Tourist's Maritime Provinces, Chapter 9 (1915)

What it is

This is Chapter IX of a 1915 travel book about the Maritime Provinces, titled Tourist's Maritime Provinces. The chapter, headed St. John and the South Coast, describes the city of St. John in New Brunswick and its rail and shipping connections. Its text, hosted on Wikisource, includes a passage saying that a wall at Port Royal bears a tablet placed in honour of Samuel de Champlain and Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, on the three hundredth anniversary of their work there.

Why it matters

The chapter is a guidebook written for travellers in the early 1900s, so it shows how the region was promoted and how its history was presented to visitors. The memorial tablet it mentions honours Champlain and de Monts, who led the early French settlement at Port Royal. The passage is a later memory of these men, not a record from their own time.

Look closer

• Why would a travel guide mention a memorial tablet, and what does that tell you about how the past was valued in 1915?
• The passage is about a tablet on a wall. What does it leave out about the people who lived at Port Royal before and after the French?
• How is a guidebook different from a history book written by a scholar?