Introduction
Community in Nova Scotia, Canada
For the fortress, see Fortress of Louisbourg.
"Louisberg" redirects here. For the hill in Aachen, see Lousberg.
Place in Nova Scotia, CanadaLouisbourgLouisbourg HarbourLouisbourgLocation of Louisbourg, Nova ScotiaCoordinates: 45°55′N 59°59′W / 45.917°N 59.983°W / 45.917; -59.983CountryCanadaProvinceNova ScotiaMunicipalityCape Breton Regional MunicipalityEnglish settlement1769Incorporated Town1901Amalgamated Cape Breton Regional MunicipalityAugust 1, 1995Named afterLouis XIVArea • Land3.3 km2 (1.3 sq mi)Population (2021) • Total825 • Density250.1/km2 (648/sq mi)Time zoneUTC-4 (Atlantic (AST)) • Summer (DST)UTC-3 (ADT)Area code902
Louisbourg is an unincorporated community and former town in Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia.
History
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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. 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. They did so by transplanting settlers there from the evacuated Terre-Neuve colony.[citation needed] The fortress was designed as a "major statement" on French commercial and military power in the ongoing rush to colonize North America. The settlement's development therefore took between 10 and 20 percent of France's total colonial budget from c. 1720 to 1740. The settlement was burned the first day the British-American colonial forces landed during the Siege of Louisbourg (1745). The French were terrorized and abandoned the Grand Battery, which the British American colonial forces occupied the following day. It was returned to France in 1748 but recaptured by the British in 1758.
After the 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. In 1913 the Marconi Company established a transatlantic radio transmitting station here.
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.
Historical populationYearPop.±%19411,012—    19511,120+10.7%19561,314+17.3%19611,417+7.8%19811,410−0.5%19861,355−3.9%19911,373+1.3%19961,267−7.7%20011,157−8.7%2006988−14.6%2011946−4.3% 2006 population adjusted to match 2011 boundaries.
