The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: June twentieth, investigating a colonial Habitation in Nova Scotia.

Explorer and mapmaker Samuel de Champlain is remembered as the father of French Canada. For two years before he sailed up the Saint Lawrence River to found the city of Quebec in 1608, Champlain spent winters in an outpost he established on the edge of North America's vast, unknown wilderness.

Nestled in the mouth of the Annapolis River basin on the southwest coast of the island of Nova Scotia, Port Royal was a rectangular enclosure of steep-gabled wooden buildings surrounding an open courtyard. English raiders burnt the original enclave to the ground in 1613, but an exact replica has recently been constructed according to written descriptions of the period.

The re-created "Habitation" offers insights both into French social order and Canada's early history. Modest "gentlemen's dwellings" along one flank of the compound are far more comfortable than the barracks-like quarters for artisans and soldiers. There's a chapel, a sail loft, work shop and a wine cellar. Historical interpreters clad in period costumes re-create life in a self-contained colony, engaged in activities such as candle-making, shingle splitting and tending the old herb gardens.

Port Royal also depended on lore and good will of the Micmacs, local Indians, who traded furs with the French and showed them how to fish and hunt. On Sundays through mid-October, costumed interpreters at Habitation re-create MicMac tribal life.

Habitation is at Port Royal National Historic Site in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. The phone number is 902-532-2898 or www.parcscanada.gc.ca/portroyal/english

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