Earle Lockerby - Deportation of the Prince Edward Island Acadians

O ne of the lessons historians are taught when they go through graduate school and begin to make their way in the profession is how important it is to verify what it says in the original sources: the letters, diaries, and other documents of a given period. Th ose historians who went before you, the thinking goes, might have missed or, worse still, misinterpreted some telling detail in the old documents.

Earle Lockerby is definitely a historian who practices what the profession preaches regarding the need to return to the original sources. What is especially noteworthy is that Earle developed that professional discipline on his own, for he did not study history in graduate school. Rather, he is a self-taught historian. Back when he was a young man in university he chose to pursue science and engineering, and he worked for many years with a Canadian company that designs and builds nuclear power plants. It was only after he retired that Earle was able to indulge his lifelong passion for history. Th e end result has been numerous articles in different popular and scholarly journals, more often than not about the early history of Prince Edward Island.

Earle Lockerbys historical research and writing demonstrates over and again just how important it is to revisit what was actually written in a given time period, and not rely on handed-down interpretations. Once his curiosity is piqued Earle begins his research by reading everything written on that subject. Th en he turns to the period documents, French and British alike. In the end, invariably, he comes up with insights not offered by anyone before him.

Th is book is the latest example of the Earle Lockerby approach. He took a subject that a number of authors have written about in a general waythe 1758 British removal of Acadians and French colonists from le Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island)but for which there is no detailed analysis of all available evidence. Th at is exactly what Earle has done, and he has produced a study that existed nowhere previously. Because of his thoroughness and commitment to present the evidence, readers will learn in these pages more than they ever knew, or dreamed it was possible to know, about the events of 1758. Readers will be fascinated by the details of the story, and come away with a clear idea of the scale and scope of that massive population removal of 1758. Th is book by Earle Lockerby is one that should be widely read. It tells the story of an important, yet little- known event in Canadian history.

A. J. B. Johnston,
Historian with Parks Canada, specializing in Atlantic Canada

Acknowledgements

T h e assistance of staff at Library and Archives Canada, Prince Edward Island Archives and Records Office, Harriet Irving Library at the University of New Brunswick, Centre dtudes acadiennes at the Universit de Moncton, and the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto is gratefully acknowledged. I am indebted to the Parks Canada staff at the archives of Fortress Louisbourg National Historic Site for providing access to documents held there. Th e contribution of A. J. B. Johnston who reviewed the initial manuscript and provided the foreword to this book is much appreciated. I am grateful to Georges Arsenault for critiquing portions of the manuscript. I thank Sandra McIntyre, Caley Baker, and others at Nimbus Publishing for their expert guidance, editorial work, and other contributions that have transformed a manuscript into a finished book. Special thanks go to my wife, Heidi, for her encouragement and unwavering support.

Preface

D eportation is a defining event in Acadian history, and has played a profound role in shaping Acadian identity. For Acadians, deportation was a tragedy that resulted in the devastation of their society, the dispersal of close-knit families, and the destruction of communities. At the same time, the travails of an uprooted pastoral people during deportation and its aftermath, and the extraordinary odyssey experienced by many of them, produced a shared heritage that has helped the Acadian community re-establish itself. Acadian interpretations of deportation have provided a framework for the development of a rich, distinct, and undiminished sense of identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Over the last two centuries historical writing about the deportation has been extensive and, like the events themselves, shaped by contesting perspectives. Most of what has been written focuses on the deportation of 1755, which resulted in the removal of approximately 6,500 Acadians from the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and adjacent areas. Th ese people were sent into exile in British colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia. Henry Wadsworth Longfellows poem, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, played a major role in making this deportation known to Acadians and non-Acadians alike. It even imparted something of a romantic quality to the event. During the year or two following the deportation in 1755, small numbers of Acadians who had escaped deportation were apprehended and removed from Nova Scotia. In 1756, for example, about two hundred Acadians from the Cape Sable area were deported to Boston.