The Acadians: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph

The Acadians: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph (Canadian title)
The Cajuns: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph (U.S. title)

This is the story of one of the great crimes of history, a brutal act of genocide committed two and a half centuries ago. More than 10,000 men, women and children were removed from their homeland at gunpoint and sent into exile. They were stripped of the farms that had nurtured and sustained their families for four generations. Their homes and most of their possessions were burned. Five thousand of these unfortunate people, maybe more, died of disease and deprivation or perished in shipwrecks. The destitute survivors were scattered along the east coast of North America or wound up in the port cities of England and France; some sought refuge in the jungles of South America or as far away as the windswept barrens of the Falkland Islands. Family and friends were separated, never to be reunited. Children were taken from their parents to work as servants or apprentices. An entire generation knew nothing but the squalor of refugee camps and prisons, the humiliation of enslavement, and the uncertainty of a nomadic life... More >>

An infamous tale of war, politics, and human suffering

The summer of 2005 marks the 250th anniversary of the forced removal of some 10,000 Acadians from Canada’s Maritime Provinces and their dispersal into exile. The deportation tore families apart, destroyed communities that were more than a century old, and scattered refugees to the American colonies, Europe, the Caribbean and beyond. As many as 5,000 men, women and children perished in shipwrecks or died of disease and deprivation. The survivors languished in prisoner-of-war camps, worked as slaves on plantations, or saw their children taken away to become indentured servants. But deportation and exile did not destroy the people or their culture. Many escaped deportation or returned to the Maritimes; thousands more gathered in Louisiana to found a new homeland, where “Acadian” was transmuted into “Cajun.” More than a half-million people in Louisiana and eastern Texas are descendants of these refugees. More >>

Reviews

“Dean Jobb ... puts his well-honed research skills to dazzling use in The Acadians ... well paced and impassioned ... The action slides back and forth from the founding days of Acadie to its revived, vibrant reality along Canada’s East Coast and south into Louisiana. Through this graceful merging of past and present, Jobb highlights the strong, persevering spirit that has characterized the Acadian culture to this day.”
Eleanor Beaton, Atlantic Books Today, Summer 2005.

“ Dean Jobb, un journaliste du Chronicle-Herald d’Halifax, utilise un style littéraire approprié pour nous faire revivre l’histoire du peuple Acadien .... je recommande fortement la lecture de ce livre, intéressant, émouvant, facile à lire et ayant une couverture plus globale de l’histoire acadienne.”
Roger Hétu, Rootsweb (www.rootsweb.com)

“Jobb writes with a passionate conviction that their story as a founding people of this country has been long neglected by everyone but academic historians. And he marries a historian’s fidelity to research and detail with a journalist’s ability to tell a story with verve, colour and attention to the human elements beneath the historical record. Popular history just doesn’t get much better than this.”
Douglas J. Johnston. The Winnipeg Free Press, June 19, 2005.