Louisbourg (community)

Louisbourg
Community
Louisbourg harbour
Louisbourg Location of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia
Coordinates: 45°55′N 59°59′W / 45.917°N 59.983°W / 45.917; -59.983
Country	Canada
Province	Nova Scotia
Regional Municipality	Cape Breton
Incorporated Town	1901
Dissolved	August 1, 1995
Area
• Land	3.3 km2 (1.3 sq mi)
Population (2011)
• Total	1,023
• Density	286.8/km2 (743/sq mi)
Time zone	Atlantic (AST) (UTC-4)
• Summer (DST)	ADT (UTC-3)
Area code(s)	902

Louisbourg is an unincorporated community and former town located in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Regional Municipality.

The French military founded the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1713 and its fortified seaport on the southwest part of the harbour, naming it in honour of Louis XIV. The harbour had been used by European mariners since at least the 1590s, when it was known as English Port and Havre à l'Anglois. The French settlement that dated from 1713 was much altered after its final capture in 1758. Its fortifications were demolished in 1760 and the town-site abandoned by British forces in 1768. A small civilian population continued to live there after the military left.

English settlers subsequently built a small fishing village across the harbour from the abandoned site of the fortress. The village grew slowly with additional Loyalists settlers in the 1780s. The harbour grew more accessible with the construction of the second Louisbourg Lighthouse in 1842 on the site of the original French lighthouse destroyed in 1758. A railway first reached Louisbourg in 1877, but it was poorly built and abandoned after a forest fire. However the arrival of Sydney and Louisburg Railway in 1894 brought heavy volumes of winter coal exports to Louisbourg Harbour's ice-free waters as a winter coal port. The harbour was used by the Canadian government ship Montmagny in 1912 to land bodies from the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

Incorporated in 1901, the Town of Louisbourg was disincorporated when all municipal units in Cape Breton County were merged into a single tier regional municipality in 1995.

Pronounced "Lewisburg" by its largely English-speaking population, the present community has been identified by slightly different spellings over the years by both locals and visitors. The town was originally spelled Louisburg and several companies, including the Sydney and Louisburg Railway adopted this spelling. On 6 April 1966, the Nova Scotia House of Assembly passed "An Act to Change the Name of the Town of Louisburg" which resulted in the town changing its official name to the original French spelling Louisbourg.