Grand-Pré

Grand-Pré is the symbolic centre of the homeland of the Acadian people and the principal lieu de la mémoire acadienne. Here they transformed millennia-old tidal salt marshes into fertile farmland, the granary of Acadie. The tragic deportation of the Acadians in 1755 from the lands they had physically created through hard work and ingenuity is marked by the memorial chapel (1922-1930), the Deportation Cross (1924), the bronze statue of Evangeline, the heroine of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's romantic poem Evangeline (1920), and other monuments. Below-ground archaeological remains also represent the occupation and the collective memory. The area still bears the distinct settlement and land use patterns of dyked marshlands, uplands, and forest rising from the bay that identified their prosperous agricultural settlement from 1682 to 1755, as well as vestiges of the unique Acadian adaptation of 17th-century French dyking practice to the salt marshlands. The overlay of cultural resources reflecting the deliberate settlement of New England Planters on the Acadian lands immediately after The Deportation remains visible.