Village Squire, 1977-06, Page 29TRAVEL
Children at play in the de Gannes House.
Louisbourg recreates
atmosphere
of early
Canadian life
BY
SILVER DON CAMERON
Every working morning, all summer
long, Mrs. Jeannette Haley rises in the
small industrial city of Sydney, Nova
Scotia, makes her breakfast, packs a
lunch, and goes to work in the 18th
century.
"I'm not the same person at work," she
laughs. "I'm quite shy, me, but you never
feel shy in costume, you feel like you're
part of it. You're really living that life."
"That life" is the daily life of the walled
city of Louisbourg, created at the command
of King Louis XIV of France in 1713,
captured by New England irregulars in
1745, returned to the French three years
later, conquered again by English redcoats
in 1758, and destroyed almost as
completely as Carthage. The struggle for
Louisbourg was one of the crucial events of
North American history. With Louisbourg
lost, Quebec was bottled up in the St.
Lawrence Valley, and fell the next year. As
a result, says historian Dr. Robert Morgan,
"Canada became an English-speaking
nation with French enclaves, rather than
the other way around."
But Louisbourg has risen again, in a
reproduction which is accurate down to the
very nails, hand -forged in the fortress' own
smithy. In 1961, casting about for a good
make-work project for Cape Breton
Island's apparently redundant coal miners,
the Canadian government hit upon the
scheme of rebuilding Louisbourg. The
ruins were only a few miles from the
mining towns, and in reconstructing the
town the miners would learn marketable
skills such as masonry, carpentry and
ironwork; the restored site itself would
attract tourists to fortify the local economy.
restored site itself would attract tourists to
fortify the local economy.
Sixteen years and nearly $25 million
later. Jeannette Haley has "the best job
you possibly could have."
"Last year, most of the time, I was a
servant in the de Gannes de Falaise
house," she explains," and what we'd do
all day is what they did in 1744. We scrub
the floors, keep the fire going, clean the
windows, wash the clothes. We use
home-made soap, like they would have
used. And of course we talk to the tourists,
explain things if they ask about them, but
usually we just go on with our lives as if
they weren't there."
"I guess that's a difference from some
other historic places. We don't have any
little speeches all prepared. Sometimes
you get people coming in and they say,
Well, give us your talk. So we explain that
we don't do that but if they have any
questions we'll try to answer them --".
In French, or in English?
"Whichever language they use." About
65 percent of the animators are bilingual --
VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1977, 27.