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Culture quest
Four hundred years after Acadians settled the shores of Nova Scotia, their unwavering spirit still endures
By John DeMont
The little stone church is what gets them. The pilgrims mist up the moment they glimpse their clan name on the plaque at the back of the chapel. Some simply can’t help themselves. Once outside, they start trudging east through the flat farmland like mad Biblical prophets, desperate, it seems, for an inkling of how their ancestors felt 249 years ago as their British captors herded them out of the church-turned-prison in Grand Pré, N.S. Colonel John Winslow, in charge of deporting Acadians from the area for refusing to swear an unqualified oath of allegiance to the British Crown, wrote in his journal that they went “Very Solentarily and unwillingly, the women in Great Distress Carrying off Their Children In their arms. Others Carrying their Decript Parents in their Carts and all their Goods Moving in Great Confussion & appeared a Sceen of woe & Distres.”
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