There were challenges to face in Acadia from the British, who wanted the area for themselves due to it's favorable geographic location, which gave access to both the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean, a jackpot in terms of trade routes. (5) In 1613 an English ship arrived and its people set fire to the settlement when everyone was in the fields or at the mill, decimating crops, destroying buildings, and killing the farm animals. The Acadians did not give up though; they rebuilt, showing perseverance in the face of mass destruction.
Over the next hundred years or so, the land went back and forth between England and France. It was during one of those transfers, in 1621, that the name Nova Scotia was given, meaning New Scotland, as King James I (a.k.a. James IV of Scotland) gave the land to a Scottish lord, Sir William Alexander. But in 1632 the land was given back to France and went back to being called Acadia. There was lots of fighting back and forth during this time between the French and the English, with the land transferring back and forth between the two countries. The Acadians were pretty much stuck in the middle of this battle. Although they were originally from France, they had become disillusioned by the lack of French support during the British attacks. As a result they really felt no loyalty to the French; but they certainly had no warm feelings for the British, either.
Starting in 1755, the British went from town to town, tricking the Acadians into gathering in a central location, only to imprison them and load them onto ships bound for British settlements along the Atlantic coast (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.) The Acadians were not welcomed when they arrived, to say the least; many died of starvation. Some moved to Louisiana, then under Spanish rule; they are the foundation of the strong Cajun (derived from
Acadian)
population in Louisiana. Some of the Acadians escaped the soldiers and hid in the woods, eventually moving to what is now Quebec. Between 1755 and 1763 it is estimated that around 10,000 Acadians were forced from their homes in this experience of forced migration.
That forced migration occurred under in conjunction with the biggest war of this time period - the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War, and known in Canada as the War of the Conquest. It lasted from 1756 to 1763. The end of the Seven Years War marked the end of New France, as France lost all rights to its landholdings once and for all to the British. Instead of New France we now had British North America (
l'Amérique du Nord brittanique
). Canada was split into the mostly Anglophone Upper Canada
(Le Haut-Canada)
and the mostly Francophone Lower Canada
(Le Bas-Canada)
. In 1840 the Canadas were united as the Province of Canada, or United Canada (
le Province du Canada / le Canada-Uni
). With confederation in 1867 the name changed to the Dominion of Canada (
le Dominion de Canada)
, or simply, Canada.
For students who are history buffs as well as those who are in need of more challenges (in class or at home) there is a great video on the French BrainPOP website about the Seven Years War. (6) The video is intended for French children, and the language is fast. There are options for a self-quiz and the results can be emailed to you, or else students can review results themselves. You can also print out a quiz for them. Additionally, you could ask students to watch and list vocabulary they hear and facts they determine from what they see and hear.
In the
Classroom Resources
section of this unit, there is a link to a French-language article, written for children, explaining the Expulsion. It may be used in part or whole as a guided reading activity in which students highlight cognates or words they know in one color, words they think they know in another color, and then as the basis for a class discussion on the thought process of figuring meaning out through these context clues, determining what language must be understood and what is not actually necessary in order to make meaning of the content. If you go to the link, you can also click on
English
at the top for a translation. (7)