Category Archives: History

The oldest City in Europe: Lepenski Vir, Serbia

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Ancient Humans, art, History, religion

 

We had one more stop on this very interesting excursion in Serbia.  That was Lepenski Vir Serbia.

 

We visited one of the most important archaeological sites in Serbia and Europe called Lepenski Vir. It is the oldest planned settlement in Europe, located on the banks of the Danube in the Iron Gate gorge which we passed on our way there. This was the first site that was permanently inhabited in Europe.

 

The word “vir” means “whirlpool.” That refers to a nearby whirlpool so big that it could drag a big boat into it. This of course was very important for the people of the time who got most of their food fishing.

 

 

The Mesolithic Period, or Middle Stone Age, is an archaeological term describing specific cultures that fall between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic Periods. While the start and end dates of the Mesolithic Period are not the same in each region, it is generally accepted that it is dated approximately from 10,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. [12,000 to 10,000 years ago]. That is pretty darn old.

 

The earlier Paleolithic was an age when humans obtained food only by hunting and gathering, but toward the Mesolithic period, they developed agriculture which contributed to the rise of permanent settlements like this one. This happened in different places around the world at about the same time. The later Neolithic period is distinguished by the domestication of plants and animals. Agriculture was becoming to the norm. Humans started to domestic dogs in the Mesolithic period.  During the Mesolithic period, humans developed cave paintings, engravings, and ceramics to reflect their daily lives. Some Mesolithic people still continued with intensive hunting, but others practiced the initial stages of domestication.

Some Mesolithic settlements were villages of huts, others walled cities. This site contained a sprinkling of huts.

Dragoslav Srejović was the first archaeologist to explore the site. The researchers noticed that the site was an example of an outstanding level of preservation and quality of artifacts.  Because the settlement here was permanent and planned architect Hristivoje Pavlović called it “the first city in Europe.”

 

When Srejović and his team started digging they had no idea how deep they should dig.  Each step down represented 1,000 years of human history. The deeper they dug the more they found. The stone figurines were clearly of human origin and clearly indicated human culture, but at first they had no idea how old. The Lepenski Vir site consists of one large settlement with about ten satellite villages.

 

Cultures are also distinguished by the tools used by the people. Tools used in the Mesolithic period were usually composite devices that they made with small chipped tools.

The very important site of Lepenski Vir was unearthed in the 1960s. This site is usually considered the most important Mesolithic site in south-east Europe.

 

 

There were clear signs of culture discovered at Lepenski Vir. Numerous piscine (fish) sculptures with human-like faces with eyes that looked like fish eyes.  Perhaps they were associating themselves with their gods.  As Northrop Frye, the brilliant Canadian literary critic pointed out, the main purpose of art and religion is to give the world a human shape.

 

Numerous fish sculptures have been found in the area, which is understandable since fish were clearly their main source of food. Even the sculptures they created showed creature with fish like eyes. Some have speculated that these may have been considered as gods. Was the first religion created here?  Perhaps they worshipped something like Mother Earth like the indigenous peoples of North America. Is this some confirmation for my theory that all religions are really the same religion in different forms?

 

What we saw here was the remains of the huts. This period saw the development of unique trapezoidal buildings and monumental sandstone sculptures. You can see the shapes in the photographs. These included huts for human families. These are now all housed inside a structure with massive window to make it feel like nature.

 

One of the interesting features of the structures was their trapezoidal shape that mimicked the rock face across the bay pictured here. Clearly the mirroring shape is not accidental but rather, giving the world a human shape.

It was also noted that the huts (homes) were all facing the river and a large rock outcropping across the water on the other side? The huts trapezoidal shape mimics the shape of the rock face on the other side of an inlet.  Perhaps the people also considered the river a life force. Or even that massive rock an example of the life force? And don’t say rocks are dead. To indigenous people around the world, rocks are considered alive.

 

It was suspected in 1966 and confirmed in 1967 that this was a site of exceptional value. It had unique architectural remains and stone sculptures that were particularly important. The researchers concluded during this time that this was an eponymous site a previously unknown Mesolithic people in the region of the Iron Gates Gorge.  The original assumption had been that this was a Neolithic settlement. At first they had discovered pottery that indicated a Neolithic settlement, but later came to realize that lower down there were the remains of a much older settlement that had been concealed by the materials above it.

 

There is another interesting aspect to this site. The site is a kind of natural arboretum that contains a number of woody species that amount to what has been called an outdoor school for learning about trees. The presence of species from the genus Pines (Pinus), Fir (Abies), Juniper (Juniperus), and Borage (Tsuga)  was also discovered here. As a result, based on what they called the first degree of protection under the Law of Nature protection, it is one of the most it is considered one of the most important nature reserves in Serbia.

 

Lepenski Vir is the only site in Europe where the study of the history of nature and human society are closely connected. It is considered an area of exceptional ecological value.

 

 

Burial methods are also interesting. They started burying bodies in the fetal position, as if returning to the womb of the mother. This would have a very interesting religious connotation.   Important people were buried underneath the homes.

 

There is also evidence that the people who lived here were healthier than other Europeans. They had healthy teeth and dined on meat and fish. Of all the skeletons only 2 teeth were missing. Dentists would not have got rich there. 300 skeletons were found here and more than half, 180, had no evidence of violent deaths. The average life span in Europe at the time was 35 years and here some were found estimated to have died at age 50 or even, in one case, 80 years old. There was no evidence of violent deaths either. Maybe they were a lot smarter than us. It seems they lived in peace for a couple of thousand years.  What could be more impressive than that?

 

The people were also very tall. Elsewhere in Europe at the time the average height was 1.49 metres and here 1.64 metres. Sedentary life must have been good! 4,500 years ago people migrated away from this area. The reason is not clear yet.

 

One tricky thing the archaeologists had to deal with was the fact that a hydro-electric damn was being established on the Danube River, which of course meant that the river would become a reservoir for the project and the water level would rise significantly, thus drowning the found site. As a result, it was necessary to move all everything from the original site to a new one higher up. And by the time they got to this point there was little time. They had to hurry, even though archaeologists, like lawyers, hate to rush. The new site was 29.5 metres higher than the original site. The relocation was completed in 1971. The final conservation work was completed in 2011.

This is the remains of fireplace inside the hut.

During the excavations 121 grave sites were found, which had to be respected and examined for scientific information.

 

There are also signs of human occupation dating back to the Copper Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age as well as Roman and Medieval periods. Some of those trapezoidal structures date back 8,000 years which some have said is one of the most interesting periods of human history. It was a time of substantial economic, cultural, sociological, and spiritual changes caused by contact with different populations. It is also the time during which humans changed from hunter-gatherers to stock-breeding and agricultural communities in Europe. In this Danube Gorges area, the transformations are characterized by some of the most original known cultural expressions ever accomplished in human history. And most of those were discovered right here in Lepenski Vir.

 

The more I thought about what we had all learned today the more in awe I was.  That modern humans had figured all this out  based on skimpy remains is truly astounding. As a species we have created a lot of harm, but we sure have learned a lot too.

Golubac Fortress, Serbia

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, civilization, Fortress, History, Serbia

 

After lunch on the boat, we travelled by bus to the Golubac Fortress, which was built on the south (Serbian) side of the Danube River. The fortress was built during the 14th century by the Medieval State of Serbia at the time when firearms advanced significantly and fortresses had to be changed. Like so much in the Balkans it had a tumultuous history.

 

Before it was built it was the site of a Roman settlement which was frequently fought over in the Middle Ages. In particular, the Ottoman Empire of the Turks frequently fought for control of the area with the Kingdom of Hungary. What were they fighting over?  The right to levy taxes on the Danube River traffic. It was passed between Turks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Serbs, and Austrians until 1867 when it was turned over to the Serbs. Now, of course, it is the site of popular tourist attractions such as the fortress, but during its long history it successfully repelled 120 attacks.  That number tells a big story. European civilization was so often a place of wars. Wars over politics or religion or both. I remember years ago, when we visited New Zealand and one of the fellow guests at the place we stayed opined how lucky the locals were to have Europeans to bring civilization to the natives. Is that really civilization?

The name of the fortress and the modern town in its vicinity can be translated as the “Pigeon city” or the “Dove city” (golub, “pigeon”).  Some claim the name refers to the towers of the fortress that aim for the skies, like pigeons. Others say it was named after a beautiful girl Golubana who was fought over by a local Turkish pasha and a young Serbian man.

 

Fire arms were used from the first half of the 14th century but they had only a modest killing power so were used mainly to frighten the inexperienced. They were used to make a lot of noise in the hopes of eliciting panic and confusion in the ranks of the enemies. Of course, improvements made them more effective as well. Technological advances are always critical to military success in battle.

 

A big change came with advances to cannons in the 15th century. The architecture of fortresses had to change to make the walls more secure and add hole to use cannons against aggressors. Cannon towers were built as could be seen at the fortress here. Numerous cannonballs were found in the fortress. Fragments of barrels of cannons were also discovered.

Changes in firepower meant changes to the castle defences were required.

The western side of the castle was the most exposed to attack so a moat was built around the castle. But it never contained alligators. In the 15th century it had to be strengthened to be able to repeal modern, at the time, cannonballs. The towers were all walled for that purpose. Of course, they also had to make cannon holes in the walls so that cannonballs could be fired from inside the fortress upon the hapless invaders.

 

The position of the fortress made it very difficult to attack and allowed food to be brought in from the Danube River. It could really only be attacked from the west side and the river both of which exposed the attackers to weapons from inside the castle like bows and arrows, crossbows, catapults, or cannonballs.

 

Heavily armoured horsemen were the most powerful military force in the Middle Ages. A variety of other weapons were used to attack horsemen including maces, battle axes, swords hammers, clubs, battle scythes, and hooks. Because they were so heavy and bulky the mace could only be used by very powerful warriors. Lances and long spears were used for close combat. The infantry and cavalry used lances and long spears when attacking the horsemen. After breaking through the enemy’s line, the strategy was to toss the lances and spears and fight with swords.

The sword was the leading Medieval cold weapon and they kept getting “better” and more effective.  Better at killing in other words. Sort of like Modern nuclear weapons are even better than ancient cannonballs. In the late Middle Ages, the long and heavy swords were the weapon of choice and the swords could be double edged with extended handles that allowed them to be used with both hands to maximize the damage.  Maximizing the damage was always the goal. Armour was also important and kept having to be constantly improved to keep up with improvements to the swords. The Middle Ages had arms races just like modern armies.

That’s what civilization is all about.

 

Little Siberia: The Bulgarian Gulag

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Concentration Camps, History

 

This smoke stack was not, as far as I know, part of a concentration camp. but when I saw it I wondered about it.

On the CBC radio show Ideas, Nahlah Ayed also interviewed Krasmina Butseva, a visual artist, researcher and a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, London.  She was another member of the team working on The Neighbours as a response to the Bulgarian Gulag. She explained what happened when the installation was first staged for the first time in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Most of the people who visited it spent the most time in the kitchen. That really felt like home to them.

The Bulgarian gulag functioned between 1945 and 1962, primarily. But it was never completely closed.

The Bulgarian gulag was modelled on the Soviet gulag. It’s the same kind of principle. People are sent to a forced labor camp without a trial, without a sentence. They were sent indefinitely in other words. Bulgaria became known after 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as “little Siberia.”

 

And the living conditions were excruciating. There was forced labor, there were hardships, there was disease, starvation. And of course, in some cases death. Not systemic murder as in Nazi Germany but many perished in the horrid conditions of the Bulgarian camps.

 

It’s a very painful experience. Bulgaria is a country of about 7 million people, 110,000 square kilometers. There were about 40 forced labor camp complexes in Bulgaria, so about 80 individual sites. I was shocked by the number.

Krasmina Butseva explained that forced labour occurred entirely without trials. Once Bulgaria was absorbed into the Soviet Block the country was quickly Stalinized and that meant extra-judicial internment and severe repression. Authoritarians always see courts and law as an unnecessary restraint. Usually, it meant no specific sentence. They were imprisoned at the pleasure of the regime until shadowy officials decided the prisoner could be released usually without explanation. Absolute power never has to explain.

The first question of course, is who were these people who were sent to the Gulags of Bulgaria? According to Butseva, the inmates were “enemies. Perceived enemies, alleged enemies. But there are many different categories.”  In most cases the victims were part of the left in Bulgaria. Political dissidents on the non-Communist left. You might have thought a communist regime would pick on the right, but that is not how it worked.  They imprisoned more on the left. That shows me what I always thought, the communist were more fascists than socialists.

Others victims included social democrats, anarchists, members of the agrarian party. Often Trotskyites, and in time other Communists who fell out favor with the party. The regime protected their own so long as they remained loyal to those in control of the party. Again, as we are learning in North American political leaders with an authoritarian bent value nothing more than loyalty. Next, some of the victims who were “invited to stay” included peasants who lived on the land and became “enemies” if they no longer supported those in control. Their defiance made them “enemies.” If they refused to give up their farms to the collective, they became enemies. Rebels could not be tolerated.

Non-conformists were also enemies. These were people who defied social norms and included men who let their hair grow long, listened to western music, liked dancing. Young girls often wore miniskirts and included those who wore hair styles the party elite did not favor. They were seen as political opponents. Then there were ethnic “enemies” like Muslims and Roma people.

Butseva explained that the last wave of Muslim and Roma were sent to the gulag between 1984 and 1987 when communist Bulgaria interned about 500 Muslim men to the camp for forced labour. They used many camps but the one used the most was called Belene Island located in the Danube River. Unfortunately, I never got to see it. The organizers did not think tourists would be interested in former concentration camps, or more likely, the current government did not want to talk about the camps.

One thing surprised me. This is what Lilia Topouzova said about it:

 

“When you visit the site of the former camp, this beautiful island, Belene Island, on the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania, I mean, it’s a striking place. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. And the sound of it is beautiful as well.”

 

I love beautiful islands, but I this one I did not get to see, or even hear about.

The communist government of Bulgaria used camp internment to get rid of opponents when they were not able to use traditional judicial means because they could not charge them with ordinary crimes. For example, if they could not find sufficient evidence to charge them in the criminal system, they could intern them without the inconvenience of a trial. If people did nothing wrong, the regime could use that process to punish or control them anyway. That’s how autocracies work. And around the world it seems government are turning in that direction. Not good.

Some people are bored with history. I think its important to learn about things like concentration camps, even though they were unpleasant and we were on a holiday, but I hope if we learn more we won’t make such mistakes again.

Love of Country in Bulgaria, Canada, or the United States

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Abuse of Power, Bulgaria, Concentration Camps, Death of Truth, History, Social Justice, Truth Seeking

It was at the University of Toronto that Lilia Topouzova and her colleagues Julian Shehirian and Krasmira Butsova, recreated spaces from a Bulgarian home and turned them into an immersive audio installation where Concentration camp survivors’ voices and their silences could live on. Their installation is called The Neighbors. It was the official Bulgarian entry to the 2024 Venice Biennale. That showed that Bulgaria was now dealing with this issue, after decades of silence. We heard small snippets from the audio in the CBC Ideas radio show. In the autumn of 2023 it had its North American debut in a small room on the campus of the University of Toronto.

The room is based on 20 years of research that Topouzova and her eventual interviews with survivors. The original project was done in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Julian Chakurian, was a partner in the project. She is a historian in training doing a PhD in the history of science at Princeton university and also is a multimedia artist with an interest in archives and expositions of what she called “wayward histories.” Too many stories have been lost. Gone for good.

This is what she said about her recordings of the survivors:

 “Based on the oral histories that I recorded, there were three categories of Camp Survivor narratives. There were the narratives of the people who had always told their story. There were very few of them, but these are the kind of practiced narrators. That was one way of remembering the Gulag. The second way of remembering the Gulag were people who still had memories of their experiences, but they had never told them before. Some people had never shared their story, because usually nobody asked them, but they remembered everything, and they usually had chronicles of their experiences, little notes that they had taken down.    And the third category, and that is the most painful category, is of those who couldn’t speak. There was no language. There were no words.”

 

This was a very disturbing description of the survivors in this last category.  One can only imagine the suffering that spawned their condition. As a result, this is what the 3 researchers did:

 

“I knew they had been sent to camps. I could see many of them had their files, but they couldn’t express. Based on these three categories that emerged from the oral histories from the scholarly research, we decided to recreate three different rooms to illustrate the different ways of remembering trauma.”

 

Again, I want to bring this into the modern political arena even though that might be uncomfortable to some privileged Canadians or Americans or their offspring. Imposed silence is definitely not golden.  Nor should the survivors be maliciously misrepresented as people who are maligning their country, as Donald Trump and the Trumpsters are doing in American with their American descendants of enslaved people, and indigenous people. Or women who experienced sexual assaults or violence or systemic racism in that country. Or Canada. Or members of the LGBTQ community,  who have suffered systemic injustice and discrimination for decades. It is a horrible defamation of their suffering by  a privileged sector of their society who call them haters of their country. And again, we have similar men in our country as well. Men who want to hide the truth. We even have women who want to hide the truth.

 

Try to bring the truth out of darkness into light is not an act of hate against one’s country. Trying to get your country to recognize what happened there and admit that is an act of love. That is not hate. If you want to hide the truth of what happened in your country from its people, or others,  that is an act of hate. If you love your country you would never do that.

 

The Sounds of their Silent Memories: Lilia Topouzova

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Bulgaria, Concentration Camps, Death of Truth, History, Truth Seeking

During the Communist era in Bulgaria from 1946 to 1989 there was little room for political dissent. Protesters, anyone who opposed the government, could be arrested, sent to the Gulag, and silenced. Silence was often the point.  The powerful members of the Communist party brooked no public dissent in order to preserve their authority. They wanted silence. They demanded silence. And some of the victims, even after the regime was dismantled, had nothing left to offer other than silence. It was if they had lost the capacity to speak.

 

This really proved the truth of what the  Czechoslovakian writer Milan Kundera once said:

 

 

The CBC radio show Ideas, described the work of Lilia Topouzova this way:

 

For 20 years, Lilia Topouzova has been collecting the stories of those who survived: some had many stories, some had little to say, some had nothing to say — or just no way of saying it. From these eloquent stories she has recreated a Bulgarian room from the Communist era, where her meetings and conversations with survivors can be heard, a space about the absence of memory and what that does to a people, a space to bear witness to those who were sent to the camps, but who were everyone’s friends, relatives and neighbours. The installation The Neighbours is the official Bulgarian entry to the 2024 Venice Biennale.|

Bulgaria has at long last come to own the history of Bulgaria. As a filmmaker, Lilia naturally employs sounds to tell her stories, but this was difficult because many of the survivors did not want to be heard or seen, and neither did the new regime in Bulgaria.  How then to tell their story respectfully?  That was the challenge of her and her team.  She concluded that “this story was fundamentally about sound, about whispers, about hesitation, and the sound of a room where someone simply cannot speak. “She has spent more than two decades studying the Bulgarian Gulag, excavating a history that has been deliberately silenced.”

 

Obviously, that was a very difficult task.  Bringing this story up to our times, it is a stark reminder, that when the forces of darkness try to muzzle the truth, or hide the truth, or even, destroy the truth, as many are doing around the world, even in the United States, much to our current surprise, we must all realize that if those dark forces are allowed to be successful any later job of restoration will be extremely difficult. Whether in Bulgaria, the United States or Canada, for that reason, we must be vigilant to resist those powers of darkness, even if it is challenging.

 

As the CBC Ideas host Nahlah Ayed said, “Lilia is fascinated by what lives inside silence.”  By that she meant inside both the silence of survivors and the authorities. The victims often came to visit Topouzova, but then did not speak. They kept silent, because it was uncomfortable for them to speak about the horrors they had experienced.  Sometimes they came to see her with their files but could not speak.

 

I was struck by the similarities to what survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools said. They too were often reluctant to speak. Who can blame them? Dredging up painful incidents and practices is never easy. Sometimes silence seems like the only bearable response. We must respect those survivors who are brave enough and strong enough to speak, for only by hearing those words can the rest of us learn about what happened. And we need to learn what happened so that we never let it happen again. We must cherish those who are able to speak, for the benefits they bestow upon us.

 

Topouzova said,

 

“They didn’t want to talk to me about the camp. They wanted to talk to me about the weather, about Canada. I was also beginning to recognize that the camps are a kind of a present absence.”

 

It is hardly surprising, under such circumstances, how difficult it is to bring to the light such horrible events. The camps were truly chambers of horror. Consequently, Topouzova said this about the camps,

“Everybody knows they existed. Nobody wants to talk about them, at least directly. So, I’ve had conversations with people about ordinary things, like the weather and mosquitoes, for instance.”

 

In some cases it took years for victims to speak. That’s how horrible the experience was. We must be grateful to them for sharing.

 

Silence is not Golden

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Concentration Camps, Death of Truth, History, Modern History, Truth Seeking

 

 

This island in the Danube River was benign. Other islands were not that.

Right in the middle of the Danube River, on an idyllic island the main Bulgarian concentration camp was located. That island was called Belene  and it was the main forced labour camp of  a network of concentration camps in Bulgaria  that now is largely ignored by the current government, even though it is no longer a communist government. That struck me as odd. Why the silence?

 

No one mentioned it to me on our cruise either. No one mentioned it on any of our excursions. It was as if it never happened.

 

According to Lillia Topouzova, “Very clearly the [Bulgarian Interior ] minister said, Belene should vanish as a symbol of the repressive system.”

 

No one wanted to be reminded what happened there. Even the victims were not keen on bringing up painful memories. At least, at first. Topouzova on the other hand, was very interested in the silence of both oppressors and oppressed and everyone else in between. She respected the silence of the victims. And she was very patient. As she said,

 

“There was no language. There were no words. I knew they had been sent to camps. I could see many of them had their files, but they couldn’t express. And the silence of those who lived near the camps, but learned to never acknowledge their existence. They didn’t want to talk to me about the camp. They wanted to talk to me about the weather, about Canada. I was also beginning to recognize that the camps are a kind of a present absence. Everybody knows they existed. Nobody wants to talk about them, at least directly. So I’ve had conversations with people about ordinary things, like the weather and mosquitoes, for instance.”

 

It was hardly surprising that I had never heard of the Bulgarian Gulag. It was no accident. It was deliberately kept a secret supposedly to protect the Bulgarian society’s reputation, but really to protect the reputations of the powerful. Now I really want to see them. I knew we would sail very close to the island where one of the main camps was located.

 

But Lilia Topouzova, and her two fellow researchers, were determined to ferret out the truth and bring what really happened into the light of day, but only if that met with the approval of the victims she interviewed. She worked very hard to respect their wishes.

 

It took her 20 years to amass the story. That was the sound of silence. And it was not golden, but it was fruitful.

 

History is like an Almost Empty School

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, History, Truth and Beauty

 

 

This photograph was taken near a university in Bucharest, Romania

 

The Romanian communist party, like most communist parties around the world, and like the Republican party in the United States, want to control the narrative. That means they want to control history. Which means that they want to control the truth, or at least perceptions of the truth. In the Unites States for example, the Republicans want to erase or minimize history that shows the country was not always at its best. For example, they want to minimize stories about slavery or the assault on the native peoples of North America. Canada did this too when they refused to release information about the mistreatment of indigenous people at residential schools. For example, even though I went to university for 7 years I never once heard about residential schools while I attended university.

 

In Romania, when the communists came to power soon after the completion of World War II, the communists started to erase the royal family from the historical record. Within about 3 years it was if there never had been a royal family.

After the communists lost power in Romania 1989, the truth started coming out. It was then learned that 17,000 teenagers had contracted Aids. No information had been released about this by the communists. The communists wanted people to believe that under communism things were perfect and their leaders were perfect. That is what the communist leader of Romania wanted. I think that is what Donald Trump wants too.

This is unfortunate, because unless a country acknowledges its history—its truth—it can never move beyond that. It is chained to an unacknowledged past. It is like an almost empty school.

The Expulsion of the Acadians

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, History

 

No one likes to be expelled. It is an insult. You feel unwanted. Undocumented people in the US don’t like it. The Mennonites who left Russia for Germany during the Second World War did not like it. No one likes it. It is a profound insult, even when disguised as a voluntary withdrawal.

 

The Acadians had settled the area in and around Annapolis Royal since the founding of Annapolis Royal in  the early 1600s. They were among the earliest Europeans to move to Canada. The Acadians had lived in the region of Atlantic Canada, particularly Nova Scotia, and were mainly French Catholics who maintained a neutral stance between the French and the British during their interminable wars of aggression by both sides. Particularly the British looked down upon them with suspicion.

 

Many Acadians were descended from about 50 French families that settled in the Annapolis Royal. Not all were French and they considered themselves an independent people by the time they were expelled.

 

In 1713 in the Treaty of Utrecht the French signed over to Britain the land the occupied by Acadians, without of course, consulting them or the Mi’kmaq,  whose traditional territory it was. Their views did not count.  This was typical of imperial powers. The English were worried about security and signed peace and friendship treaties with the Mi’kmaq toward that end from 1725 to 1726 and again in 1752.

 

The Acadians had established a vibrant community around the Bay of Fundy where they built dykes to tame the extremely high tides and lived in peace with their allies the Mi’kmaq.

 

Between 1755, just before the beginning of the Seven Years War between France and Britain, and 1764 after the British took over in Canada from the French, they quickly saw to it that the Acadians were expelled from Canada. 10,000 of these people were expelled in the next 10years. The expulsion of the Acadians is also referred to as the “Grand Dérangement.” And like so many expulsions it truly was deranged. This one was the forced removal of Acadians (French settlers in Nova Scotia) from their homes and land by the British authorities between 1755 and 1764 mainly as a result of their refusal to swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown.  They really had done nothing to warrant such treatment, just like the Japanese in Canada during the Second World War had done nothing to warrant their expulsion to concentration camps in Canada.

In 1755 the British authorities led by Governor Charles Lawrence demanded, as tyrants demand clear demonstration of loyalty, as we are seeing again in the 21st century in a nominally democratic country like the United States.

In 1763 the French ceded control of Canada to the English in the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War. As a result, Quebec became a British colony, and the Acadians in the Maritimes became British subjects, whether they liked it or not. But starting in 1755 the British rounded up the Acadians in those territories they already controlled, confiscated their property, and deported them to various British colonies around the world where the British felt they would not pose a threat. Some were also deported to France. This is all very reminiscent of what Americans are currently doing to their undocumented people in what their current leader has bragged is the greatest deportation in American history to the cheers of his loyal Trumpsters. The desire to expel the other is a common unattractive goal.

Here is how the Canadian Encyclopedia described it:

 

“Soldiers rounding up terrified civilians, expelling them from their land, burning their homes and crops ‒ it sounds like a 20th century nightmare in one of the world’s trouble spots, but it describes a scene from Canada’s early history, the Deportation of the Acadians”.

 

This church was built in Grand Pre in 1922 to commemorate the expulsion of Acadians. We must remember even the bad parts of our history.  It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.

Just like modern deportations, the expulsion of Acadians was harsh with many of them perishing on their forced journeys as a result of disease and terrible conditions. They were allowed to take with them only what they could carry in a suitcase. In an act of savage vandalism, their properties were burnt to discourage them from returning.

Governor Lawrence ordered his soldiers not to pay the least attention “to any remonstrance or Memorial from any of the inhabitants.” When one of his Colonels, John Winslow, read the deportation order, he admitted that although it was his duty, it was “very disagreeable to my nature, make and temper.” He was like so many before and after him in claiming he was only following orders. As he said, “it is not my business to animadvert, but to obey such orders as I receive.”

Some Acadians resisted expulsion and some even launched retaliatory raids against the British troops.

Many of those deported never made it to their places of deportation on account of horrendous conditions on the ships or modes of transportation. Like the legendary Evangeline of Longfellow’s poem, many of the Acadians were forced to wander interminably looking for loved ones.

After the Seven Years War ended in 1763 some of them returned to their homelands but often found their land had been given away to others. This too is another unfortunate common occurrence among the supporters of deportations. Often authorities hand out the property of the deportees to those favored by the current regime. This was incisively shown in the film that last year was nominated for best Picture at the Academy Awards, namely “Zone of Interest.”  Among other things it depicted the eagerness of Germans to steal property from Jews sent to death camps. It showed women callously describing how they might take property such as fur coats that had belonged to Jews in their neighbourhood of the camp at Auschwitz. Humans have a nasty inclination to abandon friends when minor economic gains can be achieved.

 

The expulsion of Acadians represents a dark chapter of forced displacement and cultural loss by Canadian ancestors. I know many Conservatives, particularly in the USA, who don’t like to be reminded of such sad chapters in the history of their nation. But the stories of the resilience of the Acadians and the astonishing preservation of their culture amid the hardships are testaments to their enduring spirit. Christiane and I had benefited greatly from that culture in our attendance at a local bar in Digby a couple of days before we drove to Grand Pre.

Many of the Acadians were attracted to Louisiana by familiarity of the language and remained to there and developed the culture now known as “Cajun.”  As a result, they developed one of my favorite forms of music; Cajun or Zydeco music. Is any music better? If you want to hear some great music watch the film The Big Easy starring Dennis Quaid, John Goodman, and Ellen Barkin. The sound track to the film is stellar and gives a great taste of this music which I first heard about at a Winnipeg Folk Festival.

In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of the British crown apologized and acknowledged the wrongs committed during the Acadian deportation. Sometimes apologies are necessary.

The expulsion was later proved to have been completely unnecessary on military grounds and was justifiably judged as unjust and inhumane like so many other expulsions around the world. Governor Lawrence’s lack of imagination played as big a part as did the greed, confusion, misunderstanding, and fear of the people and their populist leaders. Yet the Acadians established a society in the region that could never be squelched in a laudable demonstration of resilience in the face of pitiful and abject cruelty. Unfortunately, those lessons have not been well learned by people who continue to use such tactics against those they manage to relegate to the category of “the other.” Once again, we learn that history is important so that hopefully, once in awhile at least, we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Our neighbours to the south are managing to avoid learning such lessons by forcing history to be re-written or ignored.  Of course, we in Canada, have often done this  as well. History is important