Daniel’s Storyline
With only a quarter of the fortress physically rebuilt, Daniel MacNeil is constructing the rest online
I was born during a blizzard on the winter solstice of 1991 at St. Rita’s Hospital. I grew up in Sydney Nova Scotia. My family is half from Cape Breton and half from Newfoundland. The best of both worlds. Today I am working in the film industry with credits in various departments. But I am an artist at heart, everything else just pays the bills.
Architectural drawing has been a hobby of mine since early childhood. Along with making sandcastles and anything that involved buildings were fascinating to me. I had aspirations to be an architect, but my lack of math skills and anything acidemic would stop that from happening.
I spent my summers at the Fortress from 1996 – 2007. I was enrolled in the immersive historical summer experience through the Fortress Louisbourg Association. First starting in the Children’s Program (5–12 ) and the Apprentice Program (13–16.)
So for two weeks of the summer I would go to the Fortress every morning, get into costume and live the life of a 18th century French child. We would go around playing games, fishing for crabs with a wooden stick and a snail on the end on the Frederic Gate wharf (there isn’t one now, but there used to be). We would eat in the restaurant, usually brown sugar on buttered bread. After that we would go watch the public humiliation of the town criminal. Who was usually accused of stealing a sheep or some other disorderly conduct.
One of my favorite things about it all was the educational aspect of showing the tourists all the facts and guiding them throughout the fortress. To this day of I go there I find myself fighting the urge to inform them like I once did.
There’s a rewarding feeling to have that little teaching moment with someone who has never been there before.
I loved the performative aspect of it all, tourists would come from across the country and all over the world to see the Fortress and experience an emersive experience and we would be right there, in character, explaining the history and answering many questions. That training from a young age has been instrumental in my ability to easily progress through this project.
People would come up to us and take pictures, ask us questions and we would have to go along with they whole bit. Essentially it was method acting with real historical information.
I particularly loved the activies we would do during the day in different buildings and areas on site. I know every nook and cranny of that whole place.
Hobbies or Obsessions?
Like I said before, I love architecture. I love buildings. I love designing buildings. I used to play Sim City and the Sims for hours as a kid (and sometimes I still do)
I’ve always known myself to an artist and creator, compelled to make physical and nonphysical creations at all times in my life.
The first few jobs and careers that I tried that didn’t involve any creativity were doomed from the start. Only until later in life I realized that the creative life was essential to earning income.
Since 2016 I have worked professionally in the film industry on various productions in various roles.
The Work
When someone asks me, “so did you use AI to create the Fortress of Louisburg model?” It literally gives me a little twitch in my eye. The vein in my forehead bulges.
I have been making this for months, every day and mostly at night. Sitting up at my desks and combing through blueprints, importing them into google SketchUp and tracing the lines into a 3D model. Finding the right textures, lighting and renderings to make it as real as possible. Listening to endless podcasts and having parasocial relationships with the hosts while I dive headfirst into a swamp of information.
No. I did not in fact use AI to make this. What would be the point of that? The fact that I could do all this work for someone to simply come to the conclusion that I just entered a prompt into chat-gpt is depressing. But nonetheless, that won’t stop me from carefully explaining the process. Over and over again. Which can be exhausting as it is, you can just see someone’s mind exit their brain and walk out the door when I fill explain how I did it. It just doesn’t make sense to the average person.
This is simply a hobby that has evolved into a full time adventure. When I go for drives, I’ll see buildings and houses to observe the architecture, noticing similarities to how I could use them to design the buildings in the model. I have no technical architectural training, nor do I even know how to do most simple math problems, which was a hindrance for someone who wants to become an architect. Which hasn’t really stopped me. By writing this or having any sort of media explanation of the digital reconstruction, it’s not some sort of self-absorbed “look at me and look what I did!” thing. It’s more of a “look how I did it so I don’t have to explain it again” thing. If you can just read it yourself and see how I put two and two together with the power of simply using my mind and coming to conclusions, drawing parallels or connecting information. You can connect the dots. Which is the story of creation
There is one particular story about Piccaso the lesson he teaches is that true mastery lies in subtraction, not addition.
“As the story goes, a woman spotted Picasso doodling on a napkin at a café and asked to buy it. Picasso agreed but asked for an astronomical sum. Shocked, the woman protested, “But it only took you two minutes to draw!” Picasso replied: “No, it took me a lifetime.”The Lesson: A quick doodle or casual sketch is not a lazy shortcut. It is the distillation of decades of practice, failure, and refined intuition. The value resides in the knowledge required to know exactly which lines to leave out”
So then, why did I make this digital louisbourg? For profit? For attention? No. Neither.
I was simply not working on anything in the winter, stuck inside and all the time in the world. By the time April 2026 hit I was rediscovering the Louisbourg lore, while playing around on Google SketchUp. Now we’re here.
From my urge to create. It’s always there. Trying to decide which medium to express myself? That is the only tricky part.
Waves / Castles Made of Sand
Like the ones that crash on Kennington Cove. Waves of inspiration flood over me, which is why I needed to use such methods like the PARA method to filter in the information from this wave. Because when it’s the wave recedes, I’ll have to shuffle through all of the items, the parallels between waves.
As there are waves of inspiration, there are pools of sorrow. I sometimes am left drained and uninspired. Unmotived and tired. Ying and Yamg.
I learned to accept these ebs and flows as an accepted condition of my existence. Spending so much time in front of a screen and exerting energy can ruin the mind. So when my battery got low I didn’t fight it. Rest became just as important as productivity.
Taking time out of my week to disconnect and find a secluded area in the wilderness has become an essential part of this journey. Luckily I live on a beautiful island where I don’t really need to go that far to find a high vibrational area to recharge. To touch grass, so to speak.
Belfry Beach has been my chosen sanctuary (besides the Fortress of course) it’s where I go to walk the shoreline. Leave my phone in the car. Frolic in the sand and waves like an animal.
Simply looking at the waves brings clarity to the mind and replenishes the soul. The ocean is not just simply a body of water. It’s a mass of cleansing energy.
Another beach-related activity that has given me much joy has been building sandcastles. Specifically the Kings Bastion. I’ve made about a dozen this past year across the island. Almost like a way of proving that I really did use the power of my mind, which now has become rather easy to recreate from all the time I’ve spent looking at the dimensions of the building on a screen or in person. Photographic memory to the rescue.
Then there’s also the parallels of symbolism with sandcastles and the fortress itself.
The short amount of time it took to build the Fortress from 1713 to 1758. From the time it was founded to the complete destruction was extremely short for the vast size. Like a sandcastle being washed away by the waves.
When I made one of my Kings Bastion sandcastles at the beach in Dominion, an older woman was walking up the beach and she noticed and saw me while I was shoveling the giant pile of sand before it was fully constructed.
As she was looking at me, she had a concerned look on her face, pondering what I was doing. Eventually I started sculpting the structure to form the details of the Bastion.
She asked me what I was doing and I told her, then she followed up with “That’s cool. But why make it if the tide comes in?”
Yeah? What if the tide comes in? So? Do I just not make the Sandcastle because it will eventually be destroyed ? No. There’s no point creating something just because it’s going to be destroyed. It’s fun. I want to make it. That’s why. I don’t care if it’s destroyed.
That really got me thinking. I got the waves.
Waves of inspiration and the waves of Destruction.
My Ancestor Connection
Growing up, my grandfather and father would explain to me from a young age the history of my lineage. It wasn’t speculaton or fantasy stories, it was historical facts documented in several books, with linages listed with names and birthdays. All the way down to me.
I am the 5th Daniel Charles MacNeil, and before the Daniels there was Donald.
Donald Og, from the Isle of Barra in Scotland to be exact. Even though Scots and the English did not entirely get along, they still fought together in the same army. Donald needed work, so he joined the Highlanders Regement and was sent to fight against New France in Isle Royale.
He participated in the pivotal 1758 Siege of Louisbourg, where British forces captured the massive French fortress. After the capture, he lived and worked on the now British controlled Louisbourg as a blacksmith.
He was on board a British war-vessel (Man-O-War) which was sailing westward thru the Bras d’r Lakes, and that when they were near Christmas Island they met a small, heavyladen French craft, whose sails were old and torn, and presenting such poor appearance in general that the warship did not molest it. He could tell there was something being hidden inside and told his superiors, when they went to take a closer look they found all the gold from the fortress. Stowed in the belly of the ship in hopes it would be ignored. Afterwards he was praised for his observation.
When he later returned to Scotland on leave, Donald Og shared glowing descriptions of Cape Breton’s geography with his family and friends, famously noting that they would find shelter from the winds, fertile land, and excellent fishing. Though he never lived to see it..he returned to battle
After telling his sons about the island, They told the people of Barra about one particular place they had seen where the lands on both sides of the channel approached each other to within a distance of less than a mile, and that they considered this to be the finest and best place for settlement they had seen in Cape Breton.
When the first settlers came to the Bras d’Or Lakes via St. Peters, they had this place in their minds, and they commenced a search for it. They sailed eastward to Castle Bay, and landed at John Og’s point. From there they sailed westward along the shore until they came to the entrance of the Narrows, where they recognized the place towards which they were sailing as the object of their search. Some of the party preferred the North side of the strait as a place for settlement, because they thought it would be warmer in winter, and that grain would ripen earlier there than on the south side Donald McNeil “Og” was killed in the army.
After the success of Louisbourg, the regiment to which he belonged was now engaged in defeating the French on the plains of Abraham in Quebec City, and after they had silenced its guns, their general asked for a volunteer who would go to hoist the British flag over the fort. Donald Og volunteered for the dangerous undertaking, and succeeded in hoisting the flag, but a bullet from the enemy laid him low while returning to his regiment. He was married and had a family. Two of his sons came to this country Rory and Murdoch, who’s families settled on the north side of the Narrows, where their descendant are numerous today.
-DM