Village Squire, 1977-06, Page 30Jeannette Haled in period costume.
and about 20 percent of the fortress'
133,000 summer visitors are French
speaking. Louisbourg is, after all, a living
recreation of their own heritage.
Jeannette Haley, despite the Irish name
of her late husband, was born a Boudreau
in the Acadian village of Cheticamp on
Cape Breton's west coast. French is her
native language. "My grandfather used to
boil to hear English spoken," she
remembers. "He lived to be nearly a
hundred, and he had heard all the terrible
stories about how the English expelled the
Acadians. Our own family went from the
Annapolis Valley to Isle St. Jean -- that's
Prince Edward Island now -- when it was
governed from Louisbourg. Then they
came across the Gulf to Cheticamp and hid
there. The English were looking for them
to expel them again. But they never found
them."
A direct connection runs from the French
empire of 1744 to Jeannette Haley today,
and she understands the connection very
well.
28, V►1.LAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1977.
"I was always interested in history," she
explains, "and that's another reason I love
this job, you learn so much. all the time. If
a visitor asks a question and you don't
know the answer, it's just a natural thing,
you're going to find out. During the
winters, when I'm not working, I like to
read up on the history. You don't have time
during the summers, the time goes so fast.
You cannot believe how fast it goes."
Actually, I can believe it. Louisbourg is
an astonishing place, a combination of a
highpowered research institution, a major
construction site. a vast stage for
educationai theatre, a generator of myth, a
form of ancestor worship, a gigantic toy. Its
permanent staff of about 175, which swells
,_to_about 300 in the summer, aims to
recreate "a moment in time," as
Superintendent John Fortier puts it --one of
the greatest of New World fortresses,
exactly as it was in the Louis Quinze
summer of 1744, the boisterous garrison
town whose trade rivalled that of Boston
and New York. The reproduction looks and
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