Media Release

For Immediate Release

February 29, 2008

Back to Grand- Pré we go

Saint Mary's University, in partnership with Parks Canada and the Société Promotion Grand-Pré, will return to Grand-Pré National Historic Site this May to continue a program of archaeological research that began in 2001.

Now in its eighth year, the Grand-Pré Archaeological Field School provides students with practical training in archaeological field and lab methods, enhances the visitor experience, and advances important research at one of Canada's best known national historic sites.

"We've always seen the teaching and learning component of the project as central," says Professor Jonathan Fowler, who has directed the project since it began nearly a decade ago, "and it's also great to see that our work is really having an impact in the community as well."

Grand-Pré National Historic Site is currently on Canada's tentative list of sites to be put forward to UNESCO for inscription on its list of World Heritage Sites. There are currently 851 properties on this list all over the world that have been designated as cultural and natural heritage sites of outstanding universal value.

"Our work made a direct contribution to several of the new exhibits when the site was redeveloped in 2003-04, but the UNESCO process is going to take this to a new level. Understanding the archaeological resource is really going to be central to telling the story here," Fowler says.

The land on which the national historic site is situated was once the site of a large Acadian village founded around 1680. The Acadians farmed the adjacent marsh land, which they transformed into fields through the building of a network of dykes and sluices called aboiteaux. Fowler's team excavated one such sluice in the summer of 2006 after it had been partly unearthed by farmers. Tree-ring dating of the wood by researchers at Mount Allison University suggested that it had been installed in the mid 1690s.

The Acadian population was deported on the order of Nova Scotia's acting governor, Charles Lawrence, in 1755. They had refused to swear an unqualified oath of allegiance to King George II, preferring instead an oath that guaranteed their neutrality in the event of war.

In August of that year, Lieut. Col. John Winslow arrived at Grand-Pré with just over 300 troops from Massachusetts. Winslow used the pretext of a public meeting to capture and imprison the community's men and boys in the parish church on September 5th. By January, the entire Acadian population of this district had either been deported or had fled, and their villages burned to prevent them from returning.

One of the first structures uncovered by the Saint Mary's team in 2001 was a stone-lined cellar of an Acadian building destroyed by fire. Over the past several summers, teams of student researchers have patiently excavated, cleaned, and studied nearly twenty thousand artifacts from this and other sites on the property, gradually adding to the picture of the lost village.

Students interested in joining this year's crew are invited to apply with the application form located at: SMU Application: SMU Application

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For More Information:

Paul Fitzgerald
Public Affairs Officer
Saint Mary's University, Public Affairs
(902) 420.5514
E-mail: paul.fitzgerald@smu.ca
www.smu.ca