History is always where you find it. We've been on holiday on Prince Edward Island, and one day we walked the beautiful dunes trail at Prince Edward Island National Park's Greenwich site, close by the community of St Peter's. One of my favourite places. Vaut le voyage.
The very next day, I happened to catch the Brock University historian Daniel Samson's post on TwitteX about the French military engineer Louis Franquet's 1751 report on his visit to the very same Saint-Pierre on the island then called Ile Saint-Jean. Tonight, I'm having trouble embedding the post, but you could find it at https://twitter.com/ruralcolonialNS, for August 15. Here is a little of Franquet. (Turns out Daniel Samson had been walking the same dunes a week earlier.)
"There were in this country 11 fishing boats and six [drying] stages belonging to seven fishermen, however several of them pointed out that these agreements were totally in favour of the suppliers and that they often found themselves very happy to avoid [i.e. to smuggle] ...
