The year 2005 marked the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and adjacent areas to points around the Atlantic rim. A defining moment in the history of the Acadian people, the deportation also changed irrevocably the human geography of what is today Canada’s Maritime Provinces.

Although De Monts established a trading post at Port-Royal in 1605, the French hold over Acadia was fragile and intermittent until 1632 when the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye confirmed French possession of the region. During the early 1630s, almost three hundred French immigrants arrived in the Port-Royal area. With a high birth rate and low infant mortality, the population reached approximately 500 people in 1671, 1,400 in 1707, and about 13,000 people in the early 1750s.

From the initial core at Port-Royal, Acadian settlement spread around the Bay of Fundy as well as onto Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and to Pentagoet at the mouth of the Penobscot River. The population depended on mixed farming, raising livestock and crops from dyked marshes. At the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, much of the area settled by the Acadians was transferred to the British who called the territory Nova Scotia.