How Different It Was by Michael J. Goodspeed

Author:Michael J. Goodspeed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

Canada’s second largest French-speaking community, the Acadians, experienced a demographic resurgence during the Confederation era. With families frequently having a dozen or more children, the Acadian population jumped with each generation, growing from 8,500 at the turn of the century to over 140,000 by 1900.2

Acadian history in the Maritimes had until the nineteenth century been tragic. In 1713, the Acadians became British subjects after the Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession and the Acadian colony in Nova Scotia was ceded to the British. For forty-two years they lived peaceably as reluctant British subjects, but in 1755 they were forcibly expelled from their homes in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick.

The expulsion order was given by Charles Lawrence, the British governor in Halifax during the Seven Years’ War. The war in the Maritimes had largely been a desultory conflict, consisting of a series of small-scale raids and alternating attempts by the French and English to seize one another’s forts. After the British discovered nearly three hundred Acadian militiamen defending Fort Beauséjour in New Brunswick, Lawrence ordered Nova Scotia’s French population to be forcibly deported and their lands and goods seized. There was no credible strategic rationale behind the expulsion, as the Acadian farmers posed no military threat. However, Lawrence ordered the expulsion when the Acadians refused to take an oath of loyalty to the British.

The more plausible motive behind the mass deport­ation was that envious English-speaking colonists from the Boston area influenced Lawrence. A vocal group of New England colonists had long argued that the Acadians were an “alien” people living in British lands, and for several years they lobbied to take over the Acadians’ cleared and fertile farmlands. The militia volunteers and the loaded wording of the proposed oath gave them the excuse they had been seeking. Approximately ten thousand Acadians were deported, and several thousand others escaped to Quebec or hid in the woods. As soon as the Acadians moved out of Nova Scotia, settlers from New England began to move in.

In 1764 the expulsion order was lifted, and from that point right up until 1820 a stream of Acadians returned to the Maritimes. This time, they settled in Cape Breton, P.E.I., and northeastern New Brunswick.

The nineteenth-century Acadian resurgence has been called the “Acadian Renaissance.” Not only did the Acadian population soar during the Confederation era, but in this period they rediscovered an enduring sense of pride and identity and began to actively assert their political will.

Initially, after their return to the Maritimes, Acadians were distrustful of their neighbours and did their best to shun most kinds of contact with their fellow anglophone citizens. In the first six decades after the return, Acadian communities were relatively isolated, self-reliant, economically withdrawn, and inwardly focused, surviving largely on a subsistence basis. By the Confederation era, that began to change.

The Maritime provinces were self-governing colonies, and, by excluding themselves from the political process, the Acadians realized that, despite their increasing numbers, their interests and voices were not being heard.

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