Why the title? The exhibit title was ripped wholesale from a rare book of the same name, Louisbourg: The Dream City of America, written and self-published by Albert Almon in 1934. Almon was a plumber from Glace Bay, and in his spare time an energetic amateur historian with a fascination for old Louisbourg. The small digest-sized book runs 85-pages, looks like a slim academic journal or a perfect-bound fanzine. Almon's purpose seems less about creating a singular narrative of Louisbourg than a series of fixations that most intrigued him. These include essays about what became of Louisbourg's bells; what happened to the bones of Duc D'Anville; the history of Louisbourg's lighthouses; and the story of the Mission Chalice. Obsession is where you find it. Louisbourg or Louisburg? (Sp. ) The location was initially called Havre l'Anglois (English Harbour), so-named by the French because English fishermen used the harbour as a seasonal base to dry their cod fish catches along the cobble shoreline. When France claimed title of Isle Royale (Cape Breton Island) as a new colony following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and established their community at Havre l'Anglois, the name was changed to Port St. Louis, then quickly renamed Louisbourg in honour of the French king. When Louisbourg fell for the last time and Cape Breton Island became a part of Nova Scotia, the name was anglicized to Louisburg and the French pronounciation was lost along with the entire French population, language and culture. There are many 19th- and early-20th century history books, photos, postcards and even the old S&L railroad that used the English spelling of Louisburg. An act of parliament in 1966 officially changed the name back to the original formal spelling of Louisbourg. The pronounciation with the local inhabitants, however, remains anglicized as "Lewisburg" (Loo-iss-berg). What was the inspiration for the project? I first visited the area in 1995, trying to barnstorm the Maritimes in less than two weeks. Near Sydney, en route to the Cabot Trail, I saw a road sign for Glace Bay. Remembering that a friend in Waterloo had his roots in Glace Bay and an uncle with a tavern on the main drag (Red's Cell Block, long since vanished), I made a side-trip to take a snapshot, then returned in the direction of Sydney and St. Ann, the start of the Cabot Trail. I saw road signs to Louisbourg, looked at a map and saw that it was a dead-end (no exit), and thought to myself, hmm, maybe I'll have to come back and check it out some day. It took me six years. Having read J.C. Beaglehole's landmark biography The Life of Captain James Cook, my initial goal was to visit Kennington Cove and White Point, believing them to be mystical -- or, as my old Fine Arts prof. Nancy-Lou Patterson used to say, "magical" -- places. Kennington Cove is easy enough to visit -- it's one of the loveliest golden sandy beaches in all of Nova Scotia and there's a direct road route. White Point was a different matter. I was initially told by a park staffer that I did not have permission to visit White Point, so never made an attempt. Months afterward, at home in Waterloo and following up on a request for photographs of the area from a book publisher in the United Kingdom, I made a request to park administration seeking permission to hike to White Point. I was told that was straightforward -- report to them my hike and return, for safety and precautionary reasons, and I was good to go. I re-visited Louisbourg the following year -- and the one after that -- but several incidents conspired against me making it to White Point. The round-trip is three hours over boulders, and by the time I arrived in Louisbourg I had an in-grown toenail (no, Joe, not a wussie hang-nail) that was much too painful to put weight on, let alone make a hard slog for several hours. The hike was abandoned, and I instead putted around for a week reading as much material about Louisbourg as I could. I again resolved to return the following year, knock the bastard off (as Ed used to say) and get it behind me. I spent the interval reading as much source material as I could, and began setting my sights on other locations. I returned again. I made the Kennington Cove to Simon's Point hike (not recommended for anybody except experienced hikers), and sure enough hyperextended my knee and couldn't walk to White Point. I spent a few miserable days with an ice-pack, researching at the local library and making smaller easier day hikes. White Point became my proverbial white whale. I have since hiked to White Point on four occasions, and after years poring over old maps and research material felt obliged to explore and exhaust every last trail in the park -- whether they were maintained or not (most aren't) -- and escape the stresses of Ontario. The park scenery and the imagination of place are never anything less than beautiful and captivating. Why the decision to shoot panoramas and composites? The decision was a belated one. I was initially shooting single frames, but on several problem instances found the best solution seemed to be composites -- shooting several frames and combining them -- for my own reference. It's a technique I have used sparingly the past twenty years, but here seemed to me the most viable and appropriate solution. Some of the most memorable period illustrations of Louisbourg, all created well before the invention of photography, were panoramas. And the parallax problem, connecting the composites into a linear whole, seemed to make thematic sense as well. The more source material you investigate, the more inconsistencies and not easily resolved conflicts you discover, with answers to some questions buried, perhaps forever. If the lines of the photos do not always match perfectly, and if some images appear to be covering up the edges of others, it is because that is my reading of history. The lines that bind are the spaces between memory and history. Why are there two versions (i.e. different dimensions) of some prints and not others? The project was pulled together -- and accepted as a Feature Presentation -- for the annual Contact Toronto Photography Festival. All of the prints were printed large and in editions of three. However, I miscalculated the size of some of the hanging panels at the Bank of Nova Scotia exhibit venue -- the framed composites were too big for some of them -- so several of the images had to be re-printed specifically to match the size of the panels. These are unique 1/1 editions. Why no photos of the actual fortress? I have shot plenty of photographs of the fortress, but the fortress has been shot and reproduced onto postcards countless times by others before me. I wanted something different, something authentic, something new, something where I had to make an effort and get my fingernails dirty. If you look closely at the actual exhibit photos, you nonetheless might be able to spot the fortress in the background of seven of them. Most are too small to see in the online scans, and a few are even difficult to discern in the large photo-composites, but they are instructive to the scale and relationship of the old city to the surrounding topography. | MAIN PAGE |