The idea behind The Lost World of Cape Breton Island project came about by accident some years ago when I stumbled across one of the many old maps of Louisbourg harbour that had been created for the French Secretary of the Navy during the mid-18th century. The map was entitled Carte du Port de Louisbourg et de ses Environs. There was nothing inherently unique about it – it looked like the hundreds of other maps of the Fortress of Louisbourg that had been published through the centuries – except for the fact that it was one of the only maps I had seen that had included the roads around Louisbourg harbour in its composition. One of the roads it identified by name was a road called Le Grand Chemin de Miré, loosely translated “The Great Mira Road” in English. I had heard of this centuries old road before, and over the years it has taken on an almost mythical element to people living in the area of Louisbourg, but to my surprise it wasn’t located anywhere near where it was generally thought to have been. 

Some research revealed to me this road’s full extent – all the way from Louisbourg harbour to the shores of the Mira opposite the mouth of Salmon River. More digging revealed that, during the 18th century, two villages had actually sprung up along this road, but their exact locations were now lost to the passing of time. And even more research confirmed that additional villages had existed on Cape Breton Island during the same period that had also disappeared from the collective cultural memory of modern-day Cape Bretoners. Over time I discovered some of the memoirs, journals and correspondence of the people who were eye-witnesses to these settlements. Their writings revealed an island that was familiar, but fundamentally different from the one we now know – for example, these documents talk about “Miré Lake,” not the Mira River, and the towering heights that overlook St. Ann’s Bay as “The Four Sons of Aymond” instead of today’s Murray Mountain. The people that were immigrating to the Island and trying to eke out a living were not English or Gaelic, they were French, Breton, and Basque. But most interesting of all was the discovery of stories and experiences from these long forgotten communities – communities that can no longer pass on their own history.

Why are some of these stories not part of the Island’s rich folklore today? The answer is simple – there is no one left to “culturally” remember Louisbourg and what happened during the years that Cape Breton Island was a colony of France. The English, Gaels, Acadians and Mi’kmaq can claim an unbroken line of descent centuries in the making, but who in Cape Breton can presently claim to have descended from French citizens who lived in Île Royale during the Ancien Régime nearly three centuries ago?

It’s the goal of this project to explore the human element of these communities through the memoirs, journals and correspondence of the very people who saw it with their own eyes – to reconstruct this lost world of Cape Breton Island. “Why,” you may ask, “are these stories even worth telling?” Because they, like those of us born and raised in Cape Breton today, also called this island “home.”

– J.M. Bourgeois

© J.M Bourgeois & J.R. Bourgeois 2020-2025