Written in the Ruins: Cape Breton Island's Second Pre-Columbian Chinese Settlement

2017 Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award — Shortlisted
Paul Chiasson reveals the possibility that early Chinese settlers landed in Cape Breton long before Europeans.

From the very beginning of the European Age of Discovery, Cape Breton was considered unusual. The history of the area even includes early references to the island having once been the land of the Chinese. In 1497, at least a century before any attempt at European settlement in the region, the explorer John Cabot had referred to...