Consider the apple

Did you know the first apple trees in Canada were grown in the County of Annapolis, Nova Scotia? The introduction of apple trees to Canada is attributed to French settlers in the early 1600s at Port-Royal.

Marie Nightingale, for Saltscapes Magazine, wrote: "The first reference to apples in North America was recorded at Port-Royal, NS, in 1605, which means that Samuel de Champlain and his merry men had to be planting apple trees long before Johnny Appleseed scattered his seeds in New England."

She said it was on the Acadian farms that the roots went deep.

"By 1698, some 1,500 apple trees were growing in the gardens of 54 families at Port-Royal alone, and the planting continued as the French established new settlements farther from the fort."

Canadian Geographic also attributes the first apples to the Annapolis Valley: "Deemed the 'king of fruits,' apples were first cultivated in Canada by French settlers, with the first planted trees appearing in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley around 1633."

In an interesting twist, one of the early apples was the Belliveau Apple, first grown in the Town of Annapolis Royal on the Belliveau property. The family was deported during the Grande Derangement but returned to Nova Scotia when the deportation order was lifted and re-established the apple variety in Clare.

Deportation records show Belliveaus from Annapolis Royal were deported on ships Pembroke, Helena, Edward, and Elizabeth.

"Legend says that members of the family returned to their old orchards in Port-Royal (downtown Annapolis Royal) and took cuttings of their old trees to re-establish the apple in their new home," reads a 2021 story on the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens website.

Image: Andrew Tolson

"The Gardens are built on property where the Belliveau family lived before the Deportation," the story explains. "To complete the circle, when the Gardens were established, cuttings were taken from Belliveau apple trees in Clare and established at the Historic Gardens."

In May of 2021, the trees saw their first blossoms, and that fall they had their first fruit.

As for Johnny Appleseed (Johnathan Chapman), he wasn't planting trees in the United States until almost 200 years after Champlain's men brought the first apples to Port-Royal.

To Visit the Historic Gardens website, go to: https://tinyurl.com/5dcsp28m

To read Marie Nightingale's story in Saltscapes, go to: https://www.saltscapes.com/roots-folks/826-bon-appetit.html

To visit Canadian Geographic, go to: https://tinyurl.com/bde5ce77

To see our Early Acadian Settlements Storymap, where those first apples were grown, go to: https://www.mapannapolis.ca/acadian-settlements

To check the ships on our Acadian Deportation Storymap, go to: https://tinyurl.com/2pb6rncj