INDEPTH: ACADIANS
Acadians
CBC News Online | December 10, 2003
Acadians are the original French people who settled the areas now called Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I. starting in the early 17th century. The first French settlers arrived in 1604, but actual colonies didn't take root until the 1630s.
Throughout the 1600s, various treaties flipped ownership of the Acadian colonies between the French and the English. In the early 18th century, the War of Spanish Succession spilled over into North America. The Treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713 and made the Acadians permanent British subjects.
In 1730, the Acadians signed an oath swearing allegiance to the British Crown, but stipulating that Acadians would not have to take up arms against the French or Indians.
At the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754, the British government demanded that Acadians take an oath of allegiance to the Crown that included fighting against the French. Most of them refused.
British Governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council decided to deport the Acadians on July 28, 1755. About 6,000 Acadians were forcibly removed from their colonies and dispersed among the 13 American colonies. Many colonies refused to take refugees and sent the Acadians to Europe. The British military ordered the Acadians' homes and barns to be burned down. Families were separated in the deportation and many lost everything they owned. Acadians call the deportation the Grand Dérangement, or Great Expulsion, of 1755.
Some Acadians fled into the woods and to French territories such as Ile St-Jean, which is now P.E.I. When Louisbourg, the last French stronghold on the Atlantic coast, fell in 1758, British troops rounded up over 3,000 Acadians from former French holdings and sent them to France.
Estimates on the total number of Acadians displaced in the Grand Dérangement range from 10,000 to 18,000. Thousands more were killed.
The Acadians were allowed to return to Nova Scotia at the end of the French and Indian War in 1764. Some Acadians deported to France settled in Louisiana. Although it was a Spanish colony at the time, Louisiana retained its French culture, and the Acadians' descendents, the Cajuns, became a major cultural influence.
Most of today's Acadians live in New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, with some in parts of Maine and Quebec.
Acknowledgement but no apology
Acadian groups, such as the Société Nationale de l'Acadie (SNA), who consider the 1755 deportation a form of genocide, have sought apologies from the Queen.
Bloc Québécois MP Stéphane Bergeron, who has Acadian roots, introduced a motion in the House of Commons in 2001 asking the Governor General to demand an apology from the Queen. The Liberal government defeated the motion.
The SNA wrote to Queen Elizabeth in 2003 seeking an acknowledgement of the Grand Dérangement. Buckingham Palace responded by saying the Queen would defer to the judgment of Parliament.
In December 2003, the federal government agreed to issue a proclamation in the name of the Queen recognizing the wrongs the Acadians suffered during the deportations.
The SNA's Euclide Chiasson said the government would set aside July 28 as a day to commemorate the Acadian exile beginning in 2005 on the 250th university of the Grand Dérangement. Chiasson said the statement would not be an apology, but acknowledgement was the next best thing.
Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who has Acadian ancestors on her mother's side, said she sent an invitation to the Queen to come to the Maritimes in 2005 to mark the anniversary.
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