Madam Speaker, it is with great pride that I speak today to Motion No.382 put forward by my colleague from Verchères—Les-Patriotes, which was amended and now reads as follows:
That a humble Address be presented to Her Excellency praying that, following the steps already taken by the Société Nationale de l'Acadie, she will intercede with Her Majesty to cause the British Crown to recognize officially the wrongs done to the Acadian people in its name between 1755 and 1763.
First, let us recall the historical event of 1755. In the 19th century, American writer William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past”. Henri Lacordaire, a member of the Académie française said, “History is the memory of immortalized centuries... A man without history is in his grave; a people that has not written its history has not yet been born”.
What a past. If the Acadian people had not yet been born, they certainly were during the painful exodus when children, women and men obeyed the official order of Lawrence, who forced them to leave their land, homes and belongings for an unknown and foreign destination.
We can just hear John Winslow reading the deportation edict in a small church in the village of Grand-Pré, on September 5, 1755:
I have received from His Excellency, Governor Lawrence, the instructions of the King. It is by these orders that you are assembled in order to hear the final resolution of His Majesty concerning the French inhabitants of this province of Nova Scotia... It is ordered that your lands and tenements, cattle of all kinds and livestock of all sorts, be forfeited to the British Crown, along with all other effects, saving your money and household goods and you, yourselves, be removed from this Province. The peremptory orders of His Majesty are that all the inhabitants of this district be deported.
Even though the British Crown did not intend to physically eliminate these people, it must be kept in mind that entire families disappeared from the surface of the earth.
With Antoine Bernard, a professor at the University of Montreal, a question remains. The author says that:
At the heart of this tragedy there will always remain a dark area, a dark area that the most perceptive lens cannot definitively explore: the area of responsibility. Must we accuse only Lawrence of this wrongdoing? Or must we see behind him “the instructions of His Majesty”, which Winslow referred to in his proclamation in September 1755? Did Winslow, Murray and Lawrence, who were guiding them, lie by using the name of old George II to commit their vile attack?
Moreover, we may ask whether the historian Robert Rumilly is accurately reporting the events in his book entitled Histoire des Acadiens , when he says this about Lawrence:
The enforcer of the deportation of the Acadians is thus officially approved, commended and promoted. The British government is endorsing, if it did not formally order, the action taken by its top officials in America.
In the newspaper Le Devoir , we can read how outraged François Baby, a professor at Laval University, is when he writes that:
—As a soldier in Acadia and the Quebec region, Monckton indeed committed some unacceptable and extremely cruel acts that undoubtedly equate with crimes of genocide, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity as we define them today.
The tragedy of the Acadians has, for two centuries, provided poets with a source of inspiration, while also being studied closely by historians. Who does not remember the immortal Evangeline by Longfellow, a 19th century American author? It is a very beautiful poem whose heroine, Evangeline, searches all her life for her fiancé, Gabriel, and finally finds him just as he is about to depart this life. This poem is a concrete illustration of what the Acadians lived through: the separation of families, illness, death, absence, exile, uncertainty of all kinds, a very minimal well-being.
Some would call the poem romantic while others see an undeniable honesty of the heart. As Yves Cazaux writes in L'Acadie, histoire des Acadiens :
The 1844 poem screams out the truth of the most painful history ever, without weakness, without convention or invention, only reality.
Today, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of that fateful day of September 5, 1755, is there a glimmer of hope in this dark sky? With the royal proclamation of December 10, 2003, which makes July 28 the Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval, as of September 5, 2004, we might believe there is.
After more than 240 years, it has finally been officially recognized in the history of Canada that an unspeakable tragedy truly did take place, and that it is not an invention or the imaginings of a people seeking attention, as the text of the proclamation confirms:
—the deportation of the Acadian people, commonly known as the Great Upheaval, continued until 1763 and had tragic consequences, including the deaths of many thousands of Acadians from disease, in shipwrecks, in their places of refuge and in prison camps in Nova Scotia and England as well as in the British colonies in America—
It is a step forward, we must admit, and it is a good beginning, but there is still a long road ahead before all Acadians feel placated about the wrongs done to their ancestors between 1755 and 1763.
The main problem with this royal proclamation, is that only the Acadians of Canada are formally addressed by this solemn gesture, because, unfortunately, it is not the British Crown that recognizes the wrongs of the Great Upheaval in this royal proclamation, but only the Crown of Canada. And so what does that mean for the Acadians who were deported all through the Americas and to Europe, and who live in those places now? Are they not entitled to recognition, too?
I also want to state that, in my opinion, it is quite strange for the Canadian government to recognize injustices for which it bears no responsibility. That responsibility, morally anyway, belongs to the authority in whose name those injustices were committed and which, incidentally, still exists today. I am referring to the British crown.
The matter, therefore, remains unresolved. When can the Acadian people hope to see the real wrongdoer, the British crown, officially recognize the harm done by the deportation?
Will the British crown restore, two centuries later, our pride in our origins? Will it attempt to bandage the wound carved into our collective Acadian history? Will the British heed the example of the many other countries that have recognized their past mistakes?
In this day and age, the world is experiencing a vast movement to rehabilitate the historic memory of those peoples who have suffered. We need only think of the Maori, Japanese-Canadians, the victims of apartheid, the children of Duplessis or the Vatican's apologies to the Jewish people, in particular.
Since we are living in an age of reconciliation among peoples and apologies for the wrongs done over the course of history, can we hope that the British crown, and not just the Canadian crown, will do as much with regard to the Acadian people?
The royal proclamation of last December 10 raises another issue and University of Ottawa professor Joseph-Yvon Thériault commented on this in an article in the Le Devoir of January 15 as follows:
Where does Canadian recognition of the Acadian deportation fit in as a memorial process? There is no doubt, as Donald J. Savoie has said, that the deportation of the Acadians is an example of the phenomenon we today call “ethnic cleansing”, and its integration into Canadian hearts and minds can serve to prevent such things from happening again. The way this recognition is being achieved, however, is making it into a commonplace event.
It would be a dangerous thing to trivialize a tragedy like the deportation of the Acadian nation between 1755 and 1763, by trying to rush things, as was done with the royal proclamation, concocted hurriedly and secretively by a few members of the previous cabinet who felt they were walking a tightrope and wanted to leave this testimonial of openness for posterity, after having fought it tooth and claw until then. The goal: to try to convince the Acadians that they had finally obtained justice and consequently that all's well that ends well, when that is definitely not the case.
The British Crown is duty bound to recognize officially the wrongs done to the Acadian people in its name. This is why we hope that Her Majesty will graciously accept the invitation extended to her by the Canadian government to come and read the proclamation. We believe that the ideal time for an event of such import would be either the 250th anniversary of the deportation of the Acadians, in 2005, or the 400th anniversary of the founding of Acadia in 2004.
Great Britain cannot continue to refuse to acknowledge this terrible tragedy as still more centuries pass, when this event left such a wound in the flesh of a community of peace-loving and hard-working people, a wound inflicted on it by those who had authority over it at the time.
Will Her Majesty dare to acknowledge the flagrant wrongs done to the Acadian people from 1755 on? Parliamentarians here have the power to ensure that the wishes of the Acadians can at last be fulfilled. This unique opportunity must not be let slip. We must vote in favour of the motion by my colleague from Verchères—Les-Patriotes.
Like Bona Arsenault, we believe:
Their past was a tragedy, and its acknowledgement today is the consolation they have been waiting for for nigh on 250 years. Is that enough?
All aboard for Acadia in 2005.
