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by Paul Chiasson (Author)
The Island of Seven Cities unveils the first tangible proof that the Chinese settled in the New World before Columbus.
In the summer of 2003, architect Paul Chiasson decided to climb a mountain he had never explored on Cape Breton Island, where eight generations of his Acadian family had lived. One of the oldest points of exploration and settlement in the Americas, with a written history dating back to the first days of European discovery, Cape Breton is littered with remnants of old settlements. But that day Chiasson found a road that was unique. Well made and consistently wide, and at one time clearly bordered with stone walls, the road had been a major undertaking. But he could find no record of it. In the two years of detective work that followed, Chiasson systematically surveyed the history of Europeans in North America and came to a stunning conclusion: the ruins he had stumbled upon - an entire townsite on a mountaintop---did not belong to the Portuguese, the French, the English, or the Scots. And they predated John Cabot's 1497 discovery of the island.
Author Biography
PAUL CHIASSON, a Yale-educated architect with a specialty in the history and theory of religious architechture has taught at Yale, the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and the University of Toronto. He lives in Toronto.
