A Tale of l’Acadie, the Tale of a Refugee

In 2016, I became a d’Entremont by marrying my high school sweetheart. As a rite of passage, I knew about the history of the Acadians from my history class, but I wanted to learn more about their heritage as I took a new name that belonged to them. To truly understand the past and its impact, I believe it’s important to tell personal stories, and I found that the story of the Acadians begs us to answer an old question today: When the world around us looks with fear and disgust at a stranger, how can we meet them instead with the compassion of Jesus?

This story puts us in 1758, in a small, farming community in Nova Scotia — Pubnico, to be exact, an historically French Acadian village. To Madeleine d’Entremont, it was a land known as l’Acadie. Only 18 years old, d’Entremont stood in the wreckage of her once-beautiful home of fields, farms, and quaint houses. Where she stood, houses and crops were flattened and charred. The farm animals were slaughtered. The boats were destroyed. Her entire household, and every family from her town, had been herded onto ships bound for unknown lands. The Pubnico community remembered d’Entremont’s story of survival as it celebrated its 300th anniversary in 1951, though exactly how she escaped notice amid the attacks on her community is unknown. 

Many of us will never know the grief compounded in her heart that day. But many today know it very well, especially anyone forced to relocate their lives to escape a war-torn country.

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