Naming the Great Upheaval

On July 28, 1755, in Halifax, the Nova Scotia Council ordered the dispersal of the Acadians.

A few weeks earlier, Governor Charles Lawrence had demanded that Acadian delegates swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British Crown. For decades, many Acadians had insisted on remaining neutral. The delegates refused. Lawrence had them imprisoned.

Then the order was read, including in the parish church at Grand-Pré.

What followed has a name: the Great Upheaval, le Grand Dérangement.

In the fall of 1755, nearly 1,100 Acadians were put aboard ships bound for South Carolina, Georgia or Pennsylvania. It was only the beginning. From 1755 to 1763, about 10,000 Acadians were deported. According to Parks Canada, that was roughly three quarters of the Acadian population of the Maritimes.

Families were scattered across the British colonies, France and the Caribbean. Many died of disease, crowded into ships' holds, or drowned. After the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, about 3,100 Acadians were deported; more than half died at sea or of disease.

About 1,500 people fled to New France. Others ended up in Louisiana, where their descendants became the Cajuns.

From 1764, survivors were allowed to return. But their lands had been taken. They settled elsewhere: at Baie Sainte-Marie, Chéticamp, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and in northern and eastern New Brunswick.

What this history illuminates is that exile does not always begin far from home. You can become a stranger on the land where you were born.

As early as 1763, Acadian exiles in Philadelphia petitioned King George III. There was no answer.

More than two centuries later, in the 1990s, a Cajun lawyer from Louisiana, Warren Perrin, took up the request. He did not ask for money. He asked for the facts to be acknowledged.

On December 10, 2003, a royal proclamation was signed in the Queen's name. It acknowledges the deportation order, its continuation until 1763, and the trials and suffering of the Acadian people. It admits no legal or financial liability. It makes July 28 a Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval.

On July 28, 2005, at Grand-Pré, a plaque was unveiled. The minister responsible for Parks Canada, Stéphane Dion, explained its meaning:

Naming an injustice does not repair it. But as long as it goes unnamed, those who lived it remain alone with it. To acknowledge is to tell a people: your history is part of ours.