camped with our Trailer in the local town harbor which was also interesting and attended a great show at the local Playhouse. For those of you into music they had a band playing Celtic music with a significant artist playing fiddle and tap dancing. Even the theater had an interesting story to it, apparently it was once a movie set and after the movie filming ended they moved the Shakespearean type theater to the location it is at today and for many years it never had a roof. Only recently through gov grant did they get to put a roof on it and plumbing and electrics and now do shows in it every night. http://louisbourgplayhouse.ca/shows-2015/getting-dark-again-again/
 
Cool stuff Rob,

I think it would be nice if we had more of the traditional trade learning like they did there. A lot of that happened in the states in the 30s with the civilian conservation corp, and they really left a huge legacy of work behind.
 
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