Louisbourg

Dr. Steven Eames of North Berwick, Maine, founder of the modern snowshoe men, said the group was founded in 1994 in preparation for the Grand Encampment at Fortress Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island, in 1995, the 250th anniversary of the siege of the French fortress by British and Colonial troops.

Allow a full day to tour the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, a fortified town the French built in the 1700s to protect present-day Cape Breton and Prince Edward islands, as well as to dry, salt and sell the tons of cod the French fleet was catching off the Grand Banks.

Our drive on the Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park was awesome, as was our visit to the impressive Fortress of Louisbourg.

“Forced into the Louisbourg coal mines in Canada. They work and die under the ground. They never see the sun, and they’ll never taste your freeeeeedom.”

But the film begins elsewhere, in a much older part of the country, Louisbourg, an early 18th-century French settlement in Nova Scotia, now largely a colourful holiday resort, which Margot is visiting to write material for a travel brochure.