Article Contents
THE REVIVISCENCE OF ACADIA.
The marvel of modern history in Acadia is the national reviviscence of the Acadians. From year to year that is becoming the great fact which cannot be ignored. The first settlers of the country are coming to their own again. And what makes the fact all the more remarkable is that, while the people who are so successfully asserting themselves are lineal descendants of the ancient Acadians, they have discarded completely in this peaceful rivalry the methods of their ancestors. The modem Acadian leader has little about him, except perhaps his language, to prove that lie is a descendant of the timid, retiring and submissive people who because of their general inoffensiveness of character, were called by both the French and English of this century the Neutral French. He is very much alive, very aggressive, and not to be placated with but a modicum of what he believes is the fair birthright of his people. In this, he shows the effect of Anglo-Saxon environment, and in this he is a product unproducible under the regime which the English conquest of Acadia put an end to forever. He has thus been improved upon in spite of himself.
It is a question, nevertheless, whether he recognizes the transformation or is grateful for it. Perhaps if he did he would not glory so ostentatiously in conditions that are now as utterly foreign and impossible to him as they are by heredity to the Anglo-Saxon. This renaissance of France in Canada, which is becoming yearly more noticeable, is doubtless one of the mysteries of human affinity. Blood will tell, and the wine in the hogshead will surge and work in sympathy and unison with the flow of life in the parent vine. If the barrel be strong, well staved and well hooped, the commotion within will result in froth—nothing more. We believe the barrel is strong. Yet none the less should we take men seriously who are seriously trying to take themselves seriously. If they put their own interpretation on history, or better, if they lose sight of history altogether, and exult in what others believe they should spurn and condemn—that, we suppose, is their own affair, and the greater world around them can afford placidly to look on and enjoy the sight. Yet there can be no enjoyment where men are seen to stultify themselves.
It is the dream of the men who are conducting this reviviscence of Acadia one day to be leaders of a banded and united people, to whom the French language will be their unquestioned mother-tongue and French civilization the standard of material progress. They are laying their plans carefully for a successful assertion at the opportune time of their right to a final and decisive voice in the history of these provinces by the sea. We do not blame their ambition. It appears to them praiseworthy and right. But we regret it. We regret it because as long as this spirit of separate nationality is fostered and kept alive among us just so long will there be disunion and stoppage of real national growth.
That there is such a spirit abroad among our fellow-citizens of French extraction, is a fact. It is a fact well known to those who are acquainted with the true inwardness of the French mind in Canada. Already we hear the boast that eventually the country must become French because of the productiveness of French families. French Canadians in official positions are not afraid to give expression to their hopes of French domination in Canada; Today, they are openly crying out to France to remember them when the hour arrives Witness the wild folly of Hon. Israel J. Tarte’s utterances in Paris. All this is suicidal. It is worse, it is mad folly.
We cannot afford to be misunderstood in this matter. We do not object to the elevation of the Acadian race so long submerged and so atrociously abused by the Barbarian English of the last century. We hail their growth, and their increase in importance as an element of our population. Their new status is the long delayed reward of their sufferings in other times. We believe that they should receive the fullest recognition in all the avenues, walks and conditions of life and we would furthermore advise them to agitate until all their just ambitions are gratified. But we beg of them as they value their own consistency and their own future welfare not to coquet with this attractive illusion of French renaissance, or to imagine that this country will ever again be handed over to the vicious grasp of the France of t their ancestors.