FEST Writing Group

NOTE: I am researching Acadian history for a novel I plan to write.  I’d love any comments on threads I might follow to see this history through the lens of Bowen theory. I think current life in Acadian villages also his something worth examining through theory, but I don’t deal with that here. 

My people were kicked out of Nova Scotia in 1755. Their homes were burned, their barns destroyed and their livestock set free. Their land was stolen and deeded to strangers.

I sometimes joke that Acadians have held a grudge against the British for nearly 300 years. But the truth, as I know it, is that Acadian history and culture was so thoroughly suppressed and demeaned that they were little acknowledged even by Acadians until less than 20 years ago.

Acknowledged or not, remnants of an ancient way of life still  exist  in the Acadian villages of my childhood. And I can’t help but think that Acadian history and current way of life have something to say about the challenges we face as a society, as they speak to how humankind relates to the land and each other.

I haven’t drawn those lines yet, however, so I’ll start with a summary of Acadian history.

In 1605, the founding settlers of the Acadian population arrived in western Nova Scotia from France with Samuel de Champlain. After nearly being extinguished by their first winter, the colony thrived and extended settlements along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, from what today is known as the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia to eastern New Brunswick.

According to A Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher, the population was relatively free from disease, and families routinely produced eight, 10 and even a dozen children with little infant or childhood mortality. Mothers rarely died in childbirth.

They lived in peace with the Mi’kmaq, agreeing to keep tAcadian settlements to the shore areas, while the indigenous peoples controlled the forests. If Acadians wanted to hunt on native land, they sought permission, which was routinely granted. They made and grew nearly all of what they needed and traded with New England Yankees for the rest.

As the population grew, Acadians built dikes along the Fundy to claim land from the bay. This was demanded skillful engineering, hard labor, advance planning — it took three years for rain to flush salt from the land so that it became arable — and constant monitoring and repair.

From the beginning of the settlement, Britain and France warred over control of Nova Scotia. Dominion shifted from English to French and back again. The Acadians, meanwhile, developed into a distinct population, not English but not quite French. They spoke a patois of 16th century French, Mi’kmaq and English.

In addition, the Acadian and Mi’kmaq intermarried and adopted each others’ ways, prompting observers from England and France to report with disdain that Acadians were indistinguishable from “the savages.” My family, like many Acadians today, is officially considered metis,  part indigenous and part white.

Acadians refused to align with either the French or British, something the English and, in particular, New Englanders regarded with suspicion. Their devotion to their language and Catholic religion intensified the perception of the Acadians as a threat.

Governors and military leaders in Nova Scotia and New England pressed London for permission to expel the entire population after they repeatedly refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the English king. That sparked fears they would join forces with the French or the Mi’kmaqs. Furthermore, New England planters coveted the fertile Acadian farmlands.

Editorials in colonial newspapers as far south as Philadelphia called for the expulsion  In 1755, after Britain established final control over Nova Scotia, the military launched a program of ethic cleansing against Acadians that lasted nearly 10 years. More than 20,000 Acadians were loaded onto boats and deported to Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and other states, as well as to France and England. Some made their way to Louisiana; their descendants are today’s Cajuns.

Families were broken up, children were taken from their parents and an unknown number of people were killed or died. Some Acadian men were imprisoned in Nova Scotia and forced to work as slaves to planters who took over their farms, but could not keep the dike system working.

In the ensuing decades, some Acadians made their way back to Nova Scotia and as long as they attempted no claim on their former lands and settled in remote areas, the British turned a blind eye. In 1804, my great great great grandfather founded the village where I was born.  My mother’s family hails from a neighboring village on land that her people settled in the 1780s.

There, people returned to lives of fishing and farming. They settled along tidal rivers, harbors and coves, built new dikes and used tidal marshes for agriculture. They established orchards, broke fields and rebuilt their communities separate from “the English.”

Their wish to be left alone succeeded too well. Into the 1960s, the Acadian areas of Nova Scotia were ignored by the provincial and Canadian governments. Schools were subpar and public spending was lavished on English areas before trickling down to the French. Acadians were seen as poor, uneducated, uneducable and worthy of scant attention.

Yet they created cohesive communities that, connected to the land and the sea in a way that endures today.