The Acadians from France are the original North American settlers. Today they form pockets of distinct communities in Canada’s Maritime Provinces, Québec, and Louisiana. The first true Acadian families trace their origins to approximately 300 people who settled Port-Royal and the fertile Annapolis Valley as early as the 1630s; small numbers subsequently settled the Minas Basin, Cape Sable, and the Canso areas of present-day Nova Scotia – peninsular lands formerly called Acadia.
 

Established near the mouth of the Annapolis River in Nova Scotia, Port-Royal Habitation was created by Pierre Du Gua de Montsand Samuel de Champlain in the summer of 1605. The habitation consisted of a courtyard encircled by wooden buildings suggesting a fortification. Its garden became the first experimental seed plot in North America. Here the Ordre de Bon Temps was organized in 1606, the first social club in North America. It was here, as well, that the first theatre production in Canadian history took place (1606). Port-Royal was destroyed in 1613 by English freebooter Samuel Argall.

Unlike the fishermen who were often temporary or intermittent settlers in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence the Acadians were essentially farmers. They were capable of cultivating uplands but with their ingenuity they accepted the challenge of building and maintaining dykes in fertile wetlands. The Acadian dykes were made from sods of marsh grasses, were equipped with sluices and clappers to keep out salt water, and were reinforced by logs and branches. These marshland farms, supplemented with resources from the forest and ocean, provided most of their subsistence needs.

At their original settlement in Port-Royal and elsewhere, Acadians, mercilessly victimized by external forces, had little in the way of defensive support. Port-Royal was attacked several times in the 1600s, including 1613 by Argall, 1654 by Sedgwick, and 1690 by New England adventurer Sir William Phips. A fort built at Port-Royal repelled two British attacks in 1707 but, in 1710, it fell again before Nicholson with his 36 ships and 3,500 men. The treaties of St. Germain-en-Laye (1632), Breda (1667), and Ryswick (1697) all confirmed French control of Acadia, but French neglect made the communities vulnerable particularly to aggressive New Englanders. Finally, in 1713, the French ceded the ancient boundaries of Acadia to the English in the Treaty of Utrecht. The Acadians refused to take an oath of allegiance but maintained neutrality and were ostensibly a peaceful, pastoral community. With the rise of the French fortress of Louisbourg as well as the French defenses at Fort Beauséjour and other Chignecto posts, however, the British began to be uncomfortable with their existence. After Halifax was established in 1749, in the midst of ongoing hostilities between French and English, the British regarded the Acadians’ persistent refusal to take an oath as a form of treason, despite their neutrality. Just prior to the beginning of the Seven Years War with France in 1756, the expulsion of nearly 14,000 Acadians from Acadia was begun at Grand Pré on September 10, 1755.
 

Some tools and early French artifacts archaeologically dug up at the site of Port-Royal earlier this century.

British institutions, New England settlers, Loyalist refugees, English, Irish, and Scottish immigration could not suppress or expunge the many cloistered, cohesive Acadian maritime communities. The topography of the coastline and the nature of distinct pockets of settlement permitted an adamantine Acadian culture to thrive during the nineteenth century in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and especially New Brunswick. In the twentieth century, however, the English-speaking cultural invasion of radio, television, and other media has dealt a blow to many steadfast Acadian communities. Nonetheless, through its folklore, literature and music, Acadian culture and its unique voice has been sustained, even revived. The Université de Moncton (1963) in New Brunswick and the Université Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia have greatly assisted in sustaining a viable, essential, and exciting Acadian character.
 

Five-generation portrait of the Piorier family, Acadians from the fishing village of Tignish, P.E.I., circa 1900. Well-known descendants of pioneering Acadians include Maurice and Henri Richard, Jean Beliveau, Ray Bourque, and Patrick Roy, all of National Hockey League fame. Rock superstar, Roch Voisine, has Acadian roots as do such literary figures as Antoine Maillet and Mavis Gallant. [Photo, courtesy Charles J. Humber Collection]

The Evangeline statue, a work completed by Louis-Philippe and Henri Hébert, sculptors of Acadian descent, was unveiled in 1920 near Grand Pré, Nova Scotia. Interest in the site no doubt was inspired by William Wordsworth Longfellow whose poem "Evangeline" did much to generate worldwide interest in the tragic story of Acadian expulsion from Nova Scotia in 1755. The chapel in the background was built on the site of the original Acadian church and is but a reconstruction of an early eighteenth century French chapel. It was opened in 1923. In 1956 it was acquired by the Canadian government and turned into a National Historic Site. [Photo, courtesy Musee acadien/Universite de Moncton]

Historian N.E.S. Griffiths has written, “Whatever else the deportation had brought to the Acadians it had also instilled into them a conviction of their own capacity for survival. It is a conviction that has not yet been proven false.”

Larry Turner