Grand-Pré National Historic Site is a park created to remember the Grand-Pré area of Nova Scotia as an important place where Acadians lived from 1682 to 1755. It also honors the British removal of the Acadians during the French and Indian War. The original village of Grand-Pré stretched about four kilometers along a hill between today’s Wolfville and Hortonville. Grand-Pré is recognized as a World Heritage Site and is the main part of two National Historic Sites of Canada.

History of Settlement

Grand-Pré, which means "great meadow" in French, is located along the shore of the Minas Basin, a wetland that fills with water during high tides. It was first settled around 1680 by Pierre Melanson dit La Verdure, his wife Marguerite Mius d'Entremont, and their five children. They moved from nearby Port-Royal, which was the first capital of the French settlement of Acadia (called Acadie in French).

Pierre Melanson and the Acadians who joined him in Grand-Pré built dykes, or barriers, to keep water from the tides out of the Minas Basin. These dykes allowed them to create large areas of land for raising animals and growing crops. Grand-Pré became a major source of food for Acadia, grew larger than Port-Royal, and by the mid-1700s was the largest Acadian community in the Bay of Fundy and along the coast of Nova Scotia (which means "New Scotland" in Latin).

During Queen Anne's War, the Raid on Grand-Pré happened in 1704. Major Benjamin Church burned the entire village. After the war, in 1713, part of Acadia became Nova Scotia, and Port-Royal, now called Annapolis Royal, became its capital. For the next 40 years, the Acadians refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the British king. Some feared losing their religion, others worried about angering their Native American allies, some did not want to fight against the French, and others opposed British rule.

During King George's War, the French tried to take back Acadia. In 1744 and 1745, they attacked Annapolis Royal. British forces were defeated by local Acadians, Mi'kmaq, and French-speaking settlers in the Battle of Grand Pré.

Father Le Loutre's War began when the British built a new city called Halifax, which became the capital of the colony in 1749. The British also built Fort Vieux Logis in Grand-Pré, which was attacked by a group of Mi'kmaq and Acadian fighters during the Siege of Grand Pré.

During the French and Indian War, the British wanted to stop Acadians from helping the French or providing supplies to French forces. They decided to remove Acadians from Acadia by forcing them to leave.

After the Battle of Fort Beauséjour, the British began deporting Acadians from Acadia. In 1755, Lieutenant Colonel John Winslow arrived in Grand-Pré with soldiers on August 19 and used the local church as his headquarters. Winslow built a wooden fence, which was recently found by archaeologists. On September 5, he ordered men and boys to gather in the church and told them they would be forced to leave their homes and give up most of their belongings. At the same time, Acadians in the nearby village of Pisiguit received the same order at Fort Edward.

Some Acadians escaped and continued fighting the British during the deportations. However, within a year, more than 6,000 Acadians were taken from the Bay of Fundy area. Many villages were destroyed to prevent Acadians from returning. More Acadians were deported later from Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island in 1758. The deportations continued until England and France made peace in 1763. In total, about 12,000 Acadians were removed. Many died from drowning, starvation, imprisonment, or exposure to harsh weather.

Evangeline

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline was published in the United States in 1847, it shared the story of the Deportation and le Grand Dérangement, the great uprooting, with English-speaking readers. The village of Grand-Pré, which had been forgotten for nearly 100 years, became a popular destination for American tourists who wished to visit the birthplace of the poem's heroine, Evangeline. However, little remained of the original village except for the dykelands and a line of old willow trees. A statue of Henry W. Longfellow was placed on the site by Sir Thomas Brock.

In 2018, Canadian historian and author A. J. B. Johnston released a young adult novel titled The Hat, inspired by events at Grand-Pré in 1755. The book does not mention Evangeline. Instead, it follows two fictional characters, a 14-year-old girl named Marie and a 10-year-old boy named Charles.

Preservation of the site

In 1907, John Frederic Herbin, a poet, historian, and jeweler, and whose mother was Acadian, bought the land believed to be the site of the church of Saint-Charles to protect it. The following year, the Nova Scotia legislature passed a law to create the Trustees of the Grand-Pré Historic Grounds. Herbin built a stone cross on the site to mark the church’s cemetery, using stones from what he believed were Acadian foundations.

In 1917, Herbin sold the property to the Dominion Atlantic Railway, but he required that Acadians be involved in its preservation. At that time, Acadian history was already important for tourism along the Dominion Atlantic Railway, and the Grand-Pré site was near the railway’s main line. The railway invested heavily in developing the park and promoting Acadian history. Gardens were planted, and a small museum was built. In 1920, the Dominion Atlantic Railway placed a statue of Evangeline, designed by Canadian sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert and completed by his son Henri, on the site. The railway also gave part of the land to build a memorial church in Grand-Pré. Construction began in 1922 and was finished by November 1922. The church’s interior was completed in 1930, the 175th anniversary of the Acadian Deportation, and the church opened as a museum.

As railway tourism declined due to the growth of highways, the Dominion Atlantic Railway sold the park to the Canadian federal government in 1957. The Canadian Parks Service then managed the park. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1982. The Visitor Reception and Interpretation Center includes exhibits about Grand-Pré and Acadian history. A video presentation explains the story of the Acadian Deportation.

Grand-Pré National Historic Site also includes an archaeological site supported by St. Mary’s University, Parks Canada, and Sociéte Promotion Grand-Pré. Since 1971, Parks Canada has conducted excavations at the site. A field school has operated for ten years, during which archaeologists identified an Acadian cemetery, the cellar of an Acadian house near the Memorial Church, and tested areas for evidence of the parish church, Saint-Charles-des-Mines. Pierre-Alain Bugeauld (Bujold) was the Church Warden [Marguillier aux Mines] and also served as a Notary (1706) and a Judge/Justice (1707). Artifacts found include pieces of Saintonge ceramic, nails, wine bottle glass, window pane glass, a 1711 French silver coin, spoons, belt buckles, buttons, and clay pipes. Evidence of New England troop occupation and the New England Planter occupation period, beginning in 1760, has also been found.

Historic designations

The "Landscape of Grand Pré" was added to the World Heritage Site list by UNESCO on June 30, 2012. It was first included on Canada’s list of possible World Heritage Sites in 2004. The area, which covers 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres), includes drained marshland and archaeological sites. These were recognized as a "special example of how the first European settlers adapted to life on the North American Atlantic coast" and as "a memorial to the Acadian way of life and their forced removal."

In 1982, on the 300th anniversary of the Acadians’ arrival in the region in 1682, the Grand-Pré memorial park was named the "Grand-Pré National Historic Site." This honored the Acadians’ early settlement and their later deportation. In 1995, the site and surrounding area were named the "Grand-Pré Rural Historic District National Historic Site," recognizing the rural cultural landscape, which includes one of the oldest land use patterns of European origin in Canada.

The "Grand Pré Heritage Conservation District" was established in 1999 under the provincial Heritage Property Act. It includes the hamlet of Grand-Pré and the Grand-Pré National Historic Site.