Nova Scotia

by Lesley Choyce

  The governing council of Nova Scotia and the meddling Massachusetts governor, William Shirley, suspected the Acadians of ill will. New Englanders were making suggestions to the British that the so-called “nest of traitors” should be somehow removed.

  After the English captured Louisbourg in 1745, the French counterattacked the next year by trying again to recapture Fort Anne. This attack and a subsequent one in 1747 failed and while these were actions undertaken byub French military men, the peaceful Acadians were once again under suspicion. In 1748 some British troops were killed in the Grand Pré region. Acadians were blamed, though evidence of their involvement was slim. In that year the war was over, Île Royale was again returned to France and the mainland Acadians were quite willing to continue their lives under British rule. This created an odd predicament for the British, for now Nova Scotia was officially English but predominantly populated by people of French descent.

  Herded Like Cattle

  The building of Halifax in 1749 under the direction of Governor Cornwallis signalled a shift of British attitudes; it was not just an effort to create a city but also to create a powerful military presence. Hundreds of Acadians began to take the hint and a few migrated to Cape Breton (the poor farming there notwithstanding) and several hundred to Île Saint-Jean. Cornwallis now demanded a full oath of allegiance and the Acadians refused to accept the terms, raising his ire. He responded by establishing new military posts in Acadian areas. The next Halifax governor, Peregrine Hopson, softened the hard line and was willing to accept an oathh of allegiance that would not require Acadians to fight against the French, but he left Halifax by 1753 and the next year Charles Lawrence (for whom my own community of East Lawrencetown is named) was appointed lieutenant-governor.

  Lawrence was more than leery of the Acadian population. There were too many of them and they were too settled, too entrenched and, to his mind, too dangerous. Lawrence saw the threat of the French all around him – Quebec, *Louisbourg and the loyalty of the Natives to the French. France also had control of the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Lawrence felt that he had inherited a vulnerable and weak position and he wanted to do whatever he could to strengthen the English position.

  There were 10,000 Acadians under Lawrence’s jurisdiction in Nova Scotia and this number weighed heavily on his mind. He was also fearful of a possible attack from the French to the west. So with the support of nearly 2,500 troops sent up by Governor Shirley, the British attacked Fort Beausejour in the Tantramar Marsh at the head of the Bay of Fundy. More than 300 Acadians were found inside; some had been coerced into fighting against the British. This fact would help seal the fate of a broad sweep of Acadians. Many claimed they were threatened and forced into fighting the English by the French, but this was not enough to quell the growing mistrust of all Acadians and it gave the impetus to Lawrence to take stronger measures against these “traitors from within.” *

  The New England troops went further and seized guns from the Acadians in the entire Fort Beausejour area. The Acadians thought this was going too far – guns were necessary for hunting – so a group of delegates went to Halifax to try to sort things out. Once again they were asked to sign a very strong oath of allegiance to the British. They refused and were imprisoned on George’s Island in Halifax Harbour. Later, in July 1755, a second group of Acadians came to Halifax and again the issue of the oath was put before them. Like their predecessors, they refused to agree with the British definition of allegiance and the possibility they would be forc*ed to fight against the French. Undoubtedly, the threat of expulsion had been put before them but they felt certain the British would not follow through. They had been living with this threat since the first time it had been put forward in 1713.

  From a pragmatic point of view, one wonders why the Acadian leaders did not simply swear the oath and go back to their farms – after all, they had no desire to become embroiled in anybody’s battles. They wanted to be left alone. Alas, the concept of being obliged to fight against the French must have seemed too much. The British, on the other hand, would have been foolish to send Acadians into battle against the French, as they would no doubt turn out to be very poor opponents of their own countrymen.

  Undoubtedly the business of the oath was really part of a larger agenda which had already been set. Fear had been growing among British leaders since the Mississippi River valley had recently been lost to the French. So on July 28, 1755, the Halifax governing council, which included Lieutenant*-Governor Charles Lawrence, Admiral Boscawen and Chief Justice Belcher, called for the deportation of the “French Inhabitants.” Later the British govern*ment in London would claim that it did not know of Lawrence’s decision on expulsion and if it had, it would have quashed such a measure. If Lawrence is the man most damned with the guilt of having caused such monumental grief, it’s worth noting that British colonial leaders were in a new panic about the prospect of the French conquering much of North America. Powerful Boston leaders like Phipps and Shirley were also urging Lawrence to offset any potential attacks against New England from the French in the New Brunswick region.

  Orders went out to Chignecto, Pisiquid (near Windsor), Beausejour and Fort Anne. Livestock and land would be turned over to the Crown. Families could take only what they could carry with them, as they would be sent off on ships brought in from the colonies along the Atlantic Coast from Massachusetts to Georgia. By August 11, the operation had begun at Fort Beausejour. The men were held in custody until the ships arrived. It is reported that some men tunnelled out of the fort, collected their families and escaped to freedom in the wilderness.

  The most populated settlement, Grand Pré, heard the deportation orders in early September of that year. It came as a complete shock. Despite events at Beausejour, no one in Grand Pré expected the deportation of a group of families whose lives were entirely dedicated to agriculture. They had been out working in the fields just the day before. But in Grand Pré and nearby Pisiquid, the men were brought together and told that they were about to lose their land and their livestock.

  At Grand Pré, Colonel John Winslow was the officer in charge of the expulsion. His diary reveals that he felt badly over the fate of the Acadians. He knew that he did not have enough men to forcibly remove everyone from their homes without bloodshed and he wanted to avoid a confrontation. Before the Grand Pré* villagers were aware of what was about to happen, Winslow installed himself in the priest’s house and asked the people to take mall the religious ornaments out of the church. He intended the church to become a temporary military prison and did not want religious fervour over sacred objects to further complicate his already difficult task. More than 400 men and boys aged ten and older were ordered to gather inside the church, where they learned they were now prisoners and that soon they would be deported, along with their families. It would be a long, tense wait for the necessary ships to arrive. Each day twenty men were allowed to go back into the community and bring back food. However, if they did not return, the other prisoners would be shot.

  Winslow, hoping to reduce the possibility of an uprising, ordered the young men to leave on the first five ships. With some refusing to leave without their fathers, soldiers marched them at bayonet-point to the boats asy mothers and sisters stood by and watched in tears.

  Before more ships could arrive, twenty-four men did escape. Winslow decreed that if they did not return, the entire village would be burned immediately. Twenty-two men did return, while the other two were shot in pursuit. Within a few months, everyone was herded onto ships and the Acadian community of Grand Pré had been depopulated. By December of 1755 more than 2,200 Acadians were shipped away from their homes in and around Grand Pré alone. British troops burned barns and houses so there would be nothing for the Acadians to return to. They knew how strongly these people felt about their land and they wanted to do the utmost to discourage them from corming back.

  The Tragedy of Exile

  Families were separated in many cases – not so much o
ut of cruelty but more a result of the bureaucratic nightmare of orchestrating the loading and dispersal of so many unhappy souls. Some of those families would, of cours*e, never be able to find their way back together. In all, about 6,000 Acadians were ripped away from the homes they loved and scattered to Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. Conditions aboard the Boston ships were unhealthy and many died on the voyage.

  Many Acadians accepted their fate and adapted to the ways of AngloAmerican life. A new language was learned and names were changed. But hundreds of others refused to give up on their cherished homeland and did whatever nthey could to find their way back to Nova Scotia. Still others moved on to Louisiana, French territory, to begin a new life. Not all of the colonies were hospitable toward the destitute immigrants who were to arrive. Virginia refused to accept the 1,500 Acadians deposited there and had them shipped to England as prisoners of war. After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, those who were still alive were sent on to St. Malo and Morlaix in France.

  Not all Acadians were deported. It was a massive and complex task that could never fully succeed. Acadians from Cape Sable were imprisoned in Halifax and finally shipped off to France. Even as late as 1762, more than fifty Acadian families were imprisoned at Fort Edward in Windsor.

  Others were luckier and escaped to the Restigouche, Miramichi and Bay of Chaleur areas of New Brunswick. Still others made their way to the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec and to the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

  In 1760, after the fall of Montreal, France lost control of North America and the British fear of the Acadians abated. By 1764 they were permitted to return – yet still they were required to take the loathed oath of allegiance. They were also instructed to settle in the more remote areas of the region. The move was not entirely altruistic. Acadians were needed for labour in the fishing industry and their farming and fur-trapping skills would also be greatly in demand. On top of that, the Acadians had a good working relationship with the Mi’kmaq, which might also be profitable in the trade of furs.

  British law asserted that only Protestants could purchase or own land. It was a tough policy to uphold but it kept the Catholics at a severe disadvantage. They might be permitted to hold land, even live on it without title, but only if the land was not in demand by a Protestant and in particular an Englishman. As the Acadians found their way back to the Annapolis Valley and elsewhere, they discovered that many of their farms had been given to New England colonists known as Planters, who were not nearly as skilled in working the land. A few families were permitted to return to their own land in Pubnico in southwest Nova Scotia and on Île Madame off the coast of Cape Breton.

  The growth of the fishery led to Acadians being encouraged to settle in Argyle, Clare, Cheticamp, Havre-Boucher, Île Madame, Minudie, Nappan, Maccan, Pomquet, Tracadie and Chezzetcook. French culture and language would survive most strongly in Clare and Cheticamp, while other areas experienced a gradual assimilation into English culture. Prejudice against the Acadians would continue, however, and the tragedy of the exile could not be easily forgotten by those families that had suffered severe hardship and personal loss. It’s been estimated that, despite the deportation, by the early nineteenth century, seventy percent of all surviving Acadians (23,000 of them) had returned to live in the north – in the Maritimes or in Quebec.

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 19

  Of Cabbages and Kings

  The belief in empire-building may have been more the inspiration for the Seven Years’ War than any real desire for control of more land. Underlying that notion was the fact that England and France each wanted the entire North American continent for its own. The war lasted officially from 1756 to 1763, but fighting had started in Ohio in 1754. By 1755, the British had already captured Fort Beausejour and expelled the Acadians. France knew that the fall of Louisbourg and Quebec would mean the end of French power in North America and they were prepared to fight. The English, however, were determined to capture Louisbourg again.

  Lord Loudon came to Halifax in 1757 and drilled his soldiers for battle. To avoid scurvy, the men ate vegetables they had grown themselves. As a result, Loudon’s contingent became known as the “cabbage planting expedition.” His men camped near the base of the Citadel, along with the American rangers on hand for the battle for Louisbourg. Loudon himself was not well-cliked (some thought of him as all pomp and no circumstance). On two occasions he was nearly killed by “accidental” misfiring of American muskets. He also had a habit of complaining about the quality of Halifax rum, which all too often made his troops sick.

  Admiral Holbourne had arrived from England with eleven warships to blockade Louisbourg, but something happened to stall the plan of attack. Loudon’s troops were on their way to attack Louisbourg when the French ship La Parole was captured. On the ship, hidden in a fish barrel, were fake letters addressed to the French government indicating that Louisbourg had twenty-two warships, other small craft and more than enough French troops to stave off the English. Loudon, believing his men were outnumbered by French ships and soldiers at Louisbourg, refused to send them off to what he believed would be certain slaughter. He decided to sail his men back to England but first returned to Halifax where they were responsible for spreading a smallpox epidemic that would kill 700 Haligonians that winter, a high casualty rate for a battle that never happened.

  Holbourne wasn’t as readily dissuaded from the attack but he had a stroke of bad luck as gale-force winds lashed his fleet, smashing up some of his ships along the coast of Cape Breton. By the time they had regrouped, it was too late in the season to attack.

  In England, Loudon’s refusal to move on Louisbourg was considered an outrage, so by the spring of 1758, a larger military force was sent over for battle. General Jeffrey Amherst controlled 12,000 men and Admiral Boscawen commanded more than forty ships. Together they were prepared to attack Louisbourg by the end of May. Amherst had previously held only administrative jobs, most recently in charge of providing supplies for Hessian troops, but back in England his superiors had decided that Amherst was the man for the job. Boscawen, on the other hand, had fought in Spain, Panama and India. Nicknamed “Wry-necked Dick” or more affectionately, “Old Dreadnought,” he was famous for hauling poor sods off the streets and pressing them into naval service. He had been to Nova Scotia previously with a crew of men dying of typhoid and had helped in the dirty work of “removing” Acadians from their homes. Louisbourg was not one of his favoured sailing destinations and he worried considerably about “the dismal prospect of floating islands of ice sufficient to terrifie [sic] the most daring seaman.”

  Instead of overindulging on cabbages to fight scurvy, the soldiers now drank a palatable spruce beer made from boiled spruce, molasses and yeast. By the time everyone was crowded into Halifax, the city was even rowdier, drunker and more crime-infested than before. A semblance of order was maintained by severe punishment: floggings, hangings, execution by musket, all attended by considerable crowds for their entertainment value. A less drastic but somewhat painful and humiliating punishment was “riding the wooden horse,” which, as close as I can figure, involved being strapped naked onto a sharp wooden rail for hours at a time with weights attached to your legs and feet. Pirates (privateers on the wrong side) were hanged and their bodies left to swing in the breeze for all to see.

  Nobody knew what to do with the poor and the insane, so a poorhouse – a kind of a prison, really i– was built where the library on Spring Garden Road stands today. The inhabitants there also received considerable floggings – inf hopes of what? one might wonder. Reforming them? Improving their attitude? When they died, they were buried in shallow graves, so that the smell of rotting human flesh wafted up and down lovely Spring Garden Road where now fashionable shops sell overpriced items of fashion.

  Most colonists in Halifax were not at all eager to get involved in the battle for Louisbourg. In fact, there would be no provincial regiments and rela
tively few Americans in the attack. The provincial units served mostMaly as labourers, not actual fighters. In Halifax, the red-coated Brits looked down their noses at their blue-jacketed American counterparts, but the British desperately needed the forest-fighting skills of some of the American Rangers. One of these Ranger units was made up almost entirely of Mohicans. Along with some other First Nations warriors, they were armed, paid and fed by the British in the fighting at Louisbourg and later at Quebec.

  Amherst and Boscawen hoped that they could get the job done quickly at Louisbourg and then move on to attack the French stronghold in Quebec. That didn’t happen. Difficult winds made for a slow crossing from Britain for Boscawen’s ships. Once all the troops and ships were gathered in Halifax and ready to go, General James Wolfe complained that the men were not yet ready for battle, partly because they were poorly attired. It wasn’t just a matter of fashion but the fact that the men were fitted for a summer war on the continent, not a cooler war in rough Nova Scotian terrain. He noticed that the English troops and seamen were not in top-notch physical condition as a result of surviving only on salt-meat and rum – not exactly an ideal, nourishing diet. He also argued that they were too well-paid to be good soldiers. As a leader, he had serious doubts about a lot of things. Nonetheless, the plan went ahead.