By Peter Neville-Hadley
Meridian Writers’ Group
GRAND PRE, Nova Scotia—It’s a short drive across slender Nova
Scotia from the blustery, Atlantic-facing capital of Halifax to where the
hamlet of Grand Pré overlooks sheltered Minas Basin. This is a key point on a
route called the Evangeline Trail, which passes through lands originally
settled by the French, whose descendants developed their own culture and called
themselves “Acadians.”
The land is still cross-hatched with the dikes they used to
turn marshes into highly productive farmland, but there’s little sign of their
Norman-style farmhouses and granaries today. The real drama of the Acadians is
not one of arriving and creating a paradise, but of eviction from it. The
Evangeline Trail runs through the land that was once theirs.
Considered a threat to British interests and occupying prime
farmland, the Acadians undid themselves by refusing to take an unqualified oath
of allegiance to the British crown once European treaties made this region of
New France permanently English in 1713. “Le grand dérangement” saw families
broken apart and sent to the American colonies, Louisiana, France, French
Guiana and the Falkland Islands. More than 14,000 were deported.
Their expulsion had almost been forgotten when, in 1847, the
popular American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a rather maudlin
epic romance called
Evangeline, A tale of Acadie
, a story of doomed love based around the deportations.
Founded in 1682, the original Grand Pré is now a national
historic site. In the centre of what was once the town (burned by the English)
the stone church where the first deportation order was read out has been
rebuilt. Nearby in the garden is a statue of Evangeline who, although
fictional, became the romantic heroine of the Acadians (and the subject of
Hollywood movies).
A short walk from the historic site, an iron cross marks one of
the points at which several thousand Acadians were marshalled for transshipment
to waiting British vessels in 1755.
Further west along the trail the coast’s first permanent
settlement of Port-Royal has been recreated from contemporary diaries and
diagrams. Completed in the early years of the Second World War, it’s already
appealingly weathered and is appropriately staffed in part by descendants of
the few Acadians who were eventually allowed to return. Dressed in the clogs
and homespun woollens of the period, some can point to neighbouring lands first
brought to order by their forefathers.
A narrow entrance beneath the coats of arms of successive
governors leads to a courtyard with doors to smithy, bakery, refectory,
dormitories for the men with windows of oiled sheepskin, and finer quarters for
the officers, properly glazed.
At the hamlet of Grosses-Coques, named for the local giant
clams, restaurant Chez Christophe occupies a modest farmhouse of 1837 and
serves Acadian dishes. The key item on the menu is
pâté à la râpure au
poulet
, or rappie pie, alien to the
delicate, decorated dishes we now associate with France, yet an authentic
French import nonetheless.
The trail continues through a series of little towns and
lonely, lighthouse-tipped points that offer postcard-perfect views every few
minutes. Even today, Acadia is hard to leave.
ACCESS
For more information on the Evangeline Trail visit the
Evangeline Trail Tourism Association’s website at
www.evangelinetrail.com
.
For information on travel in Nova Scotia visit Nova Scotia
Tourism’s website at
www.novascotiatourism.com
.
PHOTO CAPTION
The fortress of Louisbourg recreates the fortified town as it
would have looked in 1744, the year before the British first took it.
PHOTO CREDIT
John Masters/Meridian Writers’ Group
18
th
Century lives again at Louisbourg
By John Masters
Meridian Writers’ Group
LOUISBOURG, Nova Scotia—The fate of the fortress of Louisbourg
is a perfect example of what happens when people learn nothing from history.
In 1745 a ragtag army of New Englanders attacked French-held
Louisbourg in what has been called the “Campaign of Amateurs.” They figured out
that coming at the fortress by sea was a mug’s game, so they snuck up by land
on the Royal Battery, a smaller position across the bay.
The battery was only built to withstand seaside assaults. It
was indefensible from its land side so the French abandoned it, spiking the
cannon before they left. They should have destroyed them. The New Englanders
unspiked the guns and turned them on the fortress, which surrendered after a
six-week siege.
Louisbourg’s 3,200 people were deported, but three years later
France and Britain signed a treaty that restored the fortress to French hands.
Its inhabitants returned.
A decade later the French and British were fighting again. In
1758 the British attacked Louisbourg with a much stronger force than the
amateurs of 1745, but took it using exactly the same tactic.
There would be no third time lucky for Louisbourg. The British
blew it up and for 200 years the headland site was tended only by wind and fog.
In 1961 the Canadian government committed $26 million to
rebuilding one-fifth of the site. The job took years to complete and costs
millions to maintain, but the result is one of the largest and most beguiling
chunks of historical recreation in the New World.
Because there was very little development nearby, the view from
the fortress is of the same wilderness the French knew in the 1700s. “On a
foggy day,” says Louisbourg park interpreter Karen Pink, “you can’t even see
the modern town. It’s like going back in time.” Even on a clear day, if you
stand at the corner of rue Royale and rue Toulouse, it’s the 18th century every
way you turn.
There are more than 25 buildings to visit, from seaside taverns
to the imposing governor’s house. So meticulous was the rebuilding that at the corner
of the Quay and rue St-Louis is a bricked-up entrance.
Karen Pink explains that in the 1740s this was a passageway to
a house behind, but when the house burned down the entrance was blocked.
Historians knew the story, so they included it in the reconstruction.
Historians know quite a bit about the fortress, in fact. The
French were great at keeping records — there are more than a million documents
from Louisbourg, plus journals and letters from the 2,500 civilians and 700
soldiers living there in the 1740s. In summer, 150 people in costume recreate
the lives of some of those inhabitants.
Besides the rebuilt part, you can also take a self-guided tour
through the other four-fifths of Louisbourg. In the wind-blown fields you can
see where the hospital, breweries and executioner’s house stood. You can look
back at the spires of Louisbourg and enjoy this history lesson, thanks to
people who never learned their own.
ACCESS
The fortress of Louisbourg is open daily from June 1 to
September 30; reduced services Oct. 1 to 15.
For more information visit the University of Cape
Breton–maintained Louisbourg website at
http://fortress.uccb.ns.ca/
.