The Acadien Proscription

Newspaper
Year
1888
Month
5
Day
23
Article Title
The Acadien Proscription
Author
----
Page Number
3
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
THE ACADIEN PROSCRIPTION A Montreal despatch says: The Abbe Casgrain, while in France, occupied himself with exhaustive researches into the history of Acadia and the circumstances attending the dispersion of the Acadians. He claims to have copied numerous documents found in the Ministry of Marine and of the Colonies at Paris, and in the British museum and Public Record Office in London. In the British Museum he gained access to the curious manuscripts of Dr. A. Brown, the Presbyterian minister, who spent several years in Nova Scotia at the end of the last century, and was in communication with so many of both the authors and the victims of the proscription. These documents have not yet, for the most part, seen the light of day. The editors of the new quarterly review published by Laval University have made arrangements for their publication, from time to time in serial form. The Abbe believes they are destined to throw a new light upon the famous Acadian question, which he says appears to have been treated by some writers in a manner calculated to travesty the truth and to deceive the public. He also charges that the famous Nova Scotia archives, published by the Record Commissioners, are not what they purport to be, inasmuch as their compilers and publishers, with the apparent object of justifying the conduct of the British officials in the matter of the Acadian dispersion, have systematically omitted a number of most important documents bearing upon the question. The charge is a very serious one, for the archives in question have come to be regarded as a complete official record of the history of the Acadian proscription, and the various writers, from an English point of view, on that interesting period, have habituated themselves to appealing to the work of the Halifax Record Commission as to a court of final resort. The gravity of the accusation will increase the interest that will be attached to the approaching publication of the manuscripts brought from London and Paris by the Rev. Mr. Casgrain.