If you’d been there, in Nova Scotia—they called it Acadia then—in September of 1755, you would have seen the women down on their knees along the dirt lane, pleading, praying, wailing, reaching up with extended arms as their men and boys were marched from the church at Grand Pré down to the British ships that waited with the high tide. All men and “lads”1 over the age of ten had been summoned to meet at the church at this Nova Scotian port town at exactly 3:00 p.m. on September 5. When 418 of the Acadians were gathered within the church, British soldiers barred the doors and windows. Colonel Winslow, the British commander, in a powdered wig, sat at a table surrounded by soldiers and read aloud from a document containing orders that supposedly originated with the king. It detailed the fate of these French-descended inhabitants of Nova Scotia—the Acadians—as the British soldiers went from port to port to round them up. “His instructions and commands, to wit, That your lands and tenements, cattle and live-stock of all kinds are forfeited to the Crown, together with all your other effects, except money and household goods, and that you yourselves are to be removed from this his province.”
What do You think about The Last Empty Places (2010)?
