Acadie History at Grand-Pre´and Annapolis Royal

Yesterday was just a nice quiet day for us.  We did not get up early to ride the tidal bore, which they said was not really exciting, but we did ride our bikes on a lovely trail along the marsh lands that the Acadians created by building dykes to keep the sea water out.

Speaking of Acadians - today we visited the Grand-Pre ´ (pronounced Grand - pray) National Historic Site where we began learning about the people and history of this area beginning in 1604 when French colonists landed in this area and started to try and build a home for themselves.  It was very rough in the beginning fighting the long, cold winters, scurvy, hunger and loneliness because these men were here without their families and had never experienced these conditions.  But they persisted and around 1636 they  made friends with the Mi’kmaq Indians, welcomed folks from other countries, eventually brought their families over and found this land to have rich soil and abundant wildlife to begin a new life. In about three generations they considered themselves Acadian and not French or English or Dutch.

Then the British decided they wanted this land and they began trying to make the Acadians swear aliegance to the crown, the French wanted them to be loyal to France but the Acadians just wanted to be left alone and declared they were neutral.  From 1755-1763 there were 17 battles between the French and British and the land changed hands 7 times.  In the end the British won and the Acadians were required to be British or they were deported back to France or down to the US colonies, some even to Louisiana and Jamaica.  It was many years before they could return to Nova Scotia and by then the British had totally taken over their lands so they gave up farming and became fishermen.

Grand-Pre´ had few buildings to see since the British burned them all down. Henry W. Longfellow immortalized the plight of the Acadians in his epic poem “Evangeline”.  A statue of her stands in a small chapel on the Grand-Pre´grounds.

In Annapolis Royal I learned much of the history of the Acadians during a candle light tour of the Graveyard at Fort Anne.  Previous to that John and I drove to Digby which is famous for it scallops. We strolled around this little village before choosing a restaurant but there wasn’t a whole lot to see.  Seems they roll up the sidewalks fairly early.