Experience Canadian Loyalist History at Kings Landing
I love visiting living history museums. In the U.S., my favorites are Plimoth Plantation, Colonial Williamsburg and Conner Prairie. Before I visited the Village Acadien on Canada's Acadian Coast, I didn't know very much about living history attractions in Canada. Now, with visits to the Village Acadien and Kings Landing under my belt, I'm ready to head back north for more living history fun.
I must admit, I wasn't sure what to expect from a living history museum focusing on Canadian Loyalists in New Brunswick. The Loyalists - colonists who remained loyal to England and to King George III - fled the American Colonies during and after the American Revolution; nearly 50,000 of them settled in Canada. Kings Landing, created to preserve the homes and buildings erected by the first Loyalist settlers, is an excellent place to learn about Canada's Loyalist heritage.
What sets this living history museum apart is the well-crafted, professionally presented special re-enactment events. You can watch someone spin and weave at almost every living history museum, but at Kings Landing you can participate in an election that decides whether New Brunswick will approve confederation with Upper and Lower Canada, or sit on the jury that decides a duelist's fate. You'll quickly be swept up in the excitement of discussion and debate over the most important issues facing 19th-century Canadian Loyalists. Of course, you can learn about soap making and weaving as well, and you can feast on 19th-century fare at the Kings Head Inn. There are plenty of homes, shops and churches to visit, too.
Take our Kings Landing photo tour and delve into Canada's Loyalist history.
Photo © Nancy Parode
If you like living history, you really should visit Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. In many ways it’s a more authentic experience than any of the others you named. It is physically remote from the modern world, which makes it easier to recreate the proper atmosphere. The re-enactors are given authentic historical identities to research and recreate, and we never observed one getting out of character. In the restaurant we ate period food with large pewter spoons. Louisbourg is free of the souvenir shops and other clutter that make Williamburg and many other historical sites sort of Disney-ish. Besides all this, Louisbourg was arguably the most important French settlement in North America, and its loss to the English marked the end of the French dominance of North America. This less-than-well-known battle changed the future of the world.