The Acadians

When we left Quebec for New Brunswick, our first Maritime Province, life became easier.  Signs were in both French and English.  The well prepared tourist brochure featured several routes through the province.  We selected the Acadian one, not because we were interested in or knew anything about the Acadians but because it followed the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  We do love water.

It turns out that the Acadian culture and history became the highlight of that part of the trip.  One of the real pleasures of travel is finding these surprises.  All I knew before is that folks in Southern Louisiana came from Nova Scotia and were called Cajuns.  I have since learned that Acadia (present day Nova Scotia) was founded by the French in 1604 and later ceded to Great Britain in 1703.  While the power struggles between the French and Anglos were finally settled by 1763, the Acadians were casualties of that conflict.  From 1755 to 1763, 2/3 of the Acadians or about 10,000 people were deported to the American colonies, Great Britain and France.  Some fled to New Brunswick where they found sanctuary.  This event is modernly referred to as "The Deportation."  During this expulsion, the farms and homes of the Acadians were destroyed.  Not only were the Acadians of French origin but they were Catholic.  The Acadians were not welcome in the colonies and many later moved on to French islands in the Caribbean, as well as a still French island off Newfoundland.  About 1000 of those sent to France subsequently chose to relocate in Louisiana, where the Spanish  welcomed their fellow Catholics. 

It seems that the lives of Acadians were second class in Canada until about 40-50 years ago when Acadian leadership in New Brunswick was able to create the only Province that is officially bilingual.  Parents have the choice to send a child to a French or English school but the child must also learn the second language and become fluent.  We had no difficulty with the language while traveling in the Acadian part of New Brunswick, unlike our experience in Quebec. 

The New Brunswick provincial government runs an Acadian Village with about 40 restored or painstakingly recreated period buildings.  Life is depicted from the mid 1700's (after Deportation) through the 1930's and staff are dressed in period clothes, enthusiastic and very well versed in the history of their particular time.  I have been to Williamsburg in the US and this far surpasses that in size and accuracy.  The staff easily shift from French to English depending upon the visitor's native tongue.

We spent an hour the first day and the whole next day visiting nearly every building and watching demonstrations and asking questions.  The activities featured included:

Fiber Arts such as flax and  preparing, spinning and weaving (the topic of another blog),

An Acadian Home in the mid 1700's

 gardening, shingle making,  lumber milling, blacksmithing, tinsmithing, cooperage (largely for storing salt cod), rigging, milling, food prep and day to day living.  

Pot for dyeing wool with natural plant called Tansy

Bread Oven

Homes always had a root cellar

The Acadian Flag flying over a recreated hotel

While in the Acadian area we noticed that the Acadian Flag (not Canadian or the provincial flags) hung everywhere.  Homes were often painted with red, white and blue trim.  Clearly the Acadian identity is strong.  The flag resembles the French flag with an added yellow star, yellow we were told because that is the color for the Pope.

Eating Well #1

Poutine

The trip across the US as far as Michigan did not provide lifetime culinary memories.  The highlight was McDonald's senior coffee for himself and lattes for me.  The UP pasty was interesting, a meat pie made like a turnover.  I am told it comes from Wales and is what a coal miner would take for lunch.  Once we hit Quebec, I figured it would be a better world.

Our first Quebec adventure was to order the ubiquitous "poutine."  This makes our junk food look healthy.  It is a large serving of french fries, topped with gravy and then slightly melted cheese curds. It is a one time experience for me.

Things improved as we continued east, with very nice french bread, a Basque cheese shop with wonderful smoked cheddar and some delightful french onion soup.  The markets had quite a different selection of food, fresh duck legs and breast, duck fat, sausages made from various game including wild boar, lots of veal and of course, croissants.  It was looking much better than the North Dakota Walmart.  Fortunately, the stores laid in while still in Washington lasted about 2 weeks (and much longer for the pantry and frozen things) so we did not starve. 

My first lobster roll

PEI Mussels

Conditions are very much improved now that we are in the Maritimes.  My first (and definitely not my last) lobster roll was lovely.  A homemade hot dog bun with lettuce and a homemade tartar sauce plus loads of lobster meat.  The PEI (Prince Edward Island) mussels were the best every.  We love our Penn Cove Mussels in WA,  but the PEI fresh caught mussels on a deck in the sun with blueberry ale were memorable.  They are large and succulent, prepared with lots of garlic and wine as well as shavings of carrot and celery.  Yum.  We have also had outstanding fresh fried clams and lots of fresh caught haddock and cod, prepared either deep fried or sauteed and served on a bun.  Unfortunately we don't like oysters as they are pretty common here too.  Yesterday's lunch was a seafood chowder,  not cream based, but thickened I suspect with the generous amount of potato and loads of seafood (fish, shrimp, crab and lobster).  I am inspired.  We eat the local fare at every opportunity and I know this availability will continue for some time as we head into New England in a week or so. 

The final food related treat was a trip to the Paderno cookware factory store in PEI.  I love bargains and I love cookware.  I found a great little omelet pan which it now occurs to me will be a perfect size for the RV kitchen.  A seafood omelet will be a nice campground supper one of these days.

Quebecois (People of Quebec)

After surviving the notorious Montreal traffic, we headed east and found a lovely RV park just east of Quebec City. 

The park itself was lovely, immaculate and populated largely by people who owned their spot.  Most spoke only limited English but I dredged up the school French and got by.  Not only were there no Americans but all the license plates were from Quebec.  The site owners all fussed over their lawns and their flowers and it was truly delightful.

View of the pond side sites

You could tell that you were in another culture.  The women were stylishly dressed, the park residents were all sitting out in gliders, conversing with other park residents.  The dogs and children were well behaved, many people smoked and nearly all flew the Quebec flag-not the Canadian flag.  How many times have we seen someone flying the California or Washington State flag?


We planned to spend just one night but with the reports of Irene, decided to hunker down and not head to the Maritimes, as it seemed the closer one got to the Atlantic, the worse it would be.  Wrong.  We ended up staying three nights and the storm weakened to a tropical storm but headed our way.  We put the rig nose into the wind and prepared for the night.  The biggest challenge was taking the boys out-they did not like it at all.

There were hundreds of downed trees

 

Typical village Catholic Church

All official street signs were in French only.  Even the KFC was changed to PFK-Poulet Frite.  Most villages along the St. Lawrence Seaway had a lovely Catholic church dominating the landscape as you drove in.  In our last stop in Quebec Province we encountered a woman whose English was excellent.  She explained that she was from New Brunswick but had a Quebecois boyfriend.  She said she tries to teach him English but it is very difficult.  An Acadian in New Brunswick (more about them later) explained that people in Quebec (outside of Montreal) are afraid of losing their French culture and purposely avoid English.