Stone wall may have defended Canada's oldest British settlement

[Adrian Harper]

Stone wall may have defended Canada's oldest British settlement
 
 
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News ServiceNovember 22, 2009



Archeologists in Cupids, Nfld., have unearthed the remains of a stone wall that may have housed cannons to defend Canada's first English settlement, established on the shore of Conception Bay in 1610. Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, visited the site earlier this month during their royal tour of Canada.
Photograph by: William Gilbert, Handout Photo

[Adrian Harper]

Archeologists at the historic Newfoundland colony visited earlier this month by Prince Charles have made a tantalizing new find: the remnants of a stone wall apparently built to defend Canada's earliest English settlement.

Buried under soil and rubble dumped by 19th-century residents of Cupids — the Conception Bay village set to celebrate its 400th anniversary next year — the wall was hidden until this summer within a thicket of aspen trees north of the enclosed townsite where experts have already unearthed building foundations and artifacts from the original 17th-century colony.

The newly discovered remains suggest the wall might have housed seaward-facing cannons to ward off attackers in the early 1600s, an era when rival fishermen from France, Spain and Portugal — as well as the notorious English pirate Peter Easton — sometimes menaced the fledgling coastal community.

[Adrian Harper]

"We found this feature in September and had it uncovered during the royal visit," Bill Gilbert, the site's chief archeologist, told Canwest News Service. "I did mention it briefly to the prince but the tour was so short — only 20 minutes — that we didn't get to go into anything in too much detail."

If the 46-centimetre-thick wall proves to be what it looks like at first glance — a bulwark protecting Britain's first foothold in the future Canada — the discovery will add another layer of significance to a site already rich with symbolism.

Like the traces of earliest French settlements at St. Croix Island off New Brunswick's southern coast (1604) and at Quebec City (1608), the archeological finds at Cupids represent the beginnings of a permanent European presence in the northern half of the New World.

[Adrian Harper]

"If this feature does turn out to be a defence work or redoubt, then it is quite significant — but then again, all the discoveries at the site are significant given that this is the first English settlement in Canada," Gilbert said. "We have, among other things, the first English dwelling house and storehouse in Canada and the first English cemetery."

The property where the barrier was unearthed was only purchased by the provincial government last year. The clearing of trees and bushes this summer initially revealed a linear mound and then — after some digging by Gilbert's team in September and November — the buried base of the stone wall from four centuries ago.

"At this point, it is too early to say what the structure was used for," said Gilbert. "However, its location outside the enclosure and overlooking the harbour with a clear view to the west, north and east suggests that it may have played a role in the defence of the settlement."

Gilbert points out that the founder of the Cupids colony, English merchant John Guy, noted in a May 1611 letter that the settlers had erected three cannons "to command the harboroughs" in case of hostile encounters.

[Adrian Harper]

"It seems unlikely that anything other than some sort of defence works would have been placed in such a strategic and exposed position," said Gilbert.

Prince Charles, who studied archeology at university and appeared enthralled while touring the Cupids' site in early November, hailed the courage of Guy and his colonists for blazing a trail for future New World settlers.

"The story of Cupids is the story of Canada," said the future king, whose distant ancestors granted the royal charters securing Britain's claims to Newfoundland and other North American colonies.

"It is emblematic of the resilience and determination of those who came later to these shores in different times and in different circumstances," he noted. "The unifying factor, it seems to me, is that they all came with a purpose, a dream to create something new."
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