The Cradle of Acadie ; Drama Found in Landscape, History of Nova Scotia's Fundy Bay Coast

Summary

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If only I had met Durline Melanson before reading Longfellow's poem "Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie," in the eighth grade. Even better, how much stronger the poem's emotional impact would have been for me if I had gone to Nova Scotia and seen the homeland from which the poet's long-separated French Canadian lovers, Evangeline and Gabriel, were evicted in the Great Deportation of 1755.

Instead, I caught up with the drama many decades later, during the second half of a travel writers' introduction to the Bay of Fundy set up by the tourism offices of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The bay, known for the highest tides in the world, divides the two Maritime Provinces, shaping their shoreline and much of their culture as well.

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Extract

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The Cradle of Acadie ; Drama Found in Landscape, History of Nova Scotia's Fundy Bay Coast

An Acadian by marriage and empathy rather than ancestry, Mrs. Melanson first came to the little town of Annapolis Royal, where we meet her, while on vacation from her home in Dallas. Her guide that day was a young man who would become "my handsome husband," Alan Melanson, whom she affectionately calls "a little encyclopedia in tennis shoes." Together, they are tireless evangelists for preservation and appreciation of Acadian history and culture.

My group meets Mrs. Melanson at an 1890 wooden lighthouse that she bought for $1 for the Historical Association of Annapolis Royal because she was "so afraid someone would turn it into an ice cream shop or a T-shirt shop or some other commercial use."

She is dressed simply in a white cap, ankle-length skirt, a blouse with a gathered neckline, and wooden...

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