SAULNIERVILLE – A SETTLEMENT FOUNDED BY ELZEE SAULNIER’S ANCESTORS

According to Acadian historian Maurice Edouard LeBlanc, the very first Saulniers arrived in what is now Saulnierville in 1768. Other family members and French-speaking settlers followed them over the next decades.

These Saulniers came from the Annapolis Valley as refugees fleeing mass deportations of Acadians carried out by British soldiers in 1755, during a period of conflict between Britain and France played out on Canadian soil. After Acadian delegates refused to swear loyalty to Britain, governor Charles Lawrence imprisoned community leaders and signed the deportation order. British soldiers burned down and looted Acadian villages and farmsteads, chasing away inhabitants at gunpoint.

Some 10,000 Acadians were deported either to France, to other British colonies in the Caribbean, or to the future

United States between 1755 and 1763.

Others fled into the forests, where they struggled to survive the winters and British raiding parties. Those who escaped the British roundups received help from the Mi’kmaq people.

After 1764, the Acadians were allowed to return and settled in scattered locations across Nova Scotia from Digby County to Cape Breton, as well as New Brunswick and

Prince Edward Island. They managed to hold on to their French traditions through the times of persecution.

“There was the intent to keep us isolated, because if there was a big community, they would feel threatened,” said LeBlanc. “I’m quite proud that we’ve been able to persevere and survive and are staying here with our language, culture, religion and what our ancestors worked so hard to preserve.”