6 minute read
The heart of Acadia
Discover New Brunswick’s French Shore
BY DARCY RHYNO
Following Camilla Vautour into the interpretation centre at Kouchibouquac National Park, the entire Acadian experience is contained in a single room. Vautour, formerly with the park’s visitor services, stands before a wall-sized map. She points out villages expropriated when government created the park.
“It took about seven years to complete,” says Vautour of the expropriation process. “Some were looking at the establishment of the park in a good way, others not at all.” The creation in 1969 of the 238-square-kilometre park on New Brunswick’s Acadian coast required the forced removal or destruction of entire communities, including houses, churches, and 1,200 people. I follow Vautour to a window etched with the names of those relocated, stories of individual families, and a wall of mailbox doors representing each family. This room is part of the park’s efforts to heal a deep wound.
In some ways, the park’s creation echoes le Grand Derangement or the Great Expulsion. In 1755, British forces deported Acadians from Atlantic Canada, where they’d lived for more than a century. Over 12,000 lost their homes, farms, and belongings, some even their lives, when they were shipped away. By 1764, the British permitted Acadians to return, scattered in isolated communities, some along this coastline.
Kouchibouquac sits smack dab in the middle of the Acadian coast where those isolated settlements grew into towns like Shediac, Bouctouche, and Miramichi, pulsating with the life and history of a people determined to express their heritage in noisy festivals, traditional foods, and a bold flag. To the tricolour red, white, and blue stripes of France’s flag, Acadians added a yellow star that shines like a homing beacon in its upper left corner. The flag decorates houses, mailboxes, even lighthouses across the region.
Each town distinguishes itself, often in big, boisterous ways. A 90-tonne, 11-metrelong lobster sculpture welcomes visitors to Shediac, the province’s lobster fishing capital. Francois Poirier, co-owner of the tour company, Viva Shediac, tells me about the weekend “picnic train” from Moncton that chugged out to Shediac, crammed with visitors for lazy summer days on the beach.
Shediac’s population triples in summer, Poirier says, so it has long been an exciting culinary destination. “It’s the dynamics of the restaurants and friendly competition. Everyone has their specialty.” His tour includes tasty bites at Kuro Sushi, quirky originals like the Alice in Wonderlandthemed Le Moque-Tortue bistro, and the decadent Adorable Chocolates.
When it comes to more traditional fare, Poirier says, “Acadian food is simple food. Acadian poutine (poutine râpée) is really salty because Acadians were poor back in the day, so they had to salt everything to keep it.” This poutine has little in common with the famous Quebec version. A meatball is enfolded in shredded potatoes, then boiled and served with ketchup or brown sugar.
Bouctouche is best known for a single fictional character. Created by Acadian writer Antonine Maillet, La Sagouine, or the Washerwoman, is so beloved there’s a whole theme park dedicated to her, Le Pays de la Sagouine. I ask actor Abel Cormier, who plays Walk Alone, another Maillet character in the washerwoman universe, what it means to honour the greatest Acadian author.
“I think of my ancestors,” says Cormier. “You have to realize, they were taken from their homes and deported, some of them never to be seen again. Imagine. That’s why, whenever we talk about Acadian history, I always get a little tear. Today, we celebrate like crazy for ourselves and for our ancestors because they did not have that chance.”
Caraquet is located on the Acadian peninsula, tipped with Miscou Island, home to the Miscou Island Lighthouse, a New Brunswick landmark that appears in many tourism ads. Caraquet, population 4,300, is best known as the place to celebrate Tintamarre. Every Aug. 15, thousands descend on the town to march, shout, bang pots and pans, reunite with fellow Acadians, and generally make a great noise to celebrate their culture and identity.
Bathurst and Miramichi bookend the peninsula, the latter famous for its river, fished by American presidents and movie stars. Near the mouth of the river, Beaubear’s Island, a national historic site is named for Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot, who led a resistance against the British during le Grand Derangment and established a refugee camp here for Acadians and Indigenous Mi’kmaq.
Between Bathurst and Miramichi, the Village Historique Acadien depicts daily Acadian life from 1770 to 1949. Construction of a 2.2-kilometre circuit leading through an artificial town of 40 buildings began in 1969, the year Kouchibouquac was established. That process stands in sharp contrast to Kouchibouquac’s relocation program and two centuries earlier, the expulsion by the British. Rather than a dismantling, the village is a complete re-creation of l’Acadie through the ages.
MARIE-JEANNE BOUDREAU’S FRICOT
Karine of Viva Shediac shares this fricot (Acadian chicken stew) recipe from her grandmother, Marie-Jeanne Boudreau.
Ingredients
1 chicken
4 carrots
4 potatoes
1 onion
1 stalk celery salt, pepper to taste summer savory to taste
To make dumplings
1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder
1 cup (250 mL) flour fricot liquid
Directions
In a large pot, boil a chicken until cooked, 165F/74C internal temperature. Remove chicken. Keep stock simmering. Peel, wash, and cut carrots, then add to pot. Peel, wash, and cut potatoes into small cubes. When carrots are partly cooked, add potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Thinly dice onion, and add to pot. Slice celery and add to pot. Summer savory is the key to a good fricot; add it last, a bit at a time to taste. Don’t overcook. When the end of a knife can pass through the potatoes, remove from heat and don’t boil again. Cut up the chicken and add to the pot. For dumplings, blend baking powder and flour with a little fricot liquid. When everything holds together, drop by the spoonful into the pot.
Even though Marie-Jeanne grew up eating fricot, her mother never had a specific recipe, and recipes are transmitted verbally through the generations, as this one was. The origins of fricot are simple: the first Acadian settlers were farmers and fishermen with large families, just as Marie-Jeanne and Roméo Boudreau’s. They would make the most of all the food, having worked hard to get it. They would start their soup by boiling a chicken to make stock, then they would add in vegetables that would keep for long periods, potatoes, and carrots.
Fricot is a hearty meal, and soup is the easiest to add to when unexpected company arrives, or can be a simple leftover. On fricot nights, after working long shifts as a nurse, Marie-Jeanne would haul her big pot to her mother-inlaw Marie’s house, and she would teach her how to make the dish.
