I wrote earlier of my niece who lives in Florida and who is descended from French Canadian (as well as my father) and how she and her brother still felt their "French Connection" only once ever having visited their old homeland.
I made an observation I thought is worth mentioning.
My father's family goes back to Scotland in 1791 on one side and to the Mayflower itself (Capt Thomas Rogers) in 1620. My mother's father and mother came to Canada in 1911, escaping drudgery and poverty in Germany.
None of my family from these sides feel any subtraction from their/our integrity and identity by having willingly and enthusiastically left places thousands of miles away. We have reunited with relatives in Germany and it was joyful and we have shared many stories, pictures and laughs. My 93 year old Mom and my cousin Christian's 93 old Mom Luzie - first cousins - never met face to face, but they did become aware of each other and the reunion was a memorable event for both families.
But there were no tears of sadness of a re-connection to something lost, just tears of joy of something found.
My first novel was about Cuba and over the years I've corresponded with many Cuban exiles who deeply and sadly miss a Cuba that they have never visited, or left when they were very young. The sadness seems integrated in their basic view of life and their souls. Their success in the USA is almost a slap in the face of the dictators that took over their homeland and forced them to leave.
Similarly I see this in the Acadians descendants who were forced to leave almost 10 generations ago. Up until only a decade or so ago, they had only spiritual memories of where they were really from. They had made their way in an awful place and lived there, but a large portion of their souls remained in Beaubassin or Grand Pre or other little villages named after their families.
Why the difference?
I think because of the reason for their dislocation.
One group - my Scots/Welsh and Germans left for opportunity; to go to some place better. Or at least a place that could not be worse.
The others, the Cubans and Acadians, left not because they wanted to, but because they were shoved onto boats and made to leave.
This difference in historical reference and narrative affects the emotions and understanding of a people's collective identity. One who is in a place because of the choice of his or her ancestors has a different emotional attachment to it than one whose ancestors were driven from their home.
"Tintamarre", I hope, will bring the descendants of Acadia's exiles closer to an understanding of not only the terror suffered by their ancestors, but also their triumph.

I was asked in I was a writer a week or two ago, and I responded, "I don't know if I'm a writer, but I have written."
It is easy to call oneself anything, to live inside one's ego and self define.
But it is hard to actuate.
It's bloody hard to write 100,000 words on one topic, especially when you're writing on historical events, because for every word written you have to read five.
Especially when you have other things to do, many of which are exhausting.
I mainly make my living writing: reports, analysis, speeches, briefings, articles, etc.
And I'm pretty bloody good at it, because people pay me.
But one only has so many words; eventually everyone (except James Patterson who hires people to write for him) runs out of words.
Heck Salllenger wrote what, two novels.
So my energies for the last couple of months have been writing a patent application, a feasibility study for a resort, a few economic impact analyses, and my fiction has suffered.
But I have to get back to it...
I'm at a stage in the Tintamarre which is called an "interbellum" - it's a period in history where my characters are living in relative peace. And to this point, I have just had to wrap my characters around what really happened. 
So, I've decided to put them in a time capsule, skip the two years of plain living, to the next crisis. And those events are even more dramatic and terrifying than what they had survived before.
The war and the expulsion.

This from my niece Pamela (in a much warmer place):
(Pamela thank you for allowing me to share this)

"It is interesting to me, how the Arcadian heritage winds its way down the years, despite distance and discard. 
At my brother Tod's wedding, he asked me if I knew the words to "Ave Marie Stella" and would I sing it at the ceremony. I did of course.
Folks were surprised that I knew a song like that and wondered what it meant and where it had came from, for his wedding was not in a Catholic church and it was far away from Canada (in Tod's backyard of his home in Crestview, FL).
Tod himself was touched, as it brought his Mom, who had long since passed away, to the wedding ceremony, in a way...he said to me, "You sang it just like she always used to.""

--- It goes back to M. Burke's emotions that I wrote about on page one. Hundreds of years after one's ancestors leave a place, they still suffer from the loss.
Acadians left their homeland not willingly, but at the point of a musket (or many muskets).
They live for all time with a sense of lost connection and a yearning.
That's one reason I am writing Tintamarre, to allow people from now to understand or perhaps learn a little, about the people before them

About 2 miles from Fort Beausejour, the Missaguash (then the Mesagoueche) River narrows enough to allow crossing. It's a tidal river which means half the day it's kind of empty and half it's full to the brim.
The current path, however, is not the same as the path that the Acadians had to cross; some time since the river's route was changed.
But back then, where it narrowed, there was a little bridge across it built by a guy named Roger Buot. It became the only way to take the land route from Shebuktou (now Halifax) to Quebec. So it offered a terrific opportunity for an Irish guy named Joseph Casey to open a tavern.
Now his wife, Marie, went to a fortune teller who told her that her husband (who had become known as Joseph Caisse) would fool around on her. So he did.
Anyway, I digress.
The tavern lasted for decades under various proprietors, until the time when the English were on one side of the river and the French on the other. Both had garrisons of young thirsty men, and (the best I can figure) the owner at the time a Monsieur Cyr had two daughters.
So, it was a popular maybe even roaring hot spot.
There came a period, about 1952 to 1954 or so, when there wasn't a lot of military action. France and England weren't at war. In the summer, it was likely a great place to spend one's meagre earnings.
So, legend has it, the French and English soldiers would commonly convene there; tell stories as young men do.
Eventually the French built a little fort on their side.
I've walked around there, and chatted with Don Colpitts, Ron Trueman and Colin Mackinnon who have dug around and found bits and pieces of live from the time; pipe stems, buttons, musket balls, etc. 
Fascinating...

I traveled to Tintamarre three times in seven months in the past year. My mother's birthday just before Christmas, Mother's Day in May and, sadly, her funeral in July. No sadness, she lived for 98 years and for all but the last she was healthy, happy and smart as a whip.

An interesting fact on the area of old Acadia. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island - areas populated widely by original Acadians - have more nongenarians (90+) per capita than any place in the world. Researchers have suggested that this is from a single Acadian common gene from hundreds of years ago. 

I think it's because they grew up with very little, had to work hard every day, lived through two wars and a depression and had to find joy whenever and wherever they could. But I digress. 

This post is about my discovery.

When I started writing Tintamarre I started digging around the area: Beaubassin (the old settlement), Fort Beausejour and Fort Lawrence. While I played in the fort when I was a child, it wasn't to search the history.

I wanted to feel the damp wind on my face the way the people of the time did. To walk across the fields in places they did (but in rubber boots not wooden shoes). Geoff Harding of Ducks Unlimited allowed me to wander around the old Villiers Island site and directed me to the old dykes.

The dykes blocking the bay from the marshes was built more than 350 years ago and they still hold the muddy water back. Pretty good engineers those Acadians. They developed a means of having tide water go out but not come back in.

The dykes are not within the boundary of the National Park.

I walked out to the very edge and felt the place. I wandered around a little, went out on a little promontory and noticed something stuck in the soil. I kneeled and picked around the items. They were reddish brown and smooth and I picked them out of the soil. 

They were shards of pottery.

Some 350 years ago an Acadian man had eaten his dejeuner on this barren wind blown spot and perhaps dropped his eating dish and it had broken. Looking closer I could see the smooth marks from being crafted on a potter's wheel and a light blue stripe around the rim.

My comment? Hmmm!

I put it in my pocket and left. Half of it is on my fireplace mantle, the other half I gave to Ronnie-Gilles Leblanc, the Acadian historian who was so incredibly helpful in researching Tintamarre. 

I had stood where they had stood and touched something that one of them had used to eat.

I had a connection.