Fascinating Forts

Fe at u r e s t O r Y

Fascinating forts

By Ann-Maureen Owens

Whether wood or stone, for military, business or just plain protection, there have been forts all over Canada for centuries.

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Safe Havens If you’ve ever built a snow fort, tree fort or barricade of cushions you know a bit about protecting yourself behind walls. That kind of fort-building is fun, but the real thing was serious business in Canada until the late 1800s. More than 200 forts were built all over the country using wood or stone, sometimes with ditches and banked-up earth. Forts were usually located on rivers — the main transportation routes — and many grew into towns or cities.

First Nations built Canada’s original forts.

In forested areas, people who lived together in villages surrounded them with palisades — walls of tree trunks, usually with sharp points on top — to protect their families from wild animals or unfriendly neighbours. The Gitwangak people of British Columbia built

palisaded forts to guard their trading routes.

At Gitwangak Battle Hill, near Smithers in northwestern B.C., they fended off attackers with arrows, rocks and large logs rolled down from the hilltop fort, which also included a secret escape tunnel.

The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and HuronWendat sometimes raided each other’s fortified villages in southern Ontario and Quebec.

French priests who came to spread Christianity copied their palisade walls when they built Sainte-Marie among the Hurons (shown here) near Midland in central Ontario in 1639. They welcomed First Nations to worship and receive medical treatment, but this contact led to more conflict with the Iroquois and the spread of European diseases. The priests abandoned their mission fort in 1649.

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fortress: a walled town In 1608, the explorer Samuel de Champlain built Quebec’s first wooden fortress on a cliff where the St. Lawrence River narrows. It resembled a medieval castle and was supposed to protect settlers and control river travel. Over the next 200 years, the French and then the British expanded what is now known as Quebec City as more settlers arrived. Stone ramparts with bastions (corner towers) replaced wooden palisades. Quebec’s walls withstood attacks by Americans who wanted to conquer Canada during their War of Independence in 1775.

The Fortress of Louisbourg on the shores of Cape Breton, N.S., was a busy French-controlled fishing port with 700 soldiers and more than 3000 townspeople. Though well defended, it was far from other French forts. The British captured it twice (1745 and 1758) with a siege — a blockade of ships that kept supplies from reaching Louisbourg.

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Fortress of Louisbourg, N.S.

Military forts

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French and British soldiers built forts to claim the land that became Canada until the British eventually took over in 1759. After that, Britain worried about an American invasion. A series of small forts like Quidi Vidi Battery protected St. John’s Harbour in Newfoundland. Large stone forts, like Halifax’s Citadel, were built into hillsides so that earth-backed ramparts could reinforce the inner walls and absorb the impact of cannon balls. Round, stone Martello towers, with cannons mounted on circular tracks to swing around and fire in any direction, protected the area around the citadel.

When attacking armies captured forts, they often rebuilt them to suit their own

needs. Located on a Richelieu River island, Fort Lennox began as a French wooden fort, was burned by the British and then used as a base by the Americans for their 1775 attack on Montreal. After the Americans retreated, the British built a stronger stone fort with a starshaped moat for added protection.

British soldiers also built Fort Henry in Kingston, Ont., in 1832 to defend the Rideau Canal and their navy’s dockyard. Since the wives and children of some soldiers also lived here, the fort had a school. Officers’ families had their own comfortable rooms in the fort.

But the children of common soldiers would have shared their parents’ bed, or slept on a straw mat under it, in the crowded barracks.

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fur-trade forts

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Wickimedia Commons

Lower Fort Garry, Man.

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Trading forts — sometimes called posts, factories (because the company`s representative was called a factor) or houses — protected the first stores in Canada. Two rival companies traded blankets, axes and guns with First Nations for furs. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) built forts, such as York Factory, Man., where rivers flowed to Hudson Bay so furs could be sent on ships to Europe.

North West Company (NWC) traders canoed river routes west from Montreal.

Competition was fierce. Both companies built forts farther inland along important waterways. During long winters in Fort St. James (NWC) in central British Columbia, the men spent their time hunting and gathering firewood. North West Company traders had a reputation for drinking and gambling, while HBC forts such as Cumberland House in Saskatchewan were highly organized depots for trade goods going west and furs going east.

Fort Edmonton (HBC) was rebuilt in different locations to compete with NWC forts and be closer to First Nations traders. Its fifth and most elaborate structure, where the Alberta legislature stands today, was decorated with paintings and sculptures to attract customers.

The chief factor’s family lived in a three-storey “Big House” with the first glass windows in the West, but his clerks slept in a bunkhouse with windows made from thin animal skins.

In 1821 the companies united under the Hudson’s Bay Company name. Lower Fort Garry replaced an older fort near Winnipeg in 1830 to be a company headquarters. Workers organized supplies for fur traders and sorted and bundled furs to be shipped to England.

First Nations and Métis people worked there, producing pemmican (dried bison meat, fat and berries) for traders’ long canoe trips.

Want to know more? Check out Forts of Canada by Ann-Maureen Owens (who wrote this article) and Jane Yealland.

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Wickimedia Commons

Fort St. James, B.C.

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