Migration, Arrival, and Settlement

There are four distinct phases in the story of Acadian migration: the period until 1755, when peoples from very different homelands came together to create the original Acadian community; the deportation years of 1755–63; the era from 1764 until the late eighteenth century, when the Acadian community within the Maritime provinces was rebuilt; and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which witnessed Acadian migration from the Maritime provinces to other parts of Canada and the United States.

Migration to Acadia during the seventeenth century took two basic forms: passage as part of an organized attempt at settlement under the authority of an appointed official, such as the sailings from France undertaken by Charles Saint-Étienne de la Tour in the 1630s or those by Hector d’Andigné de Grandfontaine in the 1670s; and the migration of individuals and families on their own. After 1710 there was no major collective emigration but individual migration into the colony continued. Though France ceded Acadia to the English in 1713, it retained Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island), and French migrants still made their way to both these areas. A number of the new arrivals crossed into Nova Scotia and married into the Acadian population. Further, the northern boundary of Nova Scotia was a matter of dispute between the two empires and there was considerable French activity within what is now New Brunswick. Some individuals migrated to the Acadian communities located there.

A census conducted in 1671 showed that Acadia’s major settlement, in the area of Port Royal, had 67 families accounting for a total of 348 people (65 men, 67 wives or widows, 125 sons, and 91 daughters). Elsewhere, there were another thirty or forty people: at Pubnico, on the south shore, there were three families, fourteen people in all. One family of four was also established at Port La Tour and another of three lived near present-day Birchtown. In total, the population of European origin within the colony was close to five hundred.

The next twenty years saw this population come close to doubling. By 1690 Port Royal had increased to over 460 people, gathered into 80 families. New settlements had been founded farther north, in the deep indentations of the Minas and Cumberland basins. Minas itself had a population of 164 and Beaubassin (Amherst) 83. Little groups had been added to the families of Pubnico and Port La Tour, making an archipelago of settlement from Cape Sable to Chedabucto Bay, perhaps a hundred people in total. On the southern shore of present-day New Brunswick and along the coast of present-day northern Maine as far as Pentagoet, there was another necklace of tiny groups, seventeen individuals at the mouth of the Saint John River, twenty-one at Passamaquoddy Bay, and another twenty perhaps in separate family clearings at various estuaries along the coasts. As well, there were people along the Miramichi River, on Île Royale, and at Canso. In all, the Acadian population cannot have been far short of a thousand, and it had grown to approximately three thousand by the time Britain assumed permanent control of the colony in 1713.

Between 1713 and 1755 the Acadian population grew, mainly through natural increase, to at least 12,000 and probably as much as 18,000. The seat of government, Annapolis Royal, expanded slowly to include about 2,000 people, but the settlements at the head of the Bay of Fundy developed apace. By 1748 there were at least 5,000 people at Minas and about 3,000 at Beaubassin. Another two thousand Acadians lived in the settlements that had been established along the north shore of Chignecto Basin and in the valleys of the Memramcook, Petitcodiac, and Shepody rivers. The population in this area was in the neighbourhood of 300 by 1755. In the southeast of the colony, in the area from Pubnico to Halifax, there were another three or four hundred, while along the shore from Canso to the Miramichi, small settlements sheltered perhaps another hundred or so. About 1,500 Acadians resided on Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean.

Acadia before 1755 displayed the same diversity as did the country from which most of its inhabitants came. In the seventeenth century France’s population was some seventeen to twenty million, as opposed to the roughly five million who lived in the British Isles. Most important, France was a much more fragmented society than her neighbour. From the cream, butter, and cider country of Normandy to the garlic, red wine, and olive country of Marseilles, from the forested hills of the Ardennes to the swamps of the Gironde, the country was a patchwork quilt of traditions and practices, not to mention dialects so different as to be, for practical purposes, distinct languages. All the varying sectors of France had different relations with the central government, and the variations of judicial process recognized within the country at the opening of the seventeenth century were considerable. In Champagne the provincial estates meet tri-annually, dominated by the landowning class; in the Gironde they almost never met and were dominated by the peasantry when they did. Voltaire remarked that one changed laws in France as often as one changed horses. In practice this meant that the daily lives of the subjects of kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV differed widely when it came to marriage customs, legal obligations, social conventions, and cultural traditions.

Thus, the Leblancs coming to Acadie from Poitou in 1645 would have different traditions about the ways in which authority was exercised from the Roys arriving from Saint-Malo in 1671 with the customs of Brittany as their norm. The Arsenaults, arriving in 1670 from Rochefort, that marshy city which as late as the 1870s was referred to as “a place of fevers and barbarity,” would be aware of the conflicting religious disputes of France to a greater extent than those such as the Bastarache, arriving in 1680 from the Bayonne region. When one considers as well the Melanson brothers, arriving in 1657 with a Scottish heritage, and a number of other migrants from England and Ireland, the diverse heritage of those who became Acadian is clear.

The varied origins of Acadians at the opening of the eighteenth century is captured in a statistical snapshot prepared by the French scholar Geneviève Massignon. In 1707, 36.1 percent of the Acadian population could be traced to the Loudunais region of France, southwest of Nantes; 11 percent came from the centre-west areas of France, the regions of Poitou, Saintonge, and Angoumois; and a further 4.1 percent were from Aunis. Some 2.7 percent originated in Anjou, one family each from Tours, Orléans, and Paris, representing respectively 0.3, 0.2, and 0.5 percent of the total population. The numbers from Normandy (1.2 percent) and Brittany (1.2 percent) were less than half of those who had an anglophone heritage (4.7 percent). There were families from Maine, Bourgogne, Champagne, and Brie, accounting in total for 9.2 percent of the population. A family from Flanders made up 0.4 percent of the population, and Guyenne, Provence, and the Basque country accounted for another 2.5 percent. Almost a quarter of the population, 23.9 percent, left no trace of particular regional affiliation but were of obvious French backgrounds. There was at least one family, accounting for 0.2 percent, from Portugal, and 1.6 came from France’s larger colony along the St Lawrence.

The second era of Acadian migration came with the decision, made in 1755, to deport the Acadians. The main outlines of this event have never been in dispute. The Anglo-French battle for North America had been intensifying since 1713, and in 1756, when England and France declared war on one another, the control of North America was a major issue of contention. In 1755, peace between these powers had not formally ended but both sides were preparing for battle and manoeuvring for advantage in the coming struggle. Nova Scotia was of major strategic importance since it lay as a continental “cornice” between the northeastern claims of Maine and Massachusetts and the lands held by the French, not only New France but also Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean. Although it had been ruled by Great Britain since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the majority of the population was Acadian, French-speaking, and Catholic. After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, there had been constant incidents between English and French on Nova Scotia’s borders. Forts were established and provisioned on both sides of the colony’s contested boundaries, and neither the French nor the English refused to give full credence to the Acadian assertion of neutrality, believing that in time of all-out war this would dissolve. The deportation of the Acadians in 1755 was in the nature of a preemptive strike by the English authorities. As for the Acadians themselves, whatever judgment one makes as to the military necessity of the deportation, or its morality, it had two unequivocal results: in 1755 it sent the majority of the population into exile and reaction to it has coloured the Acadian sense of themselves, to a greater or lesser degree, ever since.

Although the summer and autumn of 1755 saw the greatest number sent into exile, the deportation was not restricted to a single year; it continued until 1763, eight years in all. Estimates of those actually deported range from 6,000 to double that number. The most reasonable estimate is that roughly 15,000 were deported. Those who remained took refuge along the Miramichi River or survived more or less as prisoners of war within Nova Scotia. In 1764, when Acadians were once more permitted to own land in Nova Scotia, there were roughly one hundred and sixty-five Acadian families in the colony, in all perhaps a thousand people.

The deported Acadians had as their appointed destination, without exception, one of the British colonies in North America. In the first instance, exile scattered the Acadians from Massachusetts to Georgia. Yet, because the places of exile were themselves involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in the Anglo-French battle for dominance of North America, they often could not offer the Acadians a permanent resting spot. For example, a number of those sent to Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia later moved to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and some of these then continued on to either Louisiana or British Honduras (Belize). Others first landed in Massachusetts but after 1763 moved to the banks of the St Lawrence. Some travelled to the Channel Islands and then to the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Those who first landed in Virginia were, for the most part, sent on to England and then to France. Many of those who survived this trek sailed from Nantes in 1785 for Louisiana, which was then Spanish territory. One study of the location of the Acadian population at the time of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 includes the following figures: Massachusetts, 1,000; Connecticut, 650; New York, 250; Maryland, 810; Pennsylvania, 400; South Carolina, 300; Georgia, 200; Nova Scotia, 1,250; Saint John River (New Brunswick), 100; Louisiana, 300; England, 850; France, 3,500; Quebec, 2,000; Prince Edward Island, 300; Baie des Chaleurs, 700; total, 12,660.

The estimate that there were some 12,000 Acadians alive in 1763 must be understood in the light of the fact that many of those counted were young children born in exile. For countless Acadians, exile was immediately lethal. The Edward Cornwallis left Grand Pré with 417 Acadians on board and arrived in Columbia, South Carolina, with “210 dead and 207 in health.” The death toll on board on all the ships, like that of other contemporary Atlantic sailings, was considerable, reaching 30 percent in most cases and 50 percent in others. Once landed, the exiles were afflicted by epidemics of smallpox and cholera since they had little experience of, and therefore little immunity to, these diseases. For those Acadians who were sent first to Virginia and then to England, death from smallpox took a third of the group.

For a significant minority of Acadians, deportation was eventually followed, after 1763, by return to Nova Scotia. In July 1764 the Lords of Trade informed the then governor of Nova Scotia, Montagu Wilmot, that he should allow the Acadians to settle in Nova Scotia provided they swore an unequivocal oath of loyalty to England. Thousands of the exiles leaped at the opportunity. After 1763 Acadians made their way back to Nova Scotia from all points of the globe, from Massachusetts to France, the Carolinas to the Channel Islands. The country they found on their return, however, differed radically from the one they had left. Not only was Nova Scotia now indisputably part of the British Empire, but the Acadians were now a minority where once they had been a majority and their former lands had been given to others. Those who had escaped deportation lived on the very boundaries of the territory once called Acadia.

When their numbers once more reached the pre-deportation level in the Maritimes, some twenty thousand people, the Acadians found themselves in a situation that was radically different from the one they had occupied before 1755. There are only a few confirmed cases of Acadians returning to the regions they had farmed before 1755: they settled around Minudie, Nappan, and Maccan, settlements at the head of Bay of Fundy in Cumberland County, and also in Argyle County, between Yarmouth and Pubnico. Those in Argyle County were some of the first to return; nine families came back by boat from Boston in 1766, and by the turn of the century the Acadian community in the area numbered 400. But these Acadians fortunate enough to resettle in their old homes were the exceptions. Acadians never regained control of the rich lands of the Annapolis valley, the Minas Basin, and the largest salt-marsh lands in the world, the Tantramar. As the eighteenth century drew to close, Acadian settlements were to be found much where they are today: on the northern shore and in the upper Saint John River valley, around the Petitcodiac and Memramcook rivers in New Brunswick; on Cape Breton Island and around St Mary’s Bay in Nova Scotia; and on the northern shore of Prince Edward Island. In contrast to their former lands, the Acadians’ post-1764 settlements were widely scattered, forming a disconnected archipelago of survivors in an expanding sea of English-speaking peoples.

The largest community of Acadians re-established in Nova Scotia after 1755 was located in Clare, in Nova Scotia’s Digby County. Actually a long string of small villages on the shore of St Mary’s Bay, it owes its origins to Pierre Belliveau and a few companions who had escaped exile by fleeing from Annapolis Royal to this area of the colony in 1755. Others joined them, particularly after 1764, and in July 1768 the government of Nova Scotia approved their applications for land. By 1800 there were just over a thousand Acadians rebuilding their lives from St Bernard to Salmon River. Acadians also re-established themselves in Cheticamp, Inverness County, on Cape Breton Island; Isle Madame, in Cape Breton’s Richmond County; and around Tracadie, in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia.

After St Mary’s Bay, Cheticamp is the most important concentration of Acadians in present-day Nova Scotia. It was founded in 1782 by the Jersey fisherman Charles Robin, who actively encouraged Acadians, especially those whose exile had taken them to the Channel Islands and to France, to migrate there. Fourteen families took up residence in the area in 1790, and over the next forty years other small groups arrived from France, the Magdalen Islands, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The population reached around 375 in 1803 and 800 by 1820.

Îsle Madame, part of the French territory of Île Royale before 1763, had Acadian settlers in the early 1750s and these were augmented by a considerable number of refugees after 1755. Though in 1758 the majority of these Acadians were shipped to France, Charles Robin reported in 1765 that a number of Acadian families still resided in the vicinity of Arichat. This was the nucleus of a post-deportation Acadian community which by 1774 numbered 400. By 1811 the island had roughly 1,200 inhabitants, of whom 90 percent were Acadian.

The last major settlement to be established in Nova Scotia by returning Acadians was along the shores of St Georges Bay in Nova Scotia, and it also drew much of its population from those who had been sent to France. Tracadie began in 1772 with the arrival of Acadians from Îsle Madame and others who had spent the last ten years in exile in Saint-Malo. Together with Jersey fishermen, these settlers founded the communities of Pomquet and Havre Boucher, which by 1800, brought together in the single parish of Tracadie, had perhaps 300 inhabitants.

At the time of its deportation in 1758, the Acadian population of Île Saint-Jean was approximately 3,000 and included a considerable number of people who had fled Nova Scotia. A few escaped to the mainland, particularly around the Miramichi, but the majority were exiled, mostly to France. Seven hundred drowned when their ships foundered at sea. In 1798 there were 115 Acadian families, consisting of 615 individuals, living on what was then known as Prince Edward Island. They were grouped into three communities: Malpeque, Rustico, and Bay Fortune.

The post-deportation centre of the Acadian population was the territory that in 1784 became New Brunswick. This was the area to which most of those who escaped exile had fled, and, although those Acadians who had taken refuge along the lower reaches of the Saint John River were once more dispossessed on the arrival there of American Loyalists in 1784, Acadian claims to the upper reaches of that river went unchallenged. As well, in much of the valley of the Memramcook and portions of the coast from the Nova Scotia border to the Baie des Chaleurs, Acadians could rebuild their lives without worrying about a constant English presence. Evidence from a diocesan visit undertaken by Monseigneur Pierre Denaut in 1803 indicates that 1,162 Acadians lived in the Memramcook area, including those lands across the Baie des Chaleurs in Minudie; that another 2,121 were found in villages from Shediac to Restigouche, including the settlements of Bouctouche, Richibucto, and Tracadie; and that about 450 more resided in Madawaska, on the border between Maine and Quebec.

While the Acadians’ migrations in the latter half of the eighteenth century are the most dramatic of their travels, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have also seen continual Acadian movement. Like other Maritimers, some followed the twists and turns of the Atlantic fishery, moving to the New England states and to the Gulf of St Lawrence to earn a living from the sea. Others journeyed to Maine and Massachusetts to obtain employment in forestry and allied industries. Still others went to urban centres in Canada and many were employed in the building of the railways. Such migrations are typical of the Canadian experience rather than distinctively Acadian.

The growth of the Acadian population in the Maritime provinces before Confederation was, to a very large extent, a matter of natural increase. There was some migration from France to the communities of Cheticamp and Îsle Madame as well as to some of the villages along the northern Atlantic coast of New Brunswick. Also, there was some migration from Quebec, especially to Madawaska County, the villages immediately south of the Baie des Chaleurs, and, occasionally, Cheticamp. On the whole, however, not only was there minimal immigration to the Acadian communities of the Maritime provinces, there was a fair amount of Acadian emigration from that region to the state of Maine and Quebec. By 1871, when the first federal census was taken, the Acadian population in the three Maritime provinces had grown to at least 87,000, of whom 44,907 were in New Brunswick, 32,833 in Nova Scotia, and 9,250 in Prince Edward Island.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the population of French origin in New Brunswick almost tripled, from 45,000 to 121,000; Nova Scotia’s Acadians increased from 32,000 to 56,000 and P.E.I.’s from 9,000 to 12,000. During the second half of the twentieth century, Acadians moved from the countryside to the towns. In Nova Scotia in 1986, Acadians in the cities made up 3.5 percent of the population of Halifax, 3.6 percent of the population of Dartmouth, and 1.7 percent of the population of Sydney. The towns in that province with more than five thousand inhabitants and more than 100 francophones were Yarmouth (765 francophones out of a total population of 7,617; Bedford (340 out of 8,010); Amherst (285 out of 9,671); New Waterford, (225 out of 8,326); Port Hawkesbury (180 out of 3,869); Bridgewater (170 out of 6,617); Antigonish (140 out of 5,291); Truro (130 out of 12,124); New Glasgow (130 out of 10,022); and Glace Bay (100 out of 20,467). In New Brunswick, there was a major francophone presence in four out of the province’s six cities: in Moncton, they made up 35.1 percent of the population; in Edmundston, 92.8 percent; in Bathurst, 51.2 percent; and in Campbellton 54.4 percent. Together, these cities had 42,210 francophones. In Saint John, a city of 76,381, there were 4,565 francophones, or 6.1 percent of the population; and in Fredericton, the provincial capital, 7 percent – 3,260 people – of the city’s population of 44,352 were francophone. In New Brunswick towns with a population of more than 5,000, there was an important French-speaking presence in Dieppe (8,085 out of 9,016); Grand Falls (5,240 out of 6,209); Dalhousie (2,215 out of 5,363); and Oromocto (1,150 out of 9,656). That year, francophones were also the majority in a number of villages with more than 3,000 inhabitants: in Caraquet, population 4,493, francophones accounted for 97.9 percent of the total; in Beresford, francophones amounted to 83.8 percent of a population of 3,851; and francophones constituted 81.9 percent of Shediac’s population of 4,370.

In the compilation of census statistics, the government of Canada has not recognized “Acadian” as an ethnic origin. In the census of 1991, over 23,000 respondents, in the Maritimes and elsewhere, described their ethnic origin as “Acadian” (writing the word in rather than checking off an existing category); of these, 10,035 reported Acadian to be their single ethnic origin, while 12,825 said that Acadian was one of their ethnic origins. However, according to the same census, those of French origin numbered 235,010 in New Brunswick, or 45.7 percent of the population; 55,310 in Nova Scotia (20.1 percent); and 11,845 in P.E.I. (24.2 percent). And, according to the same census, those reporting French as a mother tongue made up 4.85 percent of the population of Prince Edward Island, 4.4 percent of the population of Nova Scotia, and 34.6 percent of the population of New Brunswick. Most of those of French origin in the Maritimes are in fact Acadian; a realistic estimate of the number of non-Acadian francophones in the Maritimes today is 5,000; most of these people live in Moncton or Halifax and come from France, Quebec, Belgium, Haiti, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Vietnam. In addition to the roughly 300,000 Acadians in the Maritime provinces, there are likely more than 1 million people of Acadian descent in Quebec, 200,000 in Ontario and the western provinces, 400,000 in the northeastern United States, and 800,000 in Louisiana.