History
Cape Breton Island's first residents were likely Maritime Archaic natives, ancestors of the Mi'kmaq, the latter of whom inhabited the island at the time of European discovery. Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) reportedly visited the island in 1497 to become the first Renaissance European explorer to visit present-day Canada. However, historians are unclear as to whether Cabot first visited Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island. This discovery is commemorated by Cape Breton's Cabot Trail, and by Cabot's Landing Historic Site & Provincial Park, located near the village of Dingwall.
A fishing colony was established on the island about 1521–22 by the Portuguese under João Álvares Fagundes. As many as 200 settlers lived in the nameless village in what is now present day Ingonish (location according to some historians) on the island's northeastern peninsula. The fate of the colony is unknown, but it is mentioned as late as 1570.
During the Anglo-French War (1627–1629), under Charles I, by 1629 the Kirkes took Quebec City, Sir James Stewart of Killeith, Lord Ochiltree planted a colony on Cape Breton Island at Baleine, Nova Scotia and Alexander’s son, William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling established the first incarnation of “New Scotland” at Port Royal. This set of British triumphs which left Cape Sable as the only major French holding in North America was not destined to last. Charles I’s haste to make peace with France on the terms most beneficial to him meant that the new North American gains would be bargained away in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1632).
The French quickly defeated the Scottish at Baleine and established the first permanent settlements on Île Royale: present day Englishtown (1629) and St. Peter's (1630). These settlements lasted almost continuously until Nicolas Denys left in 1659. Île Royale then remained vacant for more than fifty years until the communities along with Louisbourg were established in 1713.
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)