"Acadia forever!"

I am proud to take part in today’s ceremony, which we owe especially to the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, my colleague, the Honourable Sheila Copps, and the President of the Société nationale de l’Acadie, Mr. Euclide Chiasson.

I am proud as a minister, certainly, but also as a former professor at the Université de Moncton, the first university to give me a chance in professional life.

On this solemn occasion, I wish to make the following declaration:

Acadia forever!

“When they built their carts, they were just families. By the time they returned to Acadia, they were a people.” (Antonine Maillet)

Through this Royal Proclamation, and through the annual July 28^th commemorations that will begin in 2005, the Government of Canada reiterates its acknowledgement, in the most official way possible, of the historical fact of the Acadian deportation.

Why is the Government doing this? Because it is committed to helping Canadians celebrate their achievements and their history, and the Acadian deportation is a part of that history. Also, because, in the words of our Governor General, we must “embrace the breadth of Canadian history – its triumphs as well as its tragedies.”

The Government thus expresses its hope that, in the history books and in our national museums, the tragedy of the deportation, and above all the heroic rebirth of the Acadian people, will be taught to all young Canadians, today and to future generations.

Among Canada’s political figures, it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau who perhaps best extolled that national resurrection: “The Acadians had been eliminated at one sweep, not only did they no longer have any citizenship rights, but the question itself no longer came up. They had quite simply been wiped off the map [...] In reconquering your place in the sun, you have not allowed old quarrels and past injustices to perpetuate their gall and bitterness. [...] We can live in the present, and it is in and from the present that we can build the future.”

So yes, we need to turn the page. But we cannot forget the history behind it. We have read it, so let us keep it in our memory. Indeed, it would be good to re-read it from time to time, at least once a year (!), so we can ponder the remarkable contribution of the Acadian people to the making of Canada and on its exemplary ability in building a future fortified by the lessons of the past.

Kierkegaard wrote: “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.” It is not about dwelling in the past, nor demanding apologies from those responsible who no longer exist. No, it is about drawing from past lessons to help us move forward.

One of those lessons, that holds true for all Canadians, has been rightly noted by the great Acadian professor Donald Savoie: when a country has been able to give new life to a people, it is duty-bound to always remain a land of welcome and refuge, or in Savoie’s words, “a home to start over again.”

And there is another lesson that is valid worldwide: the tragedy of the Acadian deportation fundamentally pits, to use the expression of the historian Naomi Griffiths, “the rights of small settlements against the claims of large empires.” In how many places in the world today are such tragedies being played out? We will have an opportunity to think about that, at least once a year.

They were here at the beginning. They returned, forever. Long live Acadia! Long live Canada!