THE BOOK SHELF: Exploring one family's Acadian roots

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Growing up on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, Tyler LeBlanc wasn’t aware of his family’s Acadian roots or their direct connection to the Expulsion — until an encounter with an historian pushed him to dig deeper into his genealogy.

“I wondered why I had a French last name but didn’t put much thought into it,” said LeBlanc, who grew up in Bayswater but now calls Halifax home. No one in his immediate family spoke French or had any connection to either Acadian or French culture. 

Knowing his grandfather had grown up on Cape Breton Island, he didn’t question his great-aunt Margie’s story about the family being descended from a French convict. The man was said to have survived a shipwreck. After swimming ashore, he was taken in by a family of LeBlancs and took their name.

“The story kind of changes every time it is told,” LeBlanc said during a recent interview. “It is like a family myth.”

For a long time, the family tale satisfied LeBlanc, until an Acadian teacher and historian in Cape Breton challenged him to look deeper, believing he might have Acadian roots. Four years of genealogical and historical research proved that he was not only Acadian, but resulted in his first non-fiction book, Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion (Goose Lane Editions).

“This is a personal book about 10 siblings, all distant ancestors of mine, who found themselves tossed from their quiet pastoral lives into the turbulent world of 18th-century geopolitics,” LeBlanc writes.

By tracing one family’s path through the tragic event, LeBlanc recreates their personal experiences with the hopes of evoking empathy in his readers and a deeper understanding of what Acadians endured during the Expulsion. LeBlanc not only learned more about Acadian history writing the work of creative non-fiction, but transformed how he thinks about “…identity, family, and the history of the place I call home,” he writes.

“The family has roots in this place for almost 400 years,” he said. “Along the way I have gained an appreciation and almost a grounding in this place.”

With the help of Stephen A. White, an Acadian genealogist and historian at the Université de Moncton, LeBlanc traced his family back to the original LeBlanc family that lived in Acadia in the early 17th century and found his connection to the generation that suffered the worst of the Expulsion: Joseph LeBlanc, his great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather.

Joseph LeBlanc was born in 1712 and was 43 when Governor Charles Lawrence signed the deportation order that would result in thousands of Acadians being forced from their homes, said LeBlanc. Families were shipped to points around the Atlantic. Many landed in the English colonies, others in France or the Caribbean. Thousands died of disease or starvation on board ships. 

In his research, LeBlanc found oral testimony from Joseph’s younger brother, Jean Baptiste that allowed him to loosely piece together his life and the lives of his siblings and formed the book’s framework. He relied on other primary sources found in the Nova Scotia Archives and the work of prominent historians to piece together a more complete picture of their lives.

“The most prominent figures associated with the Expulsion of the Acadians left journals, memos, letters, and diaries. The characters in this book did not,” LeBlanc writes. “The lives of those torn from their homes, left to die, murdered, or otherwise scattered to the wind have not had as much time in history’s limelight.”

LeBlanc learned Joseph and his siblings grew up in the parish of Grand-Pré, then the cultural heart of Acadia. Joseph was living with his wife and family when they decided to flee the community of Cobeguit, an Acadian settlement on the Bay of Fundy, in 1751. They witnessed the influx of British soldiers in the region and like many fled to the island of Ile Saint-Jean, what is today Prince Edward Island. Joseph later joined resistance fights near his former home and died in Cobeguit. Decades later, his youngest son, Georges-Robert got a land grant along the banks of the Margaree River and in the 1780s moved with a small group of Acadians to what is now Cape Breton Island.

Writing the book "has been my way of trying to create a connection to this history I am so separated from,” said LeBlanc. “I came to see that the Expulsion was the reason I was so disconnected [from my heritage] because it fractured society,” he added.

A University of King’s College journalism graduate, LeBlanc joined the school’s MFA program in creative nonfiction when his book idea was still in its infancy. With help from his mentor writer Harry Thurston, he completed the program in 2018; one month later, Goose Lane offered him a publishing contract. 

While hard to feel a deep, familial connection to the book’s characters, LeBlanc said discovering their story has strengthened his kinship with his Acadian ancestors.

“I definitely feel closer to them,” he said. 

LeBlanc will launch his book on April 20 at 7 p.m. at the Halifax Central Library.