10/08/2026
There is a fort in Nova Scotia that has been attacked, besieged, captured and recaptured more times than any other place in Canada — and it is still standing. Fort Anne, overlooking the Annapolis Basin, is the oldest extant fort in the country, and in 1917 it became Canada's very first National Historic Site. Genuinely, no other building in Canada has changed hands this many times and lived to tell about it.
The story begins in 1629, when the Scots built the first fort here and called it Charles Fort. Then the French took it. Then the English. Then the French again. For over eighty years, Annapolis Royal — then called Port-Royal — was the most contested piece of real estate in North America, attacked at least 19 times as France and Britain fought for control of Acadia. The current Vauban-style earthworks, those perfect star-shaped ramparts you can see from the air, were built by the French in 1702 — and even they were not enough.
In 1710, a British force under Francis Nicholson sailed into the basin with 3,600 men and laid siege for eleven days. The French governor, Daniel d'Auger de Subercase, surrendered the fort, and the town was renamed Annapolis Royal in honour of Queen Anne. Acadia became Nova Scotia. The Mi'kmaq, who had called this land home for millennia, watched yet another empire plant its flag — and within decades their Acadian neighbours would be deported in the Grand Dérangement of 1755.
What makes Fort Anne extraordinary is not just the warfare — it is the survival. The 1797 Officers' Quarters still stands. The powder magazine, built in 1708, is the oldest building in any Canadian national historic site. Four centuries of sieges could not erase it, and in 1917 Canada chose this fort — this battered, stubborn, beautiful fort — to be the first place ever given the title National Historic Site.
Does a fort that was conquered 19 times count as a survivor — or a monument to losing gracefully? Tell us what you think below.
