Grand-Pré

Meaning “Great Meadow” in french, Grand-Pré was founded by Acadian settlers who travelled east from Champlain’s original settlement in Port-Royal Annapolis Royal in 1680. The settlement grew and developed great expanses of tidal marsh as productive farmland.

However the community was caught between French and British imperial rivalries. In 1704, New Englanders burned the village in the Raid on Grand-Pré. In 1747, a French force defeated a larger British force in a night raid at the Battle of Grand-Pré.

However the Acadian residents were all expelled from Grand-Pré during the Expulsion of the Acadians, which began in 1755.

American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow later immortalized the tragedy of the Grand-Pré expulsion with his epic poem Evangeline. Acadians from Grand-Pré were dispersed in many locations and some eventually returned to other parts of the Canadian Maritimes such as Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Many Acadians expelled from the Grand-Pré area eventually settled in the New England States and in South Louisiana in the United States. In Louisiana, the term Cajun evolved from the name Acadian.

Today, Grand-Pré is the home the Grand-Pré National Historic Site which is now a national park administered by Parks Canada to commemorate the Acadian people and their deportation.