Statue representing the fictional Evangeline, at Grand-Pré National Historic Site

(Rob Crandall/Shutterstock)

So many myths have grown up around the deportation of the Acadians, that I thought it would be in order to examine some of them.

Myth #1: Acadians were deported because they refused to take the oath of allegiance to Great Britain

Bustable, but not quite busted. I believe that even if every Acadian had sworn unqualified allegiance to Britain, they would still have been forcibly removed from their lands. However, their conditional oath was the pretext for their removal.

In 1713, France ceded Nova Scotia to Great Britain. (The physical surrender took place in 1710 at Port Royal.) Nova Scotia’s Acadian deputies (selectmen) swore an oath of allegiance to Britain, though it had two important conditions. They insisted on the free exercise of their religion. They also refused to take up arms against either the British or their own kinsmen in the French territory of New Brunswick. While the British presence in the province remained weak, these conditions weren’t contested.

Fast forward to 1755, when Nova Scotia’s Governor Charles Lawrence, backed by a stronger military, demanded that they take the unconditional oath of allegiance. He had every reason to know they would refuse, as they had for 40 years. So why did he force the question? I believe there were two reasons. One was land. The other was hatred.

At that time, Lawrence was struggling to attract Protestant colonists to the province and keep them there. They weren’t coming from England, where people were reluctant to move to a contested frontier. They were mostly German and Swiss Protestants. But their farms weren’t successful. Six years after the first settlers arrived at Halifax, Lawrence was still providing them with “victuals” including beef, pork, bread and flour, peas and molasses. (See 1755 Victual List for Lunenburg.) These were staples that, arguably, they should have been able to provide themselves.

On the other side of the province, Acadians were prospering on rich farmlands they had reclaimed from the salt tidewaters. It’s clear from Lawrence’s correspondence that he, like governors before him, wanted those lands for English Protestants.

In 1748, years before the deportations began, British surveyor Charles Morris drew up maps of Annapolis Royal and Grand Pré, showing how those areas could be divided between Acadian and Protestant settlers. He was told to scrap those maps. There was no plan, even then, to leave Acadians in the province.

British plan to divide Acadian lands between Protestants and Catholics

Forcing the issue of the oath was the means of obtaining land, not allegiance. Further evidence to support this assertion:

In 1754, a small community of Acadians living near Lunenberg took the unconditional oath. Lawrence deported them anyway.

A second reason for the deportations was the anti-Catholic sentiment frequently expressed by Lawrence and his fellow colonial governors. This antagonism wasn’t limited to Nova Scotia. Catholicism was outlawed in other New England colonies. In Virginia, for example, practitioners could be publicly whipped, deprived of their property, exiled, and even executed.

Spurred by the same prejudice, Charles Lawrence governed Nova Scotia with such severity that he quickly aroused the resentment of the inhabitants. He reinstated an old policy of requiring provisions and labor from Acadians. When they balked, arguing that their oath of allegiance didn’t require them to supply the troops, he threatened them with “military execution upon the delinquents.”

He wasn’t alone. Captain Alexander Murray, who commanded Fort Edward at Pisiquid, wrote of Acadians to a fellow officer, “You know our soldiers hate them and if they can find a pretence to kill them, they will.”

This type of contemptuous bias permitted the perpetration of a scorched-earth policy that today would be considered a crime against humanity.

Myth #2: Acadians were deported only from Grand Pré

Myth #3: The deportation began and ended in 1755

Totally busted! The deportations—plural—began in 1755 before the French and Indian (Seven Years’) War was officially declared, and continued until the war ended in 1763.

Deportation ships removed Acadians from all over Nova Scotia, from the Chignecto peninsula in the north, to Cape Sable in the south. The British also rounded up inhabitants in New Brunswick, from the Chignecto isthmus, the Petitcoudiac and St. John rivers, Memramcook, Shediac, and Chipoudie. They deported Acadians from Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Île St. Jean (Prince Edward Island).

Acadian population centers, 1755

(Map from “The Acadian Migrations,” *Canadian Geographical Journal*, July 1970)

Other British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard were dismayed to receive the deportees, and when war was finally declared in 1756, began sending them back to Halifax. From there, the government continued for years to send them to England.

As an aside, the deportations were anything but inexpensive. One researcher estimates the average annual cost as 33%-38% of Britain’s total North American budget during the war. (See British Public Debt, the Acadian Expulsion and the American Revolution, by Vincent Geloso.)

Myth #4: Acadians were peaceful farmers, neutral in the quarrels between France and Great Britain

Myth #5: Acadians perpetrated murderous raids on their enemies

Um… Both these statements are partly true. Taken without any qualification, though, each is completely false.

From the earliest days of British rule in Nova Scotia (1710 onward), Acadian inhabitants in that province were required to swear allegiance to the British crown (See Myth #1). While the British presence in the province remained weak, their conditional oath was tacitly accepted. But it rankled. To the British, loyalty was binary—neutrality wasn’t an option, in their view. Yet it remained the position of Nova Scotia Acadians for 40 years.

But were the Acadians really neutral? As we know from our own times, no population takes one view of things. Contemporary British leaders didn’t differentiate between Acadians in Nova Scotia and those in New Brunswick. But there were differences.

Generally speaking, Acadians in Nova Scotia remained neutral. It’s true that from time to time over the years, some of them provided information or other support to the French Canadian militia. For example, in the prelude to the Battle of Grand Pré (1747), as the Canadian militia marched down the peninsula to attack the British, they picked up a few recruits from among the inhabitants. Nevertheless, support of this kind doesn’t seem to have been sustained, and Nova Scotia Acadians remained generally peaceable after Britain took over.

Across the Bay of Fundy, it was a different story. The Acadians there viewed New Brunswick as French territory. They had no allegiance to England, and there was no British administration in place. Among its more peaceable inhabitants were some who were truly militant. The Broussards, the Surettes and others made it a family business to disrupt the British, particularly as Protestant settlements sprang up around Halifax, but even earlier. Seeing the British as invaders, they set fire to supply ships, disrupted communications, and attacked soldiers and settlers alike. Some of their raids were truly brutal.

So what should we make of Acadian neutrality? In British Nova Scotia, it was largely adhered to, though there were isolated exceptions. They provided sporadic support to the French, but they didn’t have citizen militias of the type that existed later in New England.

In French New Brunswick, Acadians hadn’t sworn to be neutral, and some were willing to bring the battle to British Nova Scotia. Even in New Brunswick, however, the greater number of inhabitants preferred to distance themselves from French-British quarrels rather than take part in them. Like their cousins in Nova Scotia, they identified as Acadian, not French, not British.

Although there were certainly Acadian militants, and there were certainly Acadians who weren’t militant, labeling all Acadians as either neutral or murderous doesn’t serve the truth.

Myth #6: No lives were lost during the deportations

This statement is completely busted! Thousands of Acadians lost their lives in transit to, and in, foreign places. Here are some examples:

Two young men in Grand Pré were shot down as they tried to escape deportation. Reported by Col. John Winslow, who was in charge of the deportations in that area.
At least two deportation ships went down in a gale that struck in October 1755, soon after the first ships left Acadia. The schooner Boscawen and the brigantine Union, both from Chignecto and bound for Philadelphia, sank with a total of 582 souls aboard.
A series of short journals by Captain John Waite of the Jolly Roger report the deaths of seven children from Annapolis Royal between September and November 1755, on the voyage to Georgia.
Other ships arrived in New England with fewer Acadians than they held leaving Canada. The sloop Endeavour from the Rivière aux Canards area, bound for Virginia, began with 166 passengers but delivered only 125. The sloop Ranger, overcrowded at the outset, lost 58 souls on the voyage.
Uncounted numbers of Acadians in New Brunswick and elsewhere, uprooted from their homes and farms, died of starvation and epidemics in refugee camps.
In 1758, three ships—the Duke William, the Ruby, and the Violet—were lost while deporting Acadians from Île St. Jean (Prince Edward Island) to France. Approximately 850 Acadians died.

It’s impossible to know the exact toll the deportations took on Acadian lives. Poor sanitary conditions, contaminated food and bad water led to sickness that spread quickly in crowded ship holds. Cholera, diphtheria, and other diseases killed uncounted numbers of Acadians, aboard ship and after they arrived at their destination ports. The above list isn’t complete, but it clearly shows that there was a toll.

Myth #7: The Mi’kmaq were subservient to Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre

Give me a break! It's incorrect to call the Amerindians subservient, since that term implies the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet, whose ancestral lands included Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, couldn’t make their own decisions. Amerindians had thrived for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in North America.

Though they were willing to take military direction from priests like Le Loutre, they didn’t see themselves as tools. They fought with Le Loutre because their interests coincided with his. (See The Cross and the Crowns for more on Le Loutre.)

In particular, the founding of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was an existential threat. The ground that British Governor Cornwallis expropriated for Halifax was theirs by custom and by treaty. It was important to them as a hunting ground and as a place for religious gatherings. Moreover, the Mi’kmaq were alarmed at the troops and settlers Cornwallis brought with him at the start of his administration. His clear policy of what today would be called genocide soon confirmed their viewpoint.

The Mi’kmaq had other reasons to side with Le Loutre. Many had converted to Catholicism by the mid-18th century, and held him in esteem as a religious leader. Moreover, he attempted to intercede with the British on their behalf, as when they and the Maliseet attempted to negotiate for peace. The Mi’kmaq considered themselves partners with Le Loutre, not chess pieces to be moved about at his will.

Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that Le Loutre believed he could persuade or incite the Mi’kmaq to do his bidding. In a 1749 letter to the Minister of the Marine (the French Foreign Office), he wrote:

“As we cannot openly oppose the English ventures [Protestant settlements], I think that we cannot do better than to incite the Indians to continue warring on the English; my plan is to persuade the Indians to send word to the English that they will not permit new settlements to be made in Acadia. …I shall do my best to make it look to the English as if this plan comes from the Indians and that I have no part in it.”

Le Loutre had all the prejudices of most white Christians of his day. He believed the Mi’kmaq needed civilizing, and that only his religion could lift them out of their heathen ways. Nothing unusual for Europeans of his time, but patronizing nevertheless.

After all, nobody claims the Acadians who fought with him were subservient. They, apparently, could think for themselves.

Mythbusting