The story of the Acadians usually starts in the middle, with the Great Upheaval. The real beginning came with the early-1600s arrival of French Catholic settlers in the land that became known as Acadia (consisting of much of the modern-day Maritime coast of Canada).
For generations they farmed, slowly becoming intertwined with the land. Meanwhile that land passed from one colonial master to another, a game piece in the treaties that ended European wars. Between 1604 and 1713, France and Great Britain swapped Acadia seven times.
The Acadians themselves claimed neutrality and got on with building new lives in the New World. But by 1755, tensions in Europe ran so high that neutrality wasn’t enough. The British were in control. They worried that the Acadians, possibly in conjunction with the indigenous Mi’kmaq, would act as a fifth column in the coming showdown with France. They gave the Acadians an ultimatum: Swear allegiance to the King of England or be deported. The Acadians refused the oath, and deportations began.
Thousands of New England troops and hundreds of British regulars forced the expulsion of about 10,000 Acadians. They were sent all over, including France (where they were badly received) and the Falkland Islands (in the Atlantic Ocean near the southern tip of South America). Some were forced to move several times. Many ended up in Louisiana, which as a Spanish colony welcomed Catholic settlers. There they evolved into the Cajuns (and inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem Evangeline).
Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom
— from Evangeline, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Once peace returned to Europe, some Acadians returned to the Canadian Maritimes. By then they had lost much of their good land in Nova Scotia to Protestant immigrants and Loyalist settlers who had fled the United States after the Declaration of Independence in 1776. So the Acadians moved to land farther north. Today, one main pocket of Acadian culture lies tucked away in northeast New Brunswick, on what has become known as the Acadian coast. French remains the primary language in the area. New Brunswick now takes pride in its Acadian heritage. It is Canada’s only officially bilingual province.
