Grand Pré is a place of pilgrimage
There was a room full of people on their feet clapping and cheering in June 2012 to celebrate an announcement made in Russia. Grand Pré and vicinity had received UNESCO World Heritage designation as a cultural landscape.
Members of the Société Promotion Grand-Pré began working toward that end in 2007. So, it was a very happy day at the national historic site as the landscape joined a protected list that includes the Great Wall of China and the pyramids in Egypt.
Grand Pré, of course, has a history both pastoral and tragic.
The area was once home to the Mik’maw and a centre of Acadian settlement from 1682 to 1755. The designation honours the deportation and much more.
I remember the society saying the announcement covered a sweep of geography — from the red cliffs of Cape Blomidon where Kluscap keeps an eye outward to the Bay of Fundy tides over to diked fields in agricultural production.
It was a great day for Acadians around the world and those who love the landscape.
Over the years I learned a great deal about the park and the area’s broader history. John Frederic Herbin preserved the park site and passed it onto the Dominion Atlantic Railway. With help from Longfellow’s poem
Evangeline, the railway made the area famous and tourist friendly.
Reading old copies of the Wolfville Acadian, I saw that
descendants in the 1920s, Planter wanted the 1747 Battle of Grand Pré commemorated. The British were ambushed one February night and more than 60 were killed. That cairn sits on the corner of the Old Post Road.
In 1956, the federal government took over the park and free entry was guaranteed, but that couldn’t last. I remember the rebuilding of Herbin’s stone cross in 1983. Superintendent Paul Carrier told me the process had confirmed that the 1909 cross was actually located on top of the village graveyard. A sheer coincidence.
Twenty-two archeology students in the late 1980s convened to do some digging in a field on Malcolm Coldwell’s farm over in Melanson. Farmer Ellis Gertridge, who found arrowheads while turning over his land, delved into the seasonal movements of the Mik’maw along the Gaspereau River.
Meanwhile Dr. Jonathan Fowler, of St. Mary’s University, has spent more than two decades researching the archaeology of Grand Pré and surrounding areas. Persistently seeking the foundation of the original church, he and his students have been aided by ground penetrating radar.
When Barbara LeBlanc became superintendent in 1992, she had not read Longfellow’s poem. It wasn’t long before she saw that the Evangeline myth powers Acadian identity. I recall Longfellow’s great-grandson doing a dynamic reading in the memorial church.
LeBlanc formed a delightful group of children called Les Enfants de Grand Pré.
She taught them delightful old French folk dances and songs. One afternoon waiting for my daughter, who was one of the troupe, I struck up a conversation with an older American visitor. He told me he’d read Evangeline in his school reader and had always wanted to visit.
Then there was the time in the mid-90s Halifax developer Harold Medjuck aimed to
create a pseudo historic village where the visitor centre is now. LeBlanc told a public meeting that, “a whole lot of understanding has to come about,” before that happened in a place of pilgrimage. Wolfville native Rhoda Colville stood up at the meeting and said, “All my life I’ve thought it (the deportation) was a terrible thing from the English side. We love it (the place) too.”
That was true. Not long after, the much-anticipated visitor centre was constructed. The Covenanter Church held reconciliation services each July, especially during the 2004 Acadian Congress Mondiale.
On Sept. 5, 2010, there was an historical re-enactment of the assembly of Acadians in the old church in 1755. Led by the Société Promotion Grand-Pré and the Friends of Grand-Pré, Acadians came from as far away as Caraquet, N.B., and Isle Madame in
Cape Breton.
commemorative The two-kilometre walk from the memorial church to the site of the old wharf at Horton
Landing was led by Jean Gaudet, president of the Acadian Odyssey Commission. That waterside is where the deportation occurred.
Adding the landscape to the UNESCO list broadened the perspective of many. Finding an ancient Acadian aboiteau on Robert Palmeter’s farm added more. You can see that wooden aboiteau at the visitor’s centre.
More than 30,000 people came out to celebrate peace and friendship over four days during 2017. The event marked Canada’s 150th. I remember the teepees were awesome. Some $925,000 worth of upgrades to the visitors’ centre and a new maintenance compound came next.
The following year, Alan Syliboy and his band The Thundermakers performed one magical night. Titled Grand-Pré Under the Stars, Syliboy was the star as his art was projected onto the roof of the church. I only wished the audience had been larger.
The ideal place to see the full expanse of the landscape is from the View Park on
Old Post Road. It is one spot where the dikelands, fields, and settlement are displayed perfectly. The farm families of Planter descent, and later immigrants — English, Scottish and Dutch — all have cherished the 2,745 acres within the UNESCO purview.
Heritage Day this month and the 10th anniversary of the designation in June all point out how worthy of protection the landscape of Grand Pré truly is.