Sat. 17th October ‘26
Ingonish to Sydney (not that one!) is only short 110km drive as we complete the Cabot Trail at the northern tip of Cape Breton. The main objective of the day is the historic Fortress of Louisbourg, which I have been looking forward to visiting since I first got hooked on the history of the French & British in Canada back in Québec City. Before we get there, though, there is more coastline to see and lighthouses to take pictures of and autumn foliage to enjoy. We even manage to find a railway museum.
Even better, we find that there is an opportunity to take a shortcut on the Englishtown ferry across one of the many inlets on the island. The sun is shining; there isn’t too much wind and it’s only a two-minute crossing on a cable ferry. Surely this one is going to be running?? You’d think so, but when we get to the turnoff for the ferry there is a sign to say that the ferry isn’t running! What is it with us and ferries. Even worse, after we drive all the way round the inlet, we take a look in at the ferry neatly moored up. The length of the ferry is about half the width of the crossing. I think, if I had a run, I could jump the remaining section. Oh well!
So, it is on to Louisbourg where the fortress is a National Historic Site operated by Parks Canada, so our annual passes come in useful yet again. This is the largest historical reconstruction in North America. A quarter of the original 18th-century French fortified town has been rebuilt on its excavated foundations, staffed by costumed interpreters, with the harbour and the Atlantic beyond. It’s an extraordinary place, and when I found that it only had a 40 year operational lifespan, I was intrigued and had to find out not just the history, but why it was so important. Here’s what I now know:
In 1713 at Utrecht, France ceded Acadia (the Nova Scotian mainland) along with Newfoundland and Hudson Bay. But it explicitly kept Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island). So Louisbourg was not built on ceded ground; it was built on what remained French territory precisely because the mainland had been lost. The fortress exists as a direct consequence of the Treaty of Utrecht.
Why there, and why so vast? France needed a replacement for Port-Royal (on mainland Acadia / Nova Scotia) to do three jobs: protect the cod fishery, which was worth more to the French economy than the fur trade; guard the entrance to the Gulf of St Lawrence and therefore the sea road to Quebec; and provide a base for privateers against New England shipping. Settlers displaced from Plaisance in Newfoundland were moved to the site in 1713, and construction began in 1719. It took nearly thirty years and cost so much that there’s a (probably apocryphal) story of Louis XV asking whether he might see its towers from Versailles. By the 1740s it was one of the busiest ports in North America.
It was also, militarily, a disappointment. The design assumed attack from the sea. Both times it fell, the attackers simply landed troops in a cove a few miles away and besieged it from the landward side, where the ground is low and overlooked. The first siege, in 1745, was the humiliating one: a force of New England militia under William Pepperrell took the "Gibraltar of the North" in 46 days.
If politics is messy and transactional today, then it was even worse in the C18th. In 1748, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of the Austrian Succession, and Britain handed Louisbourg straight back to France in exchange for Madras. New Englanders who had lost men and money taking it were incandescent. Britain founded Halifax the following year as a counterweight. So, France did regain it and it needed taking a second time.
The second siege, 1758, is the one that matters. Amherst and Boscawen landed at Kennington Cove, with Wolfe commanding a brigade, and the fortress fell on 26 July after seven weeks. That opened the St Lawrence, and it is what made Wolfe’s assault on Quebec possible the following summer. Louisbourg is the precondition for the Plains of Abraham.
And then the British blew it up. Over 1760–61, engineers systematically demolished the fortifications with gunpowder. This was deliberate policy: having been forced to return the place once by treaty, London intended to make certain it could never be given back as a bargaining chip again. Which is why what exists today is a reconstruction – about a quarter of the original town, rebuilt on excavated foundations from the 1960s onward, partly as work for unemployed Cape Breton coal miners.
The legal transfer came three years later in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, when France ceded Canada, Cape Breton and everything east of the Mississippi. So, in summary, the sequence is: 1713 Utrecht takes mainland Acadia, 1748 Aix-la-Chapelle briefly gives Louisbourg back, 1758 takes it by force, 1760 ends the fighting, and 1763 Paris makes it permanent. Fifty years, four documents, one slow dispossession and a piece of history I have found fascinating.
Brains full, it is on to Sydney and our hotel. This is really the end of our sightseeing in Cape Breton as tomorrow we start our long drive back to Québec. It has been as good as I hoped. Absolutely wild in places, quite remote, and very spectacular. We timed our trip here just right. The trees are still in full colour, and winter has not yet arrived. I think that when it does it will be hard to get around judging by the skidoo track signs we keep seeing. And to think that the northernmost tip of Cape Breton is quite some way south of our home in Suffolk. Thank you, Gulf Stream!