For N.B. Foodies, An Historic Fort Outside Sackville The Place To Be Wednesday
SACKVILLE – It was windy on Wednesday at Fort Beausejour – Fort Cumberland, a national historic site just a few minutes outside of Sackville. But that didn’t deter some of New Brunswick’s top chefs, and food and beverage makers, from serving up their best to around 65 people to close Eating Heritage’s Food Tourism Symposium.
“Help yourselves!” says Cornel Ceapa to guests from an army barrack where he’s stationed. “There’s gravlax, smoked sturgeon, pâté and caviar.”
He showed them how to do “caviar bumps,” putting a dollop of caviar on his fist.
“You make a fist like this, you put on the back of your hand, and eat it…You drink some vodka or champagne with it.”
Ceapa and his wife Dorina own Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar, which offers products made from Atlantic sturgeon from the Bay of Fundy. With an academic background in sturgeon research, Ceapa says he wants to show that wild and farmed sturgeon can co-exist.
“Generally we do farming when it’s too late. We over-fish, they disappear, then we start growing them and we call them sustainable, when there is none in the wild. What’s the point? When you lose the wild, it’s like you lose the quality standard,” he said.
Ceapa’s stop is one of seven food and beverage stations throughout the fort grounds, in addition to an appetizer stop inside a pavilion, where Chef Gene Cormier of Euston Park Social and CLOS served.
Some stops include wines, another offers New Brunswick Blue Pearl Oyster prepared by Little Louis’ Oyster Bar. In the middle of fort grounds, Chef Michel Savoie of Les Brumes du Coude serves up traditional lamb stew, while nearby in a barrack, Chef Pierre Richard of Little Louis prepares roasted squash with duck confit.
The event is the final leg of the symposium, the first of its kind in New Brunswick. Maxime Gauvin, Executive Director of organizer Really Local Harvest, says since it was successful, he plans to organize one annually.
“We had an amazing line up of speakers, and we had over 200 people [attend]. It was a really good mix of different sectors and people from all over the province, and outside the province as well,” he said.
The event at the fort, which is managed by Parks Canada, was meant for the symposium’s speakers, sponsors, partners and members of the media. Gauvin said it was meant to “create a momentum of collaboration.”
He said organizers also wanted to try something that’s never been done before with the help of St. Martin’s-based adventure tourism company Red Rock Adventure and Parks Canada.
“Parks Canada had never done an event like this in this site; Red Rock never worked with Parks Canada before,” he said.
The idea was to dig into the word “heritage” in the symposium’s name.
On the ancestral lands of the Mi’kmaq, the fort was built in the Chignecto region between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia by the French in 1751 and fell to the British in 1755, the year the British deported the Acadians of the region. There were around 3,000 Acadians living in the area at the time.
Guests at the event weren’t only treated to food and drinks that reflect the heritage of the providers, but they also heard about the history from Parks Canada staff.
“It’s a really a great way to introduce people to the different parts [of New Brunswick] that they may not experience,” says Red Rock Adventure operations manager Jordan Jamison.
“Since it’s so close to Moncton, it’s a great way to use this as a venue for people to learn about other people’s heritage not only through food. It’s a really interesting way to engage people.”
The hot cider station, for instance, led to a casemate where a Parks Canada representative tells the story of Acadians who were imprisoned there before they were deported.
“The food and drinks almost beckon people to discover this area for themselves,” Jamison said, adding consumers’ perspective around tourism has changed over the years. They focus more on experiences.
“Tourism for us now is about making connections with people…it’s these experiences that people will remember. They’re going take photos and put it on social media, which is fantastic, but it’s the experience people are buying.”
Check out scenes from the event below: