HISTORICALLY SPEAKING WITH ED COLEMAN: There’s more to Acadian expulsion story than often told

The expulsion of the Acadians is a story familiar to most people. But the particulars of that tragic event, the before and after, are a field few historians explore.

One of the books that delves deeply into the details of the expulsion is John Mack Faragher’s A Great and Noble Scheme. I’ve recommended this book here before and I stand by it. If you only speak English, there’s few better.

I’ve read other books about the expulsion besides Faragher’s. And from what I’ve read, it appears that the Acadians were pressured by the French to move en masse and abandon land they had cleared and cultivated for generations. It seems that no matter what, as you will see further on, they were going to be forced off their land.

In the introduction to his book, Faragher writes that in the autumn of 1755, “officers and troops from New England, acting under the authority of the colonial governors of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, systematically rounded up more than 7,000 Acadians … who lived in communities along the Bay of Fundy. Men, women, and children alike were crowded into transport vessels and deported in small groups to other British colonies.”

Faragher names the villains here – the colonial governors. But as mentioned, there were other forces conspiring against the Acadians. This is summed up in a two-part French and English language book, an appraisal of the Acadians’ plight, compiled by Betty O’Toole and Roy Rhyno.

The book asks, who were the villains?

“There were a number of key figures involved in the tragedy of the Acadians,” they write. “We might wonder as to the true villains. Was it the Halifax officials, such as Gov. Lawrence (who hated the French) or Hopson and their Chief Justice, Jonathan Belcher, or Gov. Shirley of Mass. Or that cluster of Halifax merchants who eyed … the only rich and cleared land in the province. But they were occupied by the French. These lands, if cleared of the incumbents, could be offered to immigrants from New England.

“Or were the villains the crafty Quebec government, who wanted to denude Nova Scotia of the French population and move them to strengthen the other French territories.

“Or was it the wily and dangerous Abbe La Loutre … He attempted to force the Acadians to leave their lands and set up a French territory in the north and west. He went as far as to threaten the Acadians with an Indian uprising and massacre if they did not do his bidding.”

At one point in their book, the authors conclude that “caught between the schemes of the French and the schemes of the English, the unfortunate Acadian farmers had little chance to avoid being the victims in a major disaster.”

The fate of the Acadians that escaped the expulsion is an interesting feature, along with a heart-rending description of the events surrounding it.

I’ve never found other books that discuss this aspect of the expulsion.

The book is in two parts. The second part is a study and interpretation by Lucy Adellka Sloan, of Longfellow’s poem Evangeline.

L’Acadie By The World’s Highest Tides was published in 2004 by Nirwal Publishing Company, Urbania, N.S.

Ed Coleman, who resides in Kentville, is a bi-weekly columnist who has a keen interest in history, particularly that of Kings and Hants counties.