[boueinot] builders OF NOVA SCOTIA. 11 



Nova Scotia, and in the counties of Richmond and Inverness in the island 

 of Cape Breton. The total French population of Nova Scotia reached 

 thirty thousand in 1890, when the dominion census was taken, and it is inter- 

 esting to note that in the old Acadian districts of Annapolis and Kings there 

 were only twenty persons who claimed to be descendants of the French 

 pioneers, out of a total population of forty -two thousand souls. In Yar- 

 mouth, however, they numbered nearly one-half, and in Digby two-thirds 

 of the whole population of those western counties. In Inverness and Rich- 

 mond the proportions were one-tifth and two-thirds respectively. In the 

 island of Cape Breton there are over twelve thousand people of this national 

 stock, the great majority of whom live in the two counties I have just 

 mentioned. In the district of Louisbourg, once so famous in the days of 

 the French regime in Canada, not a single person is put down as a 

 French Canadian by the census returns. These twelve thousand people 

 or more are the descendants of the seven hundred old French or Acadians 

 who remained in 1758 after the capture of the fortress of Louisbourg, 

 and of the one hundred families who came into the island between that 

 year and 1810. Some descendants of the same race are also found in 

 Prince Edward Inland, where there were probably four thousand people 

 at the time of its occupation by England, and the greater number of 

 whom were also deported with unnecessary harshness from the lovely 

 island to which they had fled during the troublous years that followed 

 the settlement of Halifax. Of late years the F'rench Acadian population 

 of the maritime provinces have shown a progressive tendency in intel- 

 lectual as well as material matters, and the establishment of such colleges 

 as St. Joseph's at Memramcock, in New Brunswick, and St. Anne's at 

 Church Point, in Nova Scotia — institutions on the plan of French 

 Canadian colleges— is doing excellent woi*k by stimulating the best 

 faculties of the youth that frequent them, and in laying the foundations 

 of a brighter future for a race which is now improving in many ways 

 under the influences of modern conditions to which they were very slow 

 to yield in the past.' Their numbers in New Brunswick and elsewhere 



1 For an optimistic view of the prospects of the French Acadians see "Le Père 

 Lefebvre et I'Acadie," (Montreal, 1898), by Senator Pascal Poirier, F.R.S.C., who is 

 himself an example of the intellectual progress of the people, whose condition he 

 naturally presents in the most favourable aspect. Father Lefebvre undoubtedly did 

 much in connection with St. Joseph's College to entitle him to be called " le futur 

 sauveur de I'Acadie." It was on the formal request of Archbishop O'Brien that a 

 classical college was founded in the midst of the French Acadian communities in 

 the western part of Nova Scotia. Senator Poirier informs us that St. Anne's College 

 was established in 1890, under the auspices of the " Congrégation des Eudistes," 

 and the Reverend Father Gustave Blanche of Rennes, Brittanj', became cti7-é of 

 Church Point and Saulnierville, to facilitate the foundation of the college. M. 

 Placide Gaudet, who is a teacher in this young institution, is now preparing a 

 genealogy of Acadian families which, no doubt, will be a fitting supplement to 

 Abbé Tanguay's work on Canada. An interesting series of papers on French 

 Acadian families is now appearing in the " New Brunswick Magazine," from 

 the pen of Mr. James Hannay, the author of " The History of Acadia ; from its 

 discovery to its surrender to England by the treaty of Paris " (St. John, N.B., 1879). 



