The Halifax Citadel National Historic Site, was host to a 18th Century Living History Encampment this past weekend. Several living history groups were in attendance, incuding the 84th Regiment of Foot, King's Orange Rangers, Halifax County Militia as well as civilian and nautical re-enactors from as close as the HRM and Nova Scotia and as far away as the United States of America.
The tent line ran through the lower ditch of the Victorian fortress ditch and along the south end of the ravelin. As you walk through the tent line you see everything from gentleman of esteem chatting, women and children playing, talking and looking after the camp and men at arms cleaning muskets, sewing loose bits of uniform, playing music. The scene almost in a sense rewinds time, you smell meat cooking over a open fire or iron grill. The various families who see each other in event after event become a small neighborhood. It really is a free environment, everyone wants to welcome you into their camp site, feed you and ask how you were doing, its a family away from family and a community of its own.
A battle scenario was held on the forward side of the hill in which the Rebels held the high ground and had to fend off the King's Redcoats & Militia in a well orchestrated drill. Volley's of muskets rippled off in an exchange of military arms circa 1750-1776. The Redcoats finally overran the Rebels and the hill was taken with minor casualties on both sides.
18th Century living history offers a surreal experience, you get the sights, smells and community of an 18th century padded with modern comforts. Little worry of typhoid or cholera or the dreaded scurvy, but for a weekend you get to forget who you are, where you work and become someone else, another time and another place in a small welcoming society of like minded history geeks, families and a wealth of knowledge so vast you cannot help but learn more in one weekend than the previous years of book reading and research.
Pictures to be added soon with permission of those who took them.
