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Shipwrecked Shoes
Little evidence remains of the shoes worn by early European settlers in what is now Canada as most shoes were practical and quickly wore out. An accident of fate has brought us valuable information about those original shoes.
In 1760, the French supply ship Le Machault, carrying 500 pairs of brand-new shoes for the colonists of New France, sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Archaeologists have retrieved and restored some of the shoes from this eighteenth-century time capsule. Most are simple but well-made men’s shoes, exactly what you would expect people to wear in a basically agricultural colony. There are also a number of men’s light ‘turnshoes’, more suitable for indoor leisure activities.
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