TravelTill

History of Grand Manan Island


JuteVilla
"Manan" is a corruption of "mum-an-ook" or "man-an-ook" — meaning "island place" or "the island" from the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy-Penobscot Indians who according to oral history used Grand Manan and its surrounding islands as a safe place for the elderly Passamaquoddy during winter months and as a sacred burial place. ("ook"-means "people of"). Although there is no actual evidence, the Norse are believed by some to be the first Europeans to visit Grand Manan while exploring the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine around 1000 A.D. By the late 15th Century, famed explorers Sebastian Cabot and Gaspar Corte-Real, while separately exploring the New World, likely saw what is now known as Grand Manan and the Bay of Fundy. During early 16th Century, Breton fisherman are said to have fished the teeming waters around the island and sheltered among its old-growth oak forests.

Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes charted the area around Grand Manan in about 1520, yet the island does not appear clearly on a map until 1558. Reports of a rich land led the Portuguese to decide the area was important enough to include it in a comprehensive map of the New World. Famed Cartographer Diogo Homem produced this map, noting what would later be called Grand Manan and surrounding islands. The name "Fundy" is thought to date to this time when the Portuguese and Breton fisherman referred to the bay as "Rio Fundo" or "deep river."

It is likely this map ignited a fascination in the region in French merchant-explorer Stephen Bellinger (Étienne Bellenger). Wishing to cash in on the bounty of this newly discovered paradise, Bellinger set out aboard the Chardon in January 1583, reaching Cape Breton about 7th of February. He sailed down one side of what is now Nova Scotia and entered “the great bay of that island,” namely the Bay of Fundy (Baie Française). As he noted that “the entrance is so narrow that a culverin shot can reach from one side to the other” it would appear
previous123next
JuteVilla