Brayon
Brayon is the name given to a French-speaking resident of the region around the city of Edmundston in New Brunswick , Canada . The feminine form is brayonne and both terms are also used as adjectives. The area, also known as Madawaska , is the westernmost branch of the Canadian province of New Brunswick and borders on the province of Quebec to the north and west and the American state of Maine in the south .
The origin of the name Brayon is unclear. The inhabitants of the region used to cultivate flax in order to produce linen for clothing. The central processing step in the extraction of flax fibers is called breaking , in French-Canadian brayer . Brayon could therefore be the ancient name for a person who breaks flax. According to another derivation, some of the early settlers come from the Pays de Bray , a French landscape that lies on the border between Normandy and Picardy .
Many brayons oppose being equated with the other residents of the predominantly English-speaking Acadia or with the residents of Québec, but instead declare themselves as independent brayons of Petit Sault (Little Waterfall), the original name of Edmundston. They consider themselves to be Francophone residents of Acadia or Québec with a special culture and origin. Their roots are in the rural and forestry region of Madawaska, which is historically and culturally different from the maritime Acadia, the valley of the Saint Lawrence River or the province of Québec.
This awareness led to the idea of founding the Republic of Madawaska . In the Aroostook War (1838/39), many Brayons revolted over the actions of the British and American invaders in their country and declared themselves neutral and independent. The Republic of Madawaska was never formally recognized and was split into a Canadian and a US-American part in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842 . The planned Republic of Madawaska remained unforgotten by the Brayons and in 1938 their own flag was designed, which flies in front of the town hall in Edmundston. The Mayor of Edmundston is an honorary President of Madawaska, and a small Republic museum is dedicated to the history of the Brayons. Every summer, the Foire Brayonne , a traditional music and culture festival, is celebrated in Edmundston.
The culinary specialty of the region are ployes , buckwheat pancakes traditionally only baked on one side . After the wheat harvest in the northeast was destroyed by the rust fungus in the mid-1830s , local farmers began to switch from wheat to buckwheat. Buckwheat pancakes were then eaten at every meal as a substitute for bread, and the ployes became a characteristic tradition of the Saint John Valley . Nowadays they are served like wraps or crepes filled with chicken stew or coated with maple syrup.
Individual evidence
- ↑ website of the Foire Brayonne
- ↑ English Wikipedia: Brayon
- ^ Buckwheat miller from the region ( Memento from July 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )