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A SCREEN of spruce and birch trees topping a low hill on which cattle pasture in summer marks the site of Port Lajoie, at the entrance to Charlottetown Harbour. There is little hint in its present pastoral beauty that here was once a link in the chain of French forts guarding New World settlements and possessions, a chain which included Louisbourg on the east and Quebec on the west.

Even Jacques Cartier, on discovering Prince Edward Island in 1534, while coasting along the Gulf waters on a summer day, had described it as “the fairest that it may be possible to see.” The Indians, with more imagination, called it “Epayguit,” or “Anchored on the wave.” The French granted concessions for fishing and farming, and the rich lands about Port Lajoie early were famed for agriculture, as they are today.

Log houses and breast-works existed by 1720, with cannon and a small company of soldiers, but settlement was slow, and by 1728 there were only fourteen families. Thereafter there was rapid development, and the golden age of the French colony on the Island ensued. The French established a governor, intendant and other important officials, whose gay ruffles and laces, swords and cocked hats, contrasted with the crude apparel of the Micmacs in their neighbouring wigwams.

All through the Atlantic settlements there was now stir and unrest. The struggle for the mastery of the continent had begun. After the first capture of Louisbourg in 1745, an English force landed at Port Lajoie and wrought some destruction, but suffered heavy losses from reinforcements arriving from Quebec next year. The Island was restored to France in 1748. Governor Bonaventure then erected stronger defences, of logs, except for a stone powder magazine, and Colonel Franquet was sent from Louisbourg to create a real fort. He laid out four bastions, with buildings for 400 men, but the fort was never built. Port Lajoie in those stormy years was merely the base for repeated attacks against the English on the mainland.

The final English occupation was marked by a tragedy resembling the expulsion of the Acadians to the west. After Louisbourg’s surrender in 1758 Lord Rollo came to take possession, armed with strict orders to crush rebellion or resistance. He reported that Autumn that he had sent away 692 inhabitants, and many others had fled to Canada. The “Duke William,” which sailed from Port Lajoie for France, was wrecked off the French coast with the loss of 300 of the unfortunate Acadians from the Island.

Port Lajoie became Fort Amherst after the British took possession; its importance as a seat of defence declined. Charlottetown was established two miles up the Bay, and the Island became the “Garden of the Gulf,” famed as the home of happy farmers, the resort of joyous holiday-makers, and the source of the luscious Malpeque oysters sought by epicures in distant cities.

Site of Port Lajoie, Charlottetown