The Acadian Saga: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph, New & Revised Edition By Dean Jobb

Being of Acadian descent myself and a New Brunswicker, I know the story of Le Grand Dérangement well. It continues to play out my home province, its mark on our society, in the names of communities, in the names of people I see every day. It’s a tragic story, but remains proof of how foolish it is to try to crush a people – the deportation was cruel and unjust, but it failed. Acadians live in Acadie, speaking their language and remaining proud of their culture.

So Dean Jobb’s revised edition, for 2022, of his text The Acadian Saga: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph, was not a new story to me. It refreshed my memory of the events which led to 1755, and it went into detail about the aftermath – not just in Acadie, but in Lousiana and France as well. These pieces were ones I didn’t have a great grasp on; my New Brunswick education was primarily concerned with Acadian culture in our home, with a passing mention of the Cajun people of Louisiana as distant relatives, a splinter of the Acadian people who made a new home.

“The Acadian Saga is a prime example of taking history and telling a good, factual story with it.”

With a mix of archival research and interviews with Acadians and Cajuns in the present, The Acadian Saga is a prime example of taking history and telling a good, factual story with it. Jobb combines the historical facts with individual anecdotes, as well as analysis of what could have happened, as well as the compounding factors which led to the deportations. Jobb details the administrative battles with the Acadians over time, during the back-and-forth of French and British rule (small tangent: as a lifelong Maritimer, I remain baffled that colonial powers spent so much time fighting over what is now a very insignificant part of Canada), and the brutal conditions of the deportations. The Acadians were impoverished and died en masse during their journeys. Focusing on puling all of the threads of the deportations into one story, Jobb manages to weave them together into a strong, seamless narrative. It is impressive, when you think about the sheer amount of text which has dealt with the Acadians since 1755, as well as the many historical takes on what happened and why. Jobb provides a kinder and more supportive stance to the Acadians than earlier historians have done, recognizing their culture flourished under neglect from the British and the French.

The parts about how Cajun culture and settlements developed in Louisiana were my favourite, since they were a new story to me, but for anyone who is even a little bit curious, The Acadian Saga is a worthwhile read, providing a concise overview of the major events, major players, and the lingering consequences of the deportations more than 250 years later.

Dean Jobb’s books on history and true crime have won the Crime Writers of Canada and Chicago Writers Association nonfiction awards and have been nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize and the American Library Association?s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He writes for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the Irish Times, CrimeReads, and other major publications. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at the University of King’s College. Find him at deanjobb.com.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Nimbus Publishing Limited; 2 edition (Nov. 1 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1774711273
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1774711279

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.