Eastward along the Quay

The stone house with the rows of dormers belonged to two surgeons, LaGrange and his son-in-law Bertin. They set bones, stitched wounds, and administered bleedings and potions, but they were powerless when smallpox struck in 1732-33. With inoculation unknown here and vaccination undiscovered, the annual death rate in these years tripled to 75, and half the victims were children.

Beyond the surgeons’ house, the Beauséjour home and storehouse included a tavern called "Le Billard”. This establishment catered to the well-to-do of Louisbourg and their taste for gambling. Here visiting captains and merchants, waiting for their vessel to be reloaded for the return voyage to Quebec, France, or the West Indies, could play cards or other games of chance.

Marguerite Dugas, the widow Beauséjour, was the proprietress of this establishment in 1744. Born in Acadia, she came to Louisbourg shortly after its founding, the widow of a privateer captain with three young children. Her second husband François Cressonet dit Beauséjour built this tavern, which she operated since his death in 1742 with the help of her Irish servant Salle Forlan. She was surrounded by family in Louisbourg, as many of her grown children and the children of her cousin, Joseph Dugas, live nearby.

The blocks beyond were decidedly commercial. Guillaume Delort, a business leader from Louisbourg’s earliest days, lived on Rue Royale hut his large warehouse and retail store ran down to the quayfront. The buildings beyond his belonged to the merchant-baker Claude Morin, business partners Blaise Cassagnolles and Bernard Detcheverry, and butcher-innkeeper Maurice Santier.

The dressmaking widow Chevalier lived in the block that corners the quay. Behind her lived Nicolas Baron, who ran his fishing operations on the gravel bar beyond the pond. The other buildings in this block were storehouses for merchants and retailers living elsewhere in the town. In the 1750s a coalyard was established here. Far off on the left a lonely guardhouse stands sentinel over the ruins of a harbour battery, the Pièce de la Grave.