Grand-Pré is a Canadian rural community in Kings County, Nova Scotia.
Its French name translates to "Great Meadow" and the community lies at the eastern edge of the Annapolis Valley several kilometres east of the town of Wolfville on a peninsula jutting into the Minas Basin, framed by the Gaspereau and Cornwallis Rivers.
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History
Grand-Pré was founded by Acadian settlers who travelled east from Champlain's original settlement in Port-Royal Annapolis Royal in 1680. The settlement grew and developed great expanses of tidal marsh as productive farmland. However the community was caught between French and British imperial rivalries. In 1747, a French force defeated a larger British force in a night raid at the Battle of Grand-Pré. However the Acadian residents were all expelled from Grand Pre during the Great Upheaval, which began in 1755. American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow later immortalized the tragedy of the Grand Pre expulsion with his epic poem Evangeline.
After the deportation of the Acadians, the vacant lands were resettled by New England Planters in 1760. One of the Planter descendants was Sir Robert Laird Borden, the eighth Prime Minister of Canada, who was born in Grand-Pré in 1854. Grand Pre continued as a rich and productive but small farming community until the 1920s when the Dominion Atlantic Railway developed the Grand Pre memorial park to attract tourists. It made the community a major tourism destination as well as a memorial to the Acadian people.
Today
Today, Grand-Pré is the home the Grand-Pré National Historic Site which is now a national park administered by Parks Canada to commemorate the Acadian people and their deportation. One of Nova Scotia's best known wineries, Domaine de Grand Pré, is located in the community. Grand-Pré is also Canada's first designated Historic Rural District. The Just Us! coffee company headquarters is located in the town and is something of a tourist attraction.
Displaced Acadians
Acadians from Grand Pre were dispersed in many locations and some eventually returned to other parts of the Canadian Maritimes such as Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Many Acadians expelled from the Grand Pre area eventually settled in the New England States and in South Louisiana in the United States. In Louisiana, the term Cajun evolved from the name Acadian.
Attractions & External Links
- Société Promotion Grand-Pré - The National Historic Site
- Grand-Pré National Historic Site
- Acadian Ancestral Home - a Repository for Acadian History & Genealogy including Grand-Pré
Coordinates: 45°6′18.14″N 64°17′55.26″W / 45.1050389°N 64.2986833°W
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