Fort Edward
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada

America, North and South, was of great interest to Europe. Imagine living in an increasingly cramped, centuries-old, dynamically squabbling society such as Europe, and then realizing that there existed, o'er the ocean to your west, a whole 'nother continent which was, for all intents and purposes, absent of any pre-existing human life. Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Great Britain all went to great lengths to secure as much of the New World as humanly possible in the Age of Discovery. Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands wound up concentrating most of their efforts in Central- and South America, eventually leaving France and Britain to duke it out in the northern hemisphere.

New France included an enormous chunk of what is today Canada, and the folks who put down roots in much of this area through the 17th century were known as Acadians. The Acadians got on relatively well with the native Indians (better than the English ever did, anyway) and, had they been left to their own devices, surely would have developed into one of the world's great societies. What would an umolested Acadia have been like in the 21st century? Interesting but moot, because it was an historic imperative that anything that was French had to be violently contested by the British, and vice-versa.

You know what they say: Third time's the charm. With much fanfare following their capture of Port-Royal, the Brits renamed the town Annapolis Royal, and enjoyed that aforementioned flush of having decisively captured their first French colonial possession. The island, then known simply as Acadia, was grandly renamed Nova Scotia (New Scotland), and the Acadians who lived there began doing the thing at which Acadians would thenceforth become experts: Going elsewhere.

Though Britain now ruled this land, it was a land full of Catholic, more-or-less French-speaking Acadians and the Mi'kmaq peoples, neither of whom were particularly chuffed with their new lower-class status. British Governor of Nova Scotia Edward Cornwallis (1713-1776) demanded that all Acadians under his rule sign an oath of unconditional loyalty to Great Britain, which the vast majority of them understandably refused to do. The British didn't have a clue how to deal with these obstinate Acadians, sometimes actively preventing them from leaving, and other times expelling them en masse. If the Acadians stayed and submitted to British rule, Nova Scotia would be blessed with a productive population. If they left, their perceived threat to British governance would end, but they would likely aid the French effort elsewhere.

Other than being sullen and untrustworthily French in appearance, were the Acadians actually doing anything against the British? There was an Acadian militia, and in the upcoming war it would do its best to hold back the Protestant tide. The Mi'kmaq certainly were doing things, such as regularly raiding the settlements and fortifications that the British insisted on constructing. That was a problem more easily solved: Cornwallis would ultimately have the Indians expelled from Nova Scotia, with bounties paid for the scalps of those identified as having participated in raids.

All of which context is fascinating, but perhaps we now might cast our gaze to a hill overlooking the confluence of the Avon and St. Croix Rivers, northwest of Halifax...at a little Acadian settlement called Pisiquid. Were *I* someone commanding a military force interested in relieving the British of Halifax in the mid-18th century, I would definitely consider the route up the Bay of Fundy, down the Avon and then overland about 30 miles to Halifax's potentially underdefended back door. The British could read maps too, and identified this hill where the Avon and St. Croix meet as a great place for a starfort...and that lots of Acadians lived around this area only served to make it a more attractive spot for the projection of British power.

Or more specifically, a blockhouse! Often the starting point for a more serious fortification, a blockhouse was (and in some cases still is) a stout wooden structure meant to be used as a strongpoint containing troops and guns of one stripe or another. Such impressive edifices as Maine's Fort McClary, Georgia's Fort King George and Ontario's Fort Wellington are all examples of blockhouses-become-starforts. Not all blockhouses covered themselves in martial glory, however: The blockouse that preceded Maryland's Fort Washington creatively blew itself up during the War of 1812 when the British were (incorrectly) rumored to be approaching it from behind...but that blockhouse wasn't surrounded by helpful and protective outerworks, as were those others listed.

The locals were understandably unhappy about the existence of Fort Edward, and small skirmishes broke out in the vicinity almost immediately upon its construction. Various British officers cycled through as commanders of the fort, and Captain Alexander Murray (1715-1762) made himself particularly unpopular during his period of command at Fort Edward by randomly imprisoning Acadian men and paying "unfair prices" for supplies he bought from the community. Yes sir, the English were doing their best to ingratiate themselves with the Acadians. They wanted the Acadians to stay at this point, didn't they?!

Perhaps uncoincidentally, the Acadian Expulsion overlapped with the French and Indian War (1755-1762). With the British and French in active conflict, why bother mollycoddling those pesky Acadians anyway? Get 'em out. During this war Fort Edward served as the British army's base of operations for the deportation of Acadians.

Whilst incarcerated, the Acadians were forced to work on the farms now belonging to those "New England Planters" whom they had hoped to prevent from occupying Acadian lands.

A British Army unit known as the Jewish Legion was established in 1917, and trained in Canada. Intended to fight the Ottoman Turks in Palestine, these men would ultimately use their British-taught fighting skills to fight those same British in the interest of gaining independence for Israel. "Camp Fort Edward" housed and trained 1100 members of this legion, one of whom being David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), who would go on to become Israel's first Prime Minister. In 1918, the Canadian military finally said, it's the 20th century, what are we doing here, and Fort Edward was abandoned.