Emerald Bank

The Emerald Bank lies in the Atlantic waters off the coast of Acadia. Acadia was a colony of New France in northeastern North America, including parts of the later Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula, and Maine to the Kennebec River. Its settlers came mainly from southwestern France, while the territory was inhabited by First Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy, who called the region Dawnland. The recorded history of the adjoining coast is therefore one of Indigenous homelands and French colonial settlement, not an empty shoreline.

Port-Royal became the first capital of Acadia in 1605. English forces under Captain Argall burned the fortified habitation in 1613, and a new Port-Royal centre was established nearby; it remained the longest-serving capital of French Acadia until the British siege of 1710. From 1689, six colonial wars over 74 years saw British interests trying to capture Acadia, with French, Acadian, Wabanaki, and Mi’kmaq forces contesting the borderlands. Acadia was conquered in 1710 during Queen Anne’s War, and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 left mainland Nova Scotia under British control, though New Brunswick and much of Maine remained contested.

Conflict continued through King George’s War, Father Le Loutre’s War, and the capture of Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean in 1758. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 confirmed British control over the region and ended almost all of eastern New France. The Mi’kmaq remain in Acadia; after 1764 many exiled Acadians settled in Louisiana, where Acadian became Cajun.