It is pretty clear that the Knights Templar, yes the Knights Templar, visited a little island in Mahone Bay off the shores of Nova Scotia. They weren’t there just once. There is evidence of occupation and works that span at least two centuries, and evidence of further works and visitation, that continued up to the 18th century.
I’m not going to go into the nuts and bolts of everything that has been discovered on Oak Island during the course of a show that is entering it’s 12th season. What I do want to focus on is “The Curse” that gives the show it’s name, and the over arching narrative that runs through the show.
On the surface this show is about two brothers hunting for a treasure, and it appears that this is what the younger of the two brothers, Marty Lagina, wants. He’s not really a “big picture” kinda guy. He’s the guy that wants to find something cool and put it in his collection, or, better yet, sell it for a lot of money.
But what this show is turning out to be is a rewriting of the story of the European colonization of the Americas, and at the heart of the story, is the role the Knights Templar played in that story. But the story of the colonization of the Americas isn’t an exclusively European story, the much bigger part of that story is what happened to the indigenous peoples of the Americas when the Europeans made contact, and began what became the greatest genocide in the history of humanity.
But this is not the story that Marty Lagina wants to tell. Somewhere between seasons 8 and 10 a discovery was made in “the swamp”, in the ruins of an old stone road, that upended the “search agenda” and seriously ruined Marty Lagina’s year.
It was one of the most significant discoveries on the Island during the course of the show, but every effort has been made to dismiss it, and relegate it to the back shelf. So much so that I can’t find a record online of precisely which episode the discovery was made. Even though it has thrown a shadow over the entire progress of the show since the day it was discovered and reported.
It was a fairly small fragment of Mi’Kmaq pottery that the archaeologist Laird Niven instantly recognized. It speaks to the heart of the story that is being uncovered on Oak Island, and it may well speak to the exact nature of “the curse”, if indeed such a curse exists.