The Expulsion of the Acadians

Year
1901
Month
4
Day
20
Article Title
The Expulsion of the Acadians
Author
----
Page Number
4
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
The Expulsion of the ACADIANS The Rev. Dr. Brock of Kentville, N.S., lectured in this city on Tuesday evening last on “The Legend of Evangeline and the Removal of the Acadians from Nova Scotia.“ As a presentation of the accepted English view of that deplorable event, with which the sad story of Evangeline is connected, the deportation of the Acadians his lecture was a clear, cogent and forcible exposition of the causes which forced the expatriation of these exiles on the British government as a war measure. In the course of his lecture he had to lay bare the long series of intrigues which the French government carried on through its agents, lay and clerical, and which in the end resulted in the sad, catastrophe of 1755. We can take but little exception to the facts which Dr. Brock adduced, but we might to the evident animus with which he adduced them. Be this as it may be, it is hardly worth quarreling over. We would, however, draw Dr. Brock’s attention and the attention of our other local students of Acadian history to the statement made in the Canadian House of Commons by the Hon. H. R. Emmerson during the debate on the Accession Oath petition, that the Acadians of Nova Scotia did not refuse to take the oath of allegiance as such to King George but refused to subscribe to it because of the Declaration against Transubstantiation which formed part of the oath proposed to them. The issue, therefore, became at once religious rather than political, and the Acadians were justified in their attitude of unbending refusal. If there is anything in this story, why cannot some one of the Acadian students of Acadian history substantiate it, and thus supply the world with an entirely new phase of this vexed question of Acadian expatriation?