St. Peter's Gaelic: Baile Pheadair | |
---|---|
Nickname(s): Gateway to the Bras d'Or The Village on the Canal Where the Ocean meets the Inland Sea | |
Coordinates: 45°39′52″N60°52′33″W / 45.664555°N 60.875744°W | |
Country | Canada |
Province | Nova Scotia |
Municipality | Richmond County |
Founded | 1650 |
Government | |
• Village Chair | Esther McDonnell |
• Village Committee | Commissioners of St. Peter's |
Area | |
• Total | 346.8 km2 (133.9 sq mi) |
Highest elevation | 38 m (125 ft) |
Lowest elevation | 0 m (0 ft) |
Population (2001) | |
• Total | 2,634 |
• Density | 7.6/km2 (20/sq mi) |
Time zone | UTC-4 (AST) |
Postal code span | B0E 3B0 |
Area code | 902 |
Telephone Exchange | 535, 785 |
Website | visitstpeters.com |
St. Peter's (Scottish Gaelic: Baile Pheadair; formerly known as "Santo Pedro", "Saint-Pierre", "Port Toulouse", and "St. Peters") is a small incorporated village located on Cape Breton Island in Richmond County, Nova Scotia, Canada.
This village is located on a narrow isthmus which separates the southern end of Bras d'Or Lake, known as St. Peter's Inlet, to the north from St. Peter's Bay on the Atlantic Ocean to the south. The isthmus is crossed by the St. Peters Canal which is almost exclusively used by pleasure boats in recent decades.
It is home to Battery Provincial Park. This park is situated on a hillside overlooking St. Peter's Bay adjacent to the St. Peter's Canal National Historic Site. Its entrance is on the east side of the bridge at the canal. Battery features a small saltwater beach (unsupervised), an interpretive display, picnic area with ocean frontage, and 3 kilometres /1.8 miles of hiking trails. [1]
St. Peter's is also located on Trunk 4, one of the province's trunk or secondary highways. An expressway, Highway 104, is scheduled to be extended from its present terminus several kilometres west of St. Peter's to Sydney. When this occurs, Highway 104 will carry the Trans-Canada Highway designation on Cape Breton Island, for which Highway 105 is now designated. [ citation needed ]
The Nicolas Denys Museum is located in the village, but is only open in the summer. St. Peter's used to be served by a Canadian National Railways branch line which was abandoned in the early 1980s.
St. Peter's is one of North America's oldest European establishments. Prior to the arrival of the French, it was a Portuguese trading and fishing post named Santo Pedro in the 16th century. It was abandoned by Portugal in the early 17th century, and taken over by France in the 1630s when a small fortified settlement named Saint-Pierre (again named for Saint Peter) was built by merchants from La Rochelle, France on the isthmus. In 1650, La Rochelle merchant Nicholas Denys took possession of Saint-Pierre and encouraged the fur trade with local members of the Mi'kmaq Nation who used the isthmus as a canoe portage route between the Atlantic Ocean and Bras d'Or Lake. In addition to establishing a fur trading post, Denys later used the isthmus as a "haulover road" for portaging small sailing ships from Bras d'Or Lake to the Atlantic and vice versa. [2]
In 1653, along with raiding Pentagouet (Castine, Maine), LaHave, Nova Scotia, and Nipisguit (Bathurst, New Brunswick), Emmanuel Le Borgne with 100 men also raided Saint-Pierre. [3] Denys was taken prisoner and returned to France.
Nicolas Denys was here between 1650–1669 and then Cape Breton remained unsettled by Europeans until the establishment of Louisbourg and re-establishment of Fort Dauphin (Englishtown, Nova Scotia) and Saint Peters 1713–1758.
France lost possession of present-day peninsular (mainland) Nova Scotia to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. France began moving some Acadian colonists to Île Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island) to populate this remaining outpost of French Acadia. Port Toulouse—named after Louis Alexandre, Count of Toulouse—was created by Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville near the 17th-century location of the fortified community of Saint-Pierre as a logistics base and supply centre for the Fortress of Louisbourg. To protect Port Toulouse, Rouville built another fortification on the shore called Point Jérome. [4] A colonial military officer of New France, Rouville is best known in North America for leading the raid on Deerfield, Province of Massachusetts Bay on 29 February 1704 and was widely reviled by the settlers of New England for his tactics of raiding poorly defended settlements.
Along with Saint-Pierre, the French also established Fort St. Anne at present-day Englishtown as the other garrison on Île Royal to support the Fortress of Louisbourg.
During King George's War, just prior to the Siege of Louisbourg (1745), the village was attacked in the Siege of Port Toulouse.
In August 1752 during Father Le Loutre's War, the schooners Friendship of Halifax and Dolphin of New England were seized and 21 prisoners held for ransom by Mi'kmaq at St. Peter's. [5]
During the French and Indian War, after the final Siege of Louisbourg (1758), the forts at Port Toulouse and the settlements in the area were destroyed by the British and the rest of Île Royale became a British colony.
After Louisbourg fell on 26 July 1758, French officer Boishébert withdrew, with the British in pursuit. Boishebert brought back a large number of Acadians from the region around Port Toulouse to the security of his post at Beaubears Island on the Miramichi River. (On 13 August 1758 French officer Boishebert left Miramichi, New Brunswick with 400 soldiers, including Acadians from Port Toulouse, for Fort St. George (Thomaston, Maine). His detachment reached there on 9 September but was caught in an ambush and had to withdraw. They then went on to raid Friendship, Maine, where people were killed and others taken prisoner. [6] This was Boishébert's last Acadian expedition. From there, Boishebert and the Acadians went to Quebec and fought in the Battle of Quebec (1759).) [7] [8]
After the war, Britain sponsored settlers and displaced veterans from the Seven Years' War to move into the area of Port Toulouse.
France declared war on Great Britain on 1 February 1793 during the French Revolutionary Wars. In response, Britain built Fort Dorchester on the summit of Mount Granville, a hill overlooking the isthmus.
The village of St. Peter's was founded early in the 1800s. Local residents rehabilitated Denys's old "haulover road", laying wood skids for portaging small sailing ships across the isthmus. The route through Bras d'Or Lake was considered a much shorter and safer voyage to Sydney than travelling around the exposed southern coast of Cape Breton Island. In 1825 a feasibility study into building a canal was undertaken. Construction of the St. Peters Canal began in 1854 and took 15 years of digging, blasting and drilling through a solid granite hill 20 m high (66 ft) to build a channel 800 m long (2,600 ft) with an average width of 30 m (100 ft). The canal opened in 1869 at the dawn of the industrial age on Cape Breton Island. There can be a tidal difference of up to 1.4 m (4.5 ft), thus a double-lock system was designed to regulate water levels. The lock is the only one of its kind in North America. [9]
The walls of the canal were lined with timber planking and locks were installed at each end. Modifications to the canal and lock continued until 1917 and the canal saw moderate to heavy use by small coastal steamships and barges, particularly during the First and Second World Wars when coal from the Sydney Coal Field was transported on this sheltered inland route to avoid U-boats. A marble quarry on the western shore of Bras d'Or Lake at Marble Mountain also generated some shipping traffic.
The canal was designated a National Historic Site in 1929 and the federal government took over its operation. Parks Canada is the government agency responsible for its maintenance and operation and undertook a major project to restore both entrances to the canal in 1985. During the post-war, commercial shipping has largely avoided traveling through Bras d'Or Lake and the canal is almost exclusively used by pleasure boats, particularly sailboats with the increased popularity of cruising Bras d'Or Lake in recent decades.
Parks Canada operates the canal from May to October each year. Vessels transiting the canal are limited by the size of the lock, which measures 91.44 m long (300.0 ft), 14.45 m wide (47.4 ft), and 4.88 m draught (16.0 ft). The ruins of Nicholas Denys's Fort Saint-Pierre are located on the grounds of the lockmaster's house (ca. 1876), and the ruins of Fort Dorchester are located on Mount Granville, which overlooks the Atlantic approach to the canal.
St. Peters contains two National Historic Sites:
The 1876 Lockmaster's House beside the canal is a Recognized Federal Heritage Building, [12] while the circa 1870 MacAskill House, the birthplace of photographer Wallace MacAskill, is a Provincially Registered Property. [13] The Fort Toulouse Archaeological Site is protected under the provincial Special Places Protection Act. [14] [15]
Cape Breton Island is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada.
Acadia was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River. During much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Norridgewock on the Kennebec River and Castine at the end of the Penobscot River were the southernmost settlements of Acadia. The French government specified land bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and 46th parallels. It was eventually divided into British colonies. The population of Acadia included the various indigenous First Nations that comprised the Wabanaki Confederacy, the Acadian people and other French settlers.
The Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, the Great Deportation, and the Deportation of the Acadians, was the forced removal, by the British, of the Acadian people from parts of a Canadian-American region historically known as Acadia, between 1755–1764. The area included the present-day Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and the present-day U.S. state of Maine. The Expulsion, which caused the deaths of thousands of people, occurred during the French and Indian War and was part of the British military campaign against New France.
The Isthmus of Chignecto is an isthmus bordering the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that connects the Nova Scotia peninsula with North America.
The St. Peters Canal is a small shipping canal located in eastern Canada on Cape Breton Island. It crosses an isthmus in the village of St. Peter's, Nova Scotia which connects St. Peters Inlet of Bras d'Or Lake to the north with St. Peters Bay of the Atlantic Ocean to the south.
Île-Royale was a French colony in North America that existed from 1713 to 1763. It consisted of two islands, Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean. It was ceded to the British Empire after the Seven Years' War, and is today part of Canada.
Charles Deschamps de Boishébert was a member of the Compagnies Franches de la Marine and was a significant leader of the Acadian militia's resistance to the Expulsion of the Acadians. He settled and tried to protect Acadians refugees along the rivers of New Brunswick. At Beaubears National Park on Beaubears Island, New Brunswick he settled refugee Acadians during the Expulsion of the Acadians.
Beaubears Island is an island at the confluence of the Northwest Miramichi and Southwest Miramichi Rivers near Miramichi, New Brunswick. The island is most famous for being the site of an Acadian refugee camp during the French and Indian War. The camp was under the command of leader of the Acadian resistance to the expulsion, Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot.
Skmaqn–Port-la-Joye–Fort Amherst is a National Historic Site located in Rocky Point, Prince Edward Island.
Port La Tour is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in the Municipality of the District of Barrington of Shelburne County.
Villagedale is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in the Municipality of the District of Barrington of Shelburne County.
Port-Toulouse was an Acadian village situated in the French colony of Île-Royale, which is now Cape Breton Island. It was located on the present site of the Nova Scotian village of St. Peter's, on the strait that separates Bras d'Or Lake from the Atlantic Ocean.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence campaign occurred during the French and Indian War when British forces raided villages along present-day New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula coast of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Sir Charles Hardy and Brigadier-General James Wolfe were in command of the naval and military forces respectively. After the siege of Louisbourg, Wolfe and Hardy led a force of 1,500 troops in nine vessels to the Gaspé Bay arriving there on September 5. From there they dispatched troops to Miramichi Bay, Grande-Rivière, Quebec and Pabos, and Mont-Louis, Quebec. Over the following weeks, Sir Charles Hardy took 4 sloops or schooners, destroyed about 200 fishing vessels and took about two hundred prisoners.
Fort Menagoueche was a French fort at the mouth of the St. John River, New Brunswick, Canada. French Officer Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot and Ignace-Philippe Aubert de Gaspé built the fort during Father Le Loutre's War and eventually burned it themselves as the French retreated after losing the Battle of Beausejour. It was reconstructed as Fort Frederick by the British.
Fort Ste. Anne is a former French military fort located at present-day Englishtown, Nova Scotia, on the Island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The Battle at Port-la-Joye was a battle in King George's War that took place with British against French troops and Mi'kmaq militia on the banks of present-day Hillsborough River, Prince Edward Island in the summer of 1746. French officer Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Roch de Ramezay sent French and Mi'kmaq forces to Port-la-Joye where they surprised and defeated a force of 200 Massachusetts militia in two British naval vessels that were gathering provisions for recently captured Louisbourg.
Nova Scotia is a Canadian province located in Canada's Maritimes. The region was initially occupied by Mi'kmaq. The colonial history of Nova Scotia includes the present-day Canadian Maritime provinces and the northern part of Maine, all of which were at one time part of Nova Scotia. In 1763 Cape Breton Island and St. John's Island became part of Nova Scotia. In 1769, St. John's Island became a separate colony. Nova Scotia included present-day New Brunswick until that province was established in 1784. During the first 150 years of European settlement, the colony was primarily made up of Catholic Acadians, Maliseet and Mi'kmaq. During the latter seventy-five years of this time period, there were six colonial wars that took place in Nova Scotia. After agreeing to several peace treaties, this long period of warfare ended with the Halifax Treaties (1761) and two years later when the British defeated the French in North America (1763). During these wars, Acadians, Mi'kmaq and Maliseet from the region fought to protect the border of Acadia from New England. They fought the war on two fronts: the southern border of Acadia, which New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. The other front was in Nova Scotia and involved preventing New Englanders from taking the capital of Acadia, Port Royal, establishing themselves at Canso.
The military history of the Acadians consisted primarily of militias made up of Acadian settlers who participated in wars against the English in coordination with the Wabanaki Confederacy and French royal forces. A number of Acadians provided military intelligence, sanctuary, and logistical support to the various resistance movements against British rule in Acadia, while other Acadians remained neutral in the contest between the Franco–Wabanaki Confederacy forces and the British. The Acadian militias managed to maintain an effective resistance movement for more than 75 years and through six wars before their eventual demise. According to Acadian historian Maurice Basque, the story of Evangeline continues to influence historic accounts of the expulsion, emphasising Acadians who remained neutral and de-emphasising those who joined resistance movements. While Acadian militias were briefly active during the American Revolutionary War, the militias were dormant throughout the nineteenth century. After confederation, Acadians eventually joined the Canadian War efforts in World War I and World War II. The most well-known colonial leaders of these militias were Joseph Broussard and Joseph-Nicolas Gautier.
The Ile Saint-Jean campaign was a series of military operations in fall 1758, during the Seven Years' War, to deport the Acadians who either lived on Ile Saint-Jean or had taken refuge there from earlier deportation operations. Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Rollo led a force of 500 British troops to take possession of Ile Saint-Jean.
Joseph Dugas was a merchant, privateer and militia officer of Acadian descent.
Coordinates: 45°39′50.27″N60°53′40.09″W / 45.6639639°N 60.8944694°W