Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I love OldDartmouthMark and MonctonRad but the heartfelt comments from AverageMonctonEnjoyr, who is very young and not Québécois or French, show that you and I are not completely off-base.
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Anglos here ( mostly the older generation ) still have a problematic mentality that really should be outdated.
The Acadians were simply here first. My family established itself in Nouvelle-France in the 1660’s. The Acadians, not wanting to steal land from the natives who were their closest allies, settled in lands the natives didn’t use, the marshlands. The Acadians worked extremely hard to turn these lands into arable lands with ingenious methods such as aboiteaux ( a system optimized by them to dry out a marsh ). Acadians enjoyed roughly 100 years of peace and prosperity here with bountiful farms and very good relationship with natives ( safe to say that most Acadians have native ancestry because of the very high amount of intermarriage ). Then the British came, decided that Atlantic Canada would be better off which only white Anglo saxon protestants as inhabitants and proceeded to ethnically cleanse the lands of peaceful Acadians and natives ( the Acadians refused to pledge allegiance to Britain since they wanted to remain neutral ). Wikipedia refuses to label the crimes against the Acadian people by the english as genocide while out of the 15 000 Acadians present pre-1755, only 2000-ish remained after the rest were deported shot starved or drowned by the english. The english had the order to shoot and kill the elder of any Acadian family they couldn’t fully round up for deportation. Then British settlers came to build their houses over the ashes of Acadia ( my ancestor who survived the deportation, being hidden by the natives in the forest for 5 whole years saw 7 of the houses he built with his own hands being burnt and destroyed by the British ). Then later the loyalists came fleeing the newly formed USA. Yadda yadda yadda. The english came later than the Acadians, and came with a settler or colonizer mentality seeing themselves as the legitimate owner of these lands they had pried out of the hands of ‘savages’. Centuries later, the descendants of these Englishmen who haven’t been taught any Acadian history still have the same mentality and feel like Acadians are strangers in Atlantic Canada when we’ve been here more than a century before. I’m tired of always being asked where I’m from and being seen as a stranger here, when I was born & raised in New Brunswick, like the 10 previous generations of my family whom I can trace back all the way to france. ( seriously, whenever I talk to an anglophone stranger they ask me from where I’m from, it’s even worst with immigrants who don’t know we exist ).
What I’m trying to say is that they still feel after all these years that we don’t belong here and should get out of their land, and have some subconscious anger whenever they hear french. When my father and his little sisters walked to school at École Beauséjour, the anglophone kids from Queen-Elizabeth across the street would throw rocks at them and call them names simply because they were Acadian. My father told me that when he grew up, is simply better not speak french in public in Moncton to not attract problems.
The situation is now much better for us thankfully, but why do so many anglos have this subconscious resentment of us ? I do volunteering at the geriatric ward of the local hospital, and when talking to older anglophone patients and reveal to them that I’m francophone, they hit me a facial expression like I was the gestapo knocking at their door.
Maybe I’m not clear with what I’m trying to say since I’m emotional but, all we want is peace and respect. This hate has always been one-sided. I’ve never disliked anglophones and I never heard any Acadian badmouth anglos either. If they imagine we talk bad of them in french behind their backs, it never was the case. Our acts of self-preservation are seen as acts of aggression by them. To all my Anglo brothers & sisters, I love you and all I’m asking is understanding and respect. I have some British and Scottish heritage myself which I couldn’t be more proud of but my Acadian and french identity is the closest to my soul and I hate to see it attacked.
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