Loyalist Benjamin Marston endured blackflies, bears-and other Loyalists-to fashion Shelburne, NS, out of forest.

Wandering along the storied streets of Shelburne, NS' downtown district today, it isn't much of a stretch-a squint here, a twist of the head there-to imagine the city during its brief, shining moment in history. The grid of broad waterfront streets and narrow lanes spilling back from the harbour's edge looks much as it did 225 years ago. Many of those streets now peter into seldom-walked footpaths and overgrown bush, a ghostly reminder that current-day Shelburne, population 2,000, is a shadow of what was, for a historic blink of the eye, the fourth-largest city in North America.

Still, the town's historic district, where eight of the 12 buildings along Dock Street were built before 1785, retains the look and feel of its earliest days. Surprisingly, there are no monuments to the man most responsible for laying out the original Shelburne, which its Loyalist founders had imagined as "an ornament to the British Empire." Or perhaps not so surprising.

On May 4, 1783, the day the first fleet carrying 3,000 hopeful, fearful Loyalist refugees from New York dropped anchor in Roseway harbour, Shelburne was little more than a forest. There were no neatly divided town lots-as the settlers had expected-on which to build, not even the crudest beginnings of a townsite hacked out of the forest. There was only forest. And Benjamin Marston waiting on the shore.

Marston-by turns smug, insecure, snobbish, self-righteous, self-deprecating, vitriolic, melancholic-is one of Loyalist history's least-celebrated but most fascinating characters. Before the Revolution, he had been a prominent businessman-and outspoken royalist-in Marblehead, Mass. In 1775, a mob ransacked his home. He fled to Halifax, where he spent the war as a hapless adventurer-entrepreneur, trying and failing to make a living plying the trade routes between Nova Scotia and the Caribbean. Near the end of the war, his vessel ran aground in a remote part of Nova Scotia. He finally straggled home months later with two worthless old coins and his water-soaked diary in his pockets.

Luckily, he still had friends. His cousin, Edward Winslow convinced Nova Scotia Governor John Parr to appoint Marston deputy surveyor for a soon-to-be-built city on the colony's south shore that thousands fleeing the new United States of America could call home.

Marston had no surveying qualifications. But that didn't deter him. He arrived in Shelburne just ahead of the fleet, eager for his own-and the Loyalists'-redemption.

It wasn't easy. Armies of blackflies conducted dive-and-bite swarm manoeuvres around him as he urgently laid out new streets and subdivisions. Bears chased him. He fainted from heat and exhaustion, and shivered in a driving rain.

To make matters worse, the Loyalists formed committees to make the smallest decisions. "This cursed republican town-meeting spirit has been the ruin of us already," Marston wrote. They attempted to seize property set aside for Black Loyalists. Marston put a stop to that. But he couldn't stop the settlers from partying instead of working.

Barely a month after landing, the settlers decided to celebrate the king's birthday by declaring June 4 a holiday. Bathed in the other-worldly glow of bonfires set among the tents, trees, stumps, rocks and piles of still-uncleared brush, the settlers staged the first of many fancy-dress balls, complete with music, dancing and so much alcohol they were unable to work the next day.

Thanks in no small part to Marston's Herculean efforts, Shelburne soon became, in the words of John Parr, "the most considerable, most flourishing and most expeditious [city] ever...built in so short a time...." But the seeds of Shelburne's collapse had already been sewn. The harbour partially froze in winter. There were no rivers to float timber to market. And there were no roads linking Shelburne to…anywhere.

Some of the Loyalists' difficulties were of their own making. Shelburne's first "town-bred" settlers, including merchants, tailors, carpenters and joiners, were "…very unfit for undertakings which require hardiness, resolution, industry and patience," Marston wrote.

Marston's obvious disdain for his fellow Shelburnites didn't win him friends. Some blamed him when they didn't get the lots they wanted. Others suspected him, unfairly, of taking bribes. In July of 1784, when a group of disbanded soldiers-frustrated because freed black settlers would work for lower wages than them-rioted, Marston ended up in their crosshairs, too. He escaped to Halifax barely a step ahead of the mob's noose.

Marston never went back. He died in 1792, leaving behind a neatly laid-out town and some papers that told the story of Shelburne's first wild year.

Though Shelburne would never achieve the optimistic dreams of its founders, in recent years, it has played on its place in Loyalist history to become a popular tourist destination. Part of this has to do with the postcard-perfect town Marston helped create. For the descendants of the early Loyalists, his waterfront district is a mecca, a living museum.

That will be even more true this year. As part of year-long celebrations to mark the 225th anniversary of the original Loyalist landing, organizers are planning a reenactment weekend (July 17-20).

No word yet on who will play Benjamin Marston.

Stephen Kimber's latest book, Loyalists and Layabouts: The Rapid Rise and Faster Fall of a Loyalist Town, was published by Doubleday Canada in May 2008.