The Expulsion of the Acadians: Grand Pré

About this episode

Episode 438: In September 1755, more than four hundred men from Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, were summoned to their parish church and told their land, homes, and livestock had been forfeited to the Crown. They would not be going home, and neither would their families. The Acadians, French-speaking Catholic settlers who had farmed the Bay of Fundy’s tidal marshes for more than a century, were about to be deported in one of the largest forced removals in North American history. Here we tell the story of what the Acadians of Grand Pré built, why the British destroyed it, and what became of the families torn apart and scattered across the Atlantic world. More than ten thousand Acadians were forcibly removed from their homeland over the course of the operation, and by some estimates, nearly half did not survive the decade that followed. From Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow, who carried out the deportation, to René Leblanc, the elderly notary who refused to abandon his people, we follow the Great Upheaval from the shores of Grand-Pré to the bayous of Louisiana, where the Acadian legacy lives on as Cajun culture. Sources:L'Histoire de l'Acadie | Moncton.caExpulsion of the Acadians | Wikiped