Singing Praises of Acadia

The road along New Brunswick’s Acadian coastline meanders through a string of villages with lyrical names like Petit Rocher, Caraquet, Shippagan, Tracadie and Bouctouche. Connected by kilometres of beaches lapped by the warmest salt waters north of Virginia, the villages are also linked by a common history that forged Acadia’s singular nature.

An infamous deportation lies at the heart of that heritage. In 1755, the British rounded up all the Acadians they could find and loaded them onto ships bound for the four corners of the world, after first burning down their homes and churches. Some Acadians managed to hide or sneak back. Today their descendents are a unique people, shaped by great trials and deeply proud of their history. Their Acadian culture is suffused with a festive spirit that expresses itself in music, dance, food and handicrafts.

Song of Acadia
New Brunswick’s Acadian community has spawned several internationally renowned entertainers. Singer Natasha St-Pier, the youngest at just 21, has sold hundreds of thousands of CDs and fills major concert halls in Europe and Quebec. But whenever she’s abroad for a long stretch, she misses her hometown, Bhurst.

“There are so many wonderful beaches in the city and surrounding area,” St-Pier observes. “And it’s so great because they’re all fine-sand beaches, with water so warm that your lips don’t turn blue! Whenever I hear a song about the sea, sand and beaches, I don’t think of the Caribbean, I think of home.”

Another New Brunswick singer, Edith Butler, was the first to bring attention to Acadia on the world stage. Born in the village of Paquetville, 15 minutes from the ocean, Butler says that coastal and inland Acadians have different mentalities, which in turn gives rise to lots of good-natured ribbing.

“When we go to the coast,” she says, “we end up thinking, ‘What is there to see here? Nothing except a boat going past every once in a while!’ And when they come inland, all they see is forest and conclude that there’s nothing to look at except trees, and that nothing ever stirs except maybe a partridge from time to time. So we’re always teasing each other!”

Actually, Paquetville has several other things worth seeing, like the wooden Saint-Augustin church, an architectural gem erected at the turn of the last century. Butler also urges visitors to drop by the Salon de la Renommée, “where there’s a lot of talk about famous people in the village, like the midwife who brought 3,000 babies into the world, including me!”

Near the tip of the Acadian Peninsula, Caraquet offers plenty to see and do. A small but lively coastal town founded in 1758, the self-declared “cultural capital of Acadia” celebrates its heritage every August with the hugely popular Festival Acadien de Caraquet. Boasting plenty of bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants, Caraquet is renowned for its excellent cuisine. In addition to traditional fare like poutine râpée (a potato and pork dish) [f2]or super-sweet pets de soeur (brown-sugar rolls), you can tuck into seafood, lobster and, of course, the famous local oysters.

Remote and Romantic
The most remote part of the Acadian Peninsula is Miscou Island, 18 kilometres long by 13 kilometres wide. Singer Sandra LeCouteur, who hails from the island, waxes poetic about the place.

“Miscou Island is at the end of the world,” she begins. “It’s where birds turn back because they can’t go any further. There are plains in the middle of the island, and in October that area becomes blood red. It’s dangerous because if you cross it, you can fall in love very easily. So you have to be careful about who you’re with!” She goes on to talk of the island off Miscou’s southwest tip whose freshwater source was once a magnet for pirate ships, and relates how people are still searching for treasures rumoured to have been hidden there by seafaring bandits. “There’s also a lighthouse at the far end of the island,” she adds. “You can go there and wave at the Gaspé Peninsula because on clear days, you can see Percé Rock. It’s incredibly beautiful!”

Language Fusion
Heading south, you soon arrive in Moncton, Acadia’s urban capital. While a third of the 50,000 residents are French-speaking, the younger set speaks mainly Chiac, a mixture of Old French, modern French and English. Marie-Jo Thério’s song Moncton is the perfect example: “Gisèle, j’te callais yinque de même, à cause c’est boring à soir, pis qu’y a rien qui va on, à Moncton.”

Thério, who lived in Moncton until she was 17, says it was a big advantage to grow up there “because Moncton stands at a crossroads of musical influences. Maine is right next-door. Our own musical heritage is a little bit folk and a little bit country. And then there’s Chiac, which gives me a lot of freedom in terms of how I use the French language. It lets me take flight into all sorts of different images. Chiac is like a musical score, it has a cadence to it, it has a song in it, it’s melodious and fluid.”

Rather like Acadia itself, where there’s so much to see, taste and experience.

For more information on this or other Canadian destinations, visit the Canadian Tourism Commission’s website at www.travelcanada.ca.

Mario Proulx is a Radio-Canada radio show host. He has spent the past year working on a series called La route en chansons, which next summer will take listeners all over Canada via songs and the people who sing them. Proulx, who is also a professional songwriter, has been a journalist for two decades.