A home in Acadia
It was a killer winter. The first French settlers in North America had no idea how cold it would get when they built a small community on St. Croix Island in 1604. The island was easy to defend, but when temperatures dropped and ice floes blocked the river, they were cut off from the fresh water and hunting grounds on the mainland. Without enough food or firewood, nearly half the settlers died in the intense cold.
But when spring finally arrived, the survivors didn’t give up on the colony they called Acadia. During the summer of 1605, they moved across the Bay of Fundy to Nova Scotia, where they built a new settlement called Port-Royal.
This time, they built a square around a central courtyard, with the buildings close together, to share heat. Their new storehouse was three times larger, and they planted grains and vegetables to fill it. Port-Royal was built to last, a home for settlers in Acadia.
To celebrate Port-Royal’s 400th anniversary, Canada Post has issued a domestic rate (50¢) stamp showing a plan of the settlement drawn by one who lived there, a map-maker named Samuel de Champlain. |
