Nova Scotia and New Brunswick's European heritage by Tom Koppel
The first European inhabitants were French farmers who in the 1600s settled today’s Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, and called their homeland Acadie. They recognized the potential richness of the tidal flats and salt marshes, where high water had deposited thick layers of organic silt for thousands of years. In an arduous decades-long project, they built dikes to prevent the highest tides from flooding these areas. Winter rains flushed out the salt, creating thousands of acres of unusually fertile land on which the Acadians prospered. Then, in 1755, with Britain and France at war, the British expelled the Acadians. Some were shipped back to Europe. Others, their name shortened to "Cajuns," ended up in Louisiana. Some hid near the borders of Quebec and emerged to resettle in northern New Brunswick, Canada’s only officially bilingual province. The painful story is commemorated at a historic site in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia, and told in Longfellow’s tragic poem Evangeline.
We found the small city of Saint John, New Brunswick, to be an architecture buff’s delight. It was founded by Loyalists (loyal to the British crown, that is) who moved north during the American Revolution and made it the main port, banking and insurance center of maritime Canada. It remained so anti-Yankee that gravestones were imported from England because people refused to buy from Bostonians. The central King’s Park was laid out with walkways in the pattern of the Union Jack. In Nova Scotia, though, the Acadians survived in name only. The scenic town of Wolfville, east of the bay, is home to Acadia University. But it is a British place, full of Victorian mansions that have been converted to elegant country inns or bed-andbreakfasts. "European heritage is alive and well in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia."
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