The Past

 

 

 

THE FULLNESS OF TIME

 

        I rather think of time as a sort of compost heap. Everything we have ever been and done, everything we have ever known, either from personal experience or the testimony of others, becomes a part of that compost heap.

        But, of course, as anyone who composts knows, the things thrown into that heap don’t just sit there unchanged in one big lump. They undergo constant change, breaking down, interacting with one other, endlessly revealing new order and new meanings.

When I engage in memory, I am not just looking at the static record of past experiences, I am constantly interpreting and evaluating and analyzing those experiences, looking for their deepest meaning. And, of course, I am constantly adding things to the heap.

 

 In a sense, the present could be thought of as the topmost layer of the compost heap, the surface, the point where new things are growing in the compost and being added in turn.

 

        In a real sense, the present is not something different in kind from the past, it is the surface of the past.

The past makes growth possible, and growth, becoming, is by its very nature an intention of the future, of the beyond.

 

 The Greek verbs phuo and phuteuo, to grow and to plant, respectively, are etymologically related, in fact, to the word” future”. The future is in fact nothing more than the awareness, in the present that grows out of the past, that the process of becoming is real and is conceivable only if it is open.

If it stopped with this instant, it would not be a becoming, and the whole thing would collapse in on itself.

 

        So there is really nothing more profoundly creative than the reflection on the past in memory, whether individual or collective.

Deportation

 

What Preceded the Deportation?

For forty years, that is from 1700 to -1740, the Acadians pretty much ignored changes taking place in North America while the tensions were increasing between the French and the English as they battled for control of the continent. Even after the British conquest of Nova Scotia in 1710, the Acadians who had managed to remain neutral, pretty much went on with life as usual and with narry an interruption from the life they knew.

France never really lent a great deal of help nor support to the Acadians. Again in 1713, when the war between the English and the French officially ended, one more time, France sacrificed Acadia and its population when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. Control of Acadia and Newfoundland was given to the English while France retained control of only Ile-Royale/Cape Breton Island and Ile Saint-Jean/Prince Edward Island. Nova Scotia was the new name given this land formerly known as Acadia and Port-Royal would become Annapolis Royal, renamed so in honor of Queen Anne of England.

Between 1719 through 1730, the Acadians had taken oaths of loyalty to the British throne which had given them a verbal assurance of neutrality and included the promise not to have to bear arms against the French - their countrymen - and the Micmacs. Though likely supported and intervened by the French priests, the neutrality the Acadians adhered to was likely of their own doing. The British referred to the Acadians as the "Neutral French" or as "the Neutrals" and they were spoken of or referred to in this manner even in the American colonies. In 1755,this position of total neutrality in the face of great British adversaries who disliked them, and who would do anything to win the English view in this matter, would lead to the demise of the Acadians.

Within the next few years there was a significant change in the position of the Acadians. Because of their neutrality, neither the English nor the French now trusted the Acadians. The time came when the Acadians were faced with having to choose one side or the other.

During the 18th century, England legally excluded Roman Catholics from public office. The religion of the King of England was the religion that all English must follow and this religion was Anglican. According to Naomi Griffiths in The Contexts of Acadian History 1688-1784:

. . . the absorption of Nova Scotia with its Acadian population into the British empire posed, at first sight, no great or novel problems. London had already coped with people living at the end of long lines of communications and inclined to riot for their vision of political liberty, the other British North American colonies. However, the particular combination of the specific language and religious beliefs of the Acadians with the political geography of the colony was about to demand flexibility of mind and vision from its new administrators, for the Acadians were on the British imperial territory and linked to another power in that area by language and religion.

The British population grew between 1749 through 1755. This created quite a bit of tension for the Acadians. In fact, tensions ran so high on both sides that the English built one fort after another so as to counteract the French presence in Nova Scotia. It was an outward attempt to flex their muscles as the dominant and only landlord of this land! The English worked hard to outdo the French.

Because of its location, the English wanted Nova Scotia to be theirs. From here, the Acadians could easily connect with their French counterparts in Québec and the rich fishing banks were easily accessible. The Governor of Massachusetts, William Shirley, knew that this area was the only direct link to Québec by sea and it would also be the link to take the English ships from Massachusetts to the Louisbourg Fortress on Ile Royale/Cape Breton Island.

 

 

http://www.acadian-home.org/deportation.html

My 6th geat-grandfather

 

 

 

 

Life and Times of Michel Haché-Gallant

Credits

Major credit must be given to Fr. Patrice Gallant, author of “Michel Haché-Gallant et ses descendants”, volumes I and II, from whose works the author of this biography has liberally quoted, making up much of the body of the article, and to Rob Ferguson, author of “The Search for Port La Joye”, published in the Spring/Summer 1990 volume of The Island Magazine, providing much of the "Aftermath" information.

Special thanks are extended to Benjamin E. Achee, Jr. bachee@softdisk.com for his permission to include information from his Achee//Gallant/Hache web page in this biography.

Introduction

This is a biography of Michel Haché-Gallant, (1662-1737), who at the time of his death was the patriarch of a large, extended family of Acadian colonists, and who had spent his last 17 years in the French settlement of Port La Joye (near old Fort Amherst which is located on the southeast shore of Charlottetown harbour) on Ile Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island). Beside his considerable progeny, he left behind a farm near the colony's administrative headquarters. Eight years later New England militia put it to the torch.

Father Antoine Bernard, in his book "L’Acadie vivante" gives an inventory of the main Arcadian families from the three Maritime provinces. Leblanc leads with 2,759 families. Arsenault is second with 1,543 families. Third is Gallant, with 1,167 families. If we add to this last count the 369 Haché families mentioned in the inventory, The Gallant and Haché families total 1,536, all descending from the same ancestor, Michel Haché.

Ancestry

Little is known for certain of Michel Haché-Gallant's ancestry. The Honorable Bona Arsenault and Fr. Patrice Gallant, have studied this origin and have come to the same conclusion. This conclusion was given out as pure hypothese, as the documents examined could not give absolute proof. Many circumstantial facts found in the archives of the Court of Justice in Quebec and in the life of Nicholas Denys, tell us that Michel Larché, known in history by the name Michel Haché surnamed Gallant was thought to have been born about 1662 at St. Pierre, Acadia (near the present St. Peters, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia). It is thought that he was the son of Pierre Larché, born about 1640, originally from the parish of Saint Pierre in the town of Montidier, bishop's residence of Beauvais, in France.

A recently discovered document in the archives in Paris, lists a Michel Gallant, husbandman (farmer), on the passenger list of the ship "St. Jehan", which sailed for Acadia on 1 April 1636. On a trip to France, Father Patrice Gallant, visited the Village of Montidier, which was restored after having been destroyed during the First World War. He noted being unable to locate any records or knowledge of the names Larché or Haché, but that there was a burial vault in the cemetery and a monument in the village bearing the name “Galland”. He was also able to find the record of a Pierre Galland who was born about the time our Pierre Larché was. These facts pose the question, was the name Gallant really a surname given in Acadia, or did the name originate in France? The question also arises, was the Michel Gallant, who sailed to Acadia in 1636, really the Pierre Larché the father of Michel Haché-Gallant? The span of years mentioned would have allowed this.

Pierre Larché was employed by Nicholas Denys, a persistent, if luckless entrepreneur who in 1650 had established a trading post at St. Pierre, Ile Royale, located beside the present day St. Peter's Canal, on Cape Breton Island. Larché had been married to an Adrianne Langlois, born abut 1640, but he was thought to have taken a Micmac wife when he was at St. Pierre. Larché died about 1688 in Miscou, New Brunswick and was dead when his daughter Madeleine was married to Elie Voisen, in Notre Dame Church in Quebec on October 15, 1688.

Nicholas Denys’ commercial establishment in Acadia was not mentioned in the census of the time. Not being on friendly terms with those in authority at Port Royal, Nicholas Denys often did business with those at Quebec where he had numerous and well-established friends. Nicholas Denys met with many difficulties from his rivals, who in 1667 captured the establishment he had at St. Pierre in Cape Breton. During that summer Nicholas Denys, who was already 70 years old, crossed to France on one of his rival La Giraudiere’s ships. During his absence, his only son Richard looked after his business. Denys returned from France the following spring on a ship that probably went directly to Quebec. The French authorities having restored Denys’ former rights at St. Pierre, his son went to get him in a schooner.

It is very likely on the occasion of this voyage that, after the death of their father, Richard Denys would have brought Michel Larché along with his sister Madeleine, to Trois-Rivières in New France, and that Nicholas Denys confided them to his son-in-law Michel Leneuf and his daughter Mary. This would explain the baptismal act of April 24, 1668, if it really is Michel Larche’s.

Denys’ establishment at St. Pierre was destroyed by fire during the winter of 1668-69. Now ruined, Denys took refuge at Nipisiquit (Bathurst) during the summer of 1669. He died there in 1688 at the age of 90. Incidentally, Deny's trading post at St. Pierre, which was partially excavated by a Canadian Parks Service team in 1985, is one of the most significant 17th-century sites in Atlantic Canada. See historical site at: http://fortress.uccb.ns.ca/parks/canel_e.html