The Last Best Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

renaissance man—called it “one of the finest harbours I have ever seen on all these coasts where a couple of thousand vessels could lie in safety.” But no doubt it was de Monts’s call. Prefiguring centuries of ill-fated family investment decisions, my alleged ancestor chose to settle on a godforsaken island on theNew Brunswick side of the Bay. The clouds of blackflies puffed the men’s faces up like soufflés. The cider froze and had to be hacked out of an icy amber block and weighed by the pound; the settlers took to drinking old dirty water and melted snow. Before long some of them began to feel their gums swell and the flesh thicken in their mouths. Champlain, the meticulous note-taker, gave a detailed account of what happened as the scurvy progressed:
    There was engendered in the mouths of those who had it large pieces of superfluous flesh (which caused a great putrefaction) and this increased to such a degree that they could scarcely take anything except in very liquid form. Their teeth barely held in their place, and could be drawn out with the fingers without causing pain. This superfluous flesh was often cut away, which caused them to lose much blood from the mouth. Afterwards, they were taken with great pains in the arms and legs, which became swollen and very hard and covered with spots like flea-bites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of the nerves; consequently they had almost no strength, and suffered intolerable pains. They had also pains in the lines, stomach, and bowels, together with a very bad cough and shortness of breath. In brief, they were in such a state that the majority of the sick could neither get up nor move, nor could they even be held upright without fainting away.
    You get the picture. Come winter break-up the survivors couldn’t get out of there fast enough. They beat it back across the basin, through Digby Gut to a spot with lots of trees for firewood, streams for water and hills for windbreak. There they founded North America.
    I do feel a twinge of ancestral pride as I walk towards the log walls of Port Royal. I fantasize that the Parks Canada woman at the visitors gate takes one look at my face, notices the familial resemblance and lets me in for free. But I pay up, walk down the dirt driveway and around the outside of the fort for a while. I inspect the statue of Christ on the tall wooden cross standing in the mowed field marking the cemetery for the scurvy victims. I look at the woods from where first walked Membertou, the great Mi’kmaq sagamo—said to be over a hundred years old and described by one of the settlers as being “of prodigious size, and taller and stronger than most, bearded like a Frenchman while not one of the others had hair on his chin.” Then I step inside.
    Lord, it is tiny: the storehouse, the chapel, the kitchen, the blacksmith shop, the small, modestly furnished gentlemen’s quarters all forming a rectangle around a central courtyard. The plan was sixteenth-century manoral Normandy. But it is all not much bigger than a suburban monster home in Etobicoke. Icy wind whistled through the cracks in the walls; unknown devilish terrors lurked in the woods and the waters, and the aristocrats back in Versailles wanted to pull the plug on the whole thing.
    But I’ve always had a warmer, happier image of life in Port Royal.I picture Champlain and the others returning from a voyage of exploration in November 1606 to find costumed colonists and Indians in canoes beginning the first performance of
Le Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France
, a play in verse written by Marc Lescarbot, the lawyer and dreamer for the occasion. And the Ordre de Bon Temps, the continent’s first dining club, designed to keep the troops healthy, happy and mutiny-free during the deep freeze. The chief steward leading off with a napkin over his shoulder, a special chain of office around his neck and a staff in his hand, the others following, each carrying a dish,