73
 

Those who today live on the lands once in possession of the Acadians of Tatamagouche know little of their story. They have heard their children murmur snatches of "Evangeline" at their evening lessons, without a thought that they, too, were living in the "Land of Evangeline". During my years in the public schools at Tatamagouche when "Evangeline" was an almost daily study, I never heard even a suggestion that the Acadians had so much as visited Tatamagouche. Yet we had only to open our eyes to see the scene of their suffering. Although we walked daily where the earth once was blackened with the ruins of their burned buildings, and played before school hours and at recess over the unknown graves of those who died at Tatamagouche, the story of the Acadians with all its interest, tragedy and pathos, was still to us the story of a far country.

     Looking out from the windows of the school room we could see the waters of the French River where on that blustery day of January 1747, Coulon marched at the head of his column upon its frozen surface. But that he had passed that way on his march to Grand Pre was never explained to us, though he had gone almost within a stone’s throw from where we reluctantly learned his story.

BackNext
 Home