In 1604, a small group of migrants fled political turmoil and famine in France to start a new colony on Canada’s east coast. They thought they had escaped war, but found themselves in the midst of one. Their roughly demarcated territory included what are now Canada’s Maritime provinces, land that was fought-over by the British and French empires. That struggle resulted for the Acadians in le Grand Dérangement of 1755, an ordeal of expulsion in which families were torn apart, homes and churches torched, and those who had not fled were rounded up and deported on leaking ships to the Thirteen Colonies. Their diaspora persists to this day.
