Paul Chiasson

Who is Paul Chiasson?

Paul Chiasson is a Canadian architect and author of The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America, published 2006 by St. Martin's Press. In his book, he explains his thesis that Chinese voyagers settled in the Cape Dauphin area of Nova Scotia several years before the voyages of Christopher Columbus. He suggests that the indigenous Mi'kmaq culture was influenced by these people, offering evidence in the form of possible archaeological remains, customs, costumes, art and other material culture.

His theory was refuted by provincial archeologists, who found that Chiasson's physical evidence of Chinese settlement—an allegedly ancient road and stone wall—were actually built in the mid- to late 20th century.

In December 2010, several years after the reports of the Nova Scotian archeologists, History Television aired a one hour documentary entitled, Mysterious Ruins: Cape Breton. The documentary explored Chiasson's theory and included interviews with an archeologist and a geologist from the area who viewed the site that Chiasson posits was the location of a pre-Columbian Chinese community. The local archeologist and geologist stated that they found no evidence of any human settlement on the site. The documentary also included interviews with three Chinese historians. Those historians expressed the opinion that, given what is now known about early Chinese ocean-going fleets, there could have been a Ming Dynasty town on Chiasson’s site in Cape Breton. It is typical of similar town sites in China. Dr. Zhu Guangya, Professor of Architectural History at Southeast University, Nanjing stated, "I believe the site is a ruin from a human settlement. Further study is required to confirm what kind of settlement it is."