Here there be dragons?

Once, when mapmakers arrived at the limit of the territory they knew, what lay beyond was named terra incognita: unknown land, neither mapped nor documented.

And then there were mapmakers who identified the dangers of an unknown land by putting these words on the map’s edge: Here there be dragons

Explorers are by nature drawn to such challenges.

Early in the new 17th century, among the Europeans it was the French who arrived first in what would be named Annapolis County by the eventual British conquerors of this land.

The original inhabitants of the land had been here for millenia and called it Kespukwitk .

Nova Scotia on a map from 1558

What would the hunter-gatherers of Mi’kmaq’ki have felt, as the newcomers changed the very face of the land?

Reclaiming tidal salt water marshes to create fields for grain-growing was crucial to early French settlers.

The immense effort to dike and drain saltwater marshes for survival's sake was the first step in taming this this unknown land.

These dikes are part of the landscape now. As though the pastures and meadows they created were just there, since forever.

An early map of Port-Royal showing the Fort, ship anchorage, and a growing community.

The waters and lands of Annapolis belong to the traditional Mi’kmaw territory of Kespukwitk. We are honoured to live and work on the unceded and ancestral lands of the L’nuk. We are all Treaty people.