A Watershed Moment

A few weeks ago I found out that I’m likely descended from Acadians … well, truthfully I found that out simultaneous to finding out Acadians even exist. I had never heard of Acadians prior. I chalked it up to being brought up in the California public school system. This came about because I’m going through another one of my heavy reading cycles. It’s odd, sometimes I’ll read a book every two days for a stretch of months and then I won’t pick one up for two months, but I digress.

So ... I’m reading this book and it’s a detective story with a love twist called “A Thin Dark Line” set in Cajun Louisiana. It’s a quick read full of intrigue and Cajun French phrases. I pulled it out of the lending library here at work one boring lunch hour. The rudimentary French phrases in the story weren’t a problem, but there was one I wasn’t familiar with, “Le Grande Derangement” (again, “thanks” California Public School System). It was referenced repeatedly and I was finally aggravated to the point that I looked it up on the internet and found out it’s a phrase used to describe a great injustice (akin to the word “Holocaust”) visited on the French settlers of Nova Scotia (the Acadians) by the British government. In the mid 1600’s, the British, not uncharacteristically, decided to rid their land (Nova Scotia) of “undesirables”, in this case the Acadians, by forcibly evicting them. They put them all on boats and shipped them off to Louisiana, dividing families and confiscating property willy-nilly. As you can well imagine, the French didn’t happily tromp onto the boats. Some ended up in prison or were deported to France, some successfully evaded the British and migrated to Quebec and some eventually found their way back to Nova Scotia. That’s a seriously truncated and unemotional version of events but it covers the important aspects.

My curiosity now piqued by so much new info I began checking out other areas of the website and found a button for genealogy. Hmmmm, I’d always been told that I had French Canadian roots through my Grandmother (whose mother’s maiden name was St. Germaine - a common French-Canadian name I’m told) and so I pushed the button and started searching for “St Germaine” information. I found some pretty interesting tidbits, and then happened on a list of names, ostensibly of the 24 or so “founding families” of Acadians, and was astonished to find the surname “Roy” there. Roy is my maiden name. I’ve always known it was a French name but I did not know that it’s a common Acadian surname. Wow! A watershed moment for me and I still don’t understand exactly why but it evoked sufficient emotion to bring tears to my eyes. ACK! Probably because I’ve always been envious of those folks who are so sure of their ancestry.

So I’m both French-Canadian and Acadian, and upon doing a bit more research, found this is actually pretty common among French-speaking folks in the Northeast part of North America. Again, wow. Immediately I wondered if they look like me in that part of the world because almost no one around me does. Admittedly this has always disturbed me a bit. I realized when I was about 7 that I am my own odd color palette. I rarely see people like me in California, but I have seen some in the south. Hmmmm. One day I will make a journey, find out what that means and answer my questions for good and all.