Caraquet
| Caraquet | |
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 Caraquet overview |
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.svg) coat of arms |
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Motto : Cultural Capital of Acadia ("Cultural Capital of Arcadia") |
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Province : | New Brunswick |
| County: | Gloucester County |
| Coordinates : | 47 ° 47 ′ N , 64 ° 58 ′ W |
| Height : | 31 m |
| Area : | 68.29 km² |
| Residents : | 4169 (as of 2011) |
| Population density : | 61 inhabitants / km² |
| Time zone : | Atlantic Time ( UTC − 4 ) |
| Municipality number: | 506 |
| Postal code : | E1W |
| Foundation : | 1730 |
| Mayor : | Antoine Landry |
| Website : | www.caraquet.ca |
 Caraquet topographic map |
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Caraquet is a municipality ( town ) in Gloucester County in the Canadian province of New Brunswick . Caraquet was built from the 1730s on the banks of the Chaleur Bay of the Acadian Peninsula in the area of the Mi'kmaq . After the British conquest of the French colonies in North America, it became a center of the Catholic-Francophone culture of the Acadians . In 2011 Caraquet had 4,169 inhabitants on an area of 68.26 km².
Surname
The name of the local Mi'kmaq for Caraquet is Kalaket or Pkalge. The expression denotes a place where two rivers meet. These two relatively small rivers are Rivière Caraquet and Rivière du Nord , the former 30 km, the latter 16 km long. They flow into the bay west of the community.
history
Early history
The region has been inhabited by people for at least 4000 years. The most important Mi'kmaq settlements were Pokemouche , Tracadie and Tabusintac . As early as the 16th century, fishermen from Normandy , Brittany and the Basque Country landed on the coast of the fish-rich area . The place name was first mentioned by Nicolas Denys in 1672.
French colonial times, deportation of the Acadians
The earliest report of a European in the Caraquet area comes from the Breton Gabriel Giraud dit Saint-Jean, a trader and merchant who appeared there around 1710; In 1724 he lived there, but three years later he lived in Miramichi. He married a Mi'kmaq woman and settled in the lower Caraquet. In 1757, after the Acadians were driven out, the couple settled in Upper Caraquet. They were led by Alexis Landry after the Acadians had been expelled from southern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia . The original district is now called Sainte-Anne-Du-Bocage .
With the end of French colonial rule , most of the French-speaking residents disappeared, especially after the raid that the English navigator Roderick MacKenzie carried out in 1761 in the Chaleur Bay . As early as 1757, at least 150 academics were detained in Caraquet who were to be deported (see Deportation of academics ). The first Acadians did not return until 1766. With the Parc des Fondateurs ('Park of the Founders'), which has been entered in the register of historical sites in the province since 1986, today's city is reminiscent of the founding phase.
English colonial times
With the expulsion of the Acadians from the Gaspé Peninsula, the area was mainly open to English fishermen, because, according to the sources, only 209 people lived in Chaleur Bay, 93 Indians around Restigouche and 109 people in Gaspé. The fishermen there were, however, in competition with the well- resourced Newfoundland companies and, above all, those of Québec merchants. Charles Robin appeared in 1766 as an agent for an Arichat corporation . The following year he founded a company in Paspébiac with the awkward description at Isle Madame, coast of Acadia and at Paspébiac in the Baie of Chaleurs, coast of Canada . He made contact with various planters and fishermen, including in Caraquet. He offered salt and equipment against fish and skins. With William Smith, a trader from Québec, he agreed on a division of the Gaspé Peninsula, where he received the area from Paspébiac down. Other companies were not very successful and gave up over the next few years. In 1774, 158 people lived in Bonaventure, another 200 were scattered around the bay. The Deputy Governor reported two years later that 30 fishermen came every year, most of them from Jersey .
Caraquet and other fishing villages had developed a village structure that was fundamentally different from the farming villages of the French colonial era. Long plots of land with their narrow side facing a lake or river predominated there, and less often the sea so that everyone had access to drinking water, so places like Caraquet were almost production facilities that also had the functions of storage, landing, delivery and purchasing , but also the repair or the provision of raw materials and tools.
Land ownership for the city was granted by royal proclamation to 34 families of Acadian, Norman, and Mi'kmaq descent in 1774. From 1778 the fishing industry suffered from the US War of Independence, because pirates plundered the region again and again, so that Robin had to give up his business. He returned to Jersey in 1778, only to return to the Gaspé Peninsula in 1783. Now numerous loyalists, mostly Protestant colonial officials who had remained loyal to London, poured into New Brunswick and in 1783 alone 435 of them came to Paspébiac on the south side of the Gaspé peak. On the north side, however, around Caraquet, the Acadians soon dominated again. The city still calls itself the unofficial capital of Acadia . Following this own claim, the annual Acadian Festival is held in August . However, this gave rise to conflicts that became more acute with the immigration of numerous loyalists and the return of many Acadians. The conflicts revolved primarily around the question of denomination and language, and were accordingly sparked again and again by the global conflict between Catholicism and the Protestant denominations, between Paris, Rome and London.
Founding of Canada, school dispute and riots of 1875
George Edwin King , a Sackville Methodist College graduate who represented Saint John County in the provincial parliament, introduced a bill in 1871. This should abolish denominational schools and replace them with a state-financed school system. The Catholic-Francophone sections of the population were upset by this, especially since a denominational school system had been implemented in the Manitoba Act on the initiative of Louis Riel last year . On May 5th, however, the group of proponents of a uniform school system prevailed in the Protestant-dominated parliament with 25 to 10 votes with 6 abstentions.
The law, known as the Common Schools Act , banned religious, political or ethnic symbols in the classroom, which inevitably meant that members of the order were no longer allowed to teach. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald , who, under pressure from Québec, had agreed that school issues should be a provincial matter, refused to intervene. In January 1873, the Provincial Supreme Court also recognized that the law was within the constitutional framework. The London Privy Council in turn accepted Parliament's decision. George King, who had become premier in 1872, started with the slogan “Vote for the Queen against the Pope”. So 34 supporters of the school law got a seat in parliament, however only 5 opponents. The latter all came from Acadian areas, namely Gloucester , Kent and Madawaska Counties . Nevertheless, concessions were made in 1872 to the extent that teachers were allowed to wear religious symbols.
If the school fees were not paid, there were confiscations and foreclosures, and some priests were arrested. In Saint John , the archbishop's horses and chariots, who had returned from the Vatican Council , were confiscated and sold. In the face of these escalations, James Nowlan proposed repealing the law, but only got 13 votes against 25 in the vote.
When, in January 1875, the Caraquet Ward, chaired by Théotime Blanchard , local representative for Gloucester, met and elected their officers, they did so without paying school fees. As a result, four English speaking taxpayers convened a new meeting for January 4th, chaired by Robert Young. Young had lost to Blanchard in the 1874 election. 19 men signed the letter that had now been drawn up, demanding that the previous resolutions and elections be null and void. This was all the more daring since the 1871 census had shown that in Caraquet only 79 of the 3,111 inhabitants were Protestant. The new community leaders James Blackhall and Philip Rive called another meeting to pass a District School Tax , a school fee for the district. But the meeting was drowned in fistfights and shouting.
The next day, thirty men, some of whom were chanting the Marseillaise , gathered and went to Young's house, but allowed clerk Colson Hubbard to pull them away. The men probably also wanted to put pressure on those in the community who were willing to pay the taxes and who were considered "bourbons" in town. The New Brunswick reporter from Fredericton attacked the Saint John newspaper, the Catholic Freeman , who he accused of revolutionary detonation. Young's wife told her husband, who she believed was in Fredericton, to return immediately, but the telegram did not reach him until January 15 at Sackville. Two days later he received another telegram saying that a looting mob wanted to destroy his shop and destroy his business papers; his life is in danger. So it happened that Young did not reappear in Caraquet until January 22nd.
Two days later, Abbé Joseph Pelletier condemned the acts of violence from the pulpit of his church. At the same time he read out a letter he had received threatening to burn down his house if he did not stop "the gang of pirates". The Soeurs de Notre Dame sat on packed suitcases in order to be able to flee quickly if necessary.
On the morning of January 25th, 100 men went to Young's house. Young barricaded himself in his home with some armed men. When he refused to talk to the men, they first gathered in André Albert's house. Young told Bathurst Sheriff Robert B. Vail to come to Caraquet with gunmen. Together with the constables Stephen Cable, Alfred Gammon, Joseph Gammon and Robert Ramsay he reached the place on the morning of January 26th; William Eady and David Eady had joined them on the way, and John Sewell and Richard Sewell from Pokemouche joined them in Caraquet. The men started making arrests. Young had probably already requested more men in Chatham, regardless of the fact that he had no right to do so. A further 20 gunmen from Chatham and Newcastle joined the now 28-man force.
20 men went to André Albert's house to make arrests, plus Blackhall, who was supposed to act as translator. Already on the 26th there was violence, even more so on the 27th, the word "Young's army" got around. When the men entered the house there was an exchange of words, one of them held his gun to the head of one of the women, probably because he was afraid she might hurl hot water at the men. Robert Ramsay heard a noise from the upper floor, probably caused by the Aksdians who had fled there. He fired through the opening in the ceiling, several men tried to tear down the ceiling with their bayonets . Now a shot was fired by the Acadians, but without causing any damage. While two men tried to get up the stairs, John Gifford pushed his way through the open ceiling and possibly fired a shot. Another shot, this time from Louis Mailloux, hit him fatally in the head. In the confused exchange of fire that followed, Mailloux was also hit. No one else met in the smoke. Only Joseph Duguay and Bernard Albert had wounds on their faces when the men were taken away. Mailloux died a little later.
The prisoners were transferred to Bathurst on January 28th, some of whom suffered frostbite on their hands and feet along the way. "Bloody Wednesday" had shocked the Bathurst authorities so much that they sought army support. Senator John Ferguson and two justices of the peace came into contact with MP William Kelly in Chatham. Two officers and 41 men from the Newcastle Field Battery, under the command of Major RC Call, set out with two nine-pounder cannons. They were followed by four officers and 46 men of the 73rd Battalion . They cut through mountains of snow and reached Bathurst on January 29th, then Caraquet. It was not until February 3 that the situation at Caraquet appeared calm enough to the officers to return, even if the artillery remained in Bathurst for another six weeks.
When Mailloux died, the competent court quickly came to the conclusion that the cause must have been a stray bullet; the perpetrator remained unknown. In Gifford's case there were nine defendants, namely Joseph Chiasson, Joseph Duguay, Moïse Parisé and Jean Louis Paulin plus Prudent, Luc, Bernard, Stanislas and Agapait Albert. John Young, a brother of Robert Young, acted as translator. The Moniteur lamented the example of the justice that the Acadians should expect from their persecutors.
Pierre Landry, later MP, volunteered as a defense lawyer. Onésiphore Turgeon, a Québec-born Bathurster hoped to win JA Chapleau, who had defended Ambroise-Dydime Lépine in 1873 . In 1869/70 he was the military commander of the provisional government of the Métis , which was proclaimed by Louis Riel . The trial began on September 7, 1875, under presiding judge John Campbell Allen . The defense took over SR Thompson and P. Landry, as it was feared that the Québecer would trigger further reprisals. The riot trial began on September 17th. Another week passed before the jury was elected, as relatives of the “volunteers” had to leave. Of the twelve men, nine were Catholics, five of them French-speaking. Two men were acquitted and the others convicted of gathering illegally. The government selected 150 men for the murder trial, but made extensive use of the possibility of excluding possible sympathizers. Ultimately, the jury consisted only of Protestants. One of the key witnesses, Robert Ramsay, admitted firing first to intimidate the Acadians. While the prosecution alleged that the men gathered to resist, the defense alleged that it was to play cards and that only the approach of "Young's army" caused them to flee upstairs in a panic. Still, Joseph Chiasson was the first to be found guilty. Judge Allen, however, the evidence was too poor and so he referred the case to the Supreme Court.
In Montréal and Ottawa, money has now been raised to finance the process. The trial began in June 1876. In addition to John Campbell Allen as Chief Justice, Charles Fisher, Charles Duff, John Wesley Weldon and Andrew Rainsford Wetmore sat on the bench. The murder trial has been dropped.
Although the matter was hotly debated across Canada, parliaments largely kept a low profile so as not to add fuel to the fire. This quickly led to the "compromise" of 1875, which provided that Catholic children could be taught in a school, that school reports from any school unit, and not only at the normal school, were recognized, that school books were recognized as being against attacks on Catholic ideas should be exempted, and that Catholic buildings could certainly serve as school buildings, regardless of what they were used for outside of school hours. The Catholics did not have their own state-run schools, but they could send their children to any school of their choice. They were also allowed to have their own catechism and to be taught by religious.
Railway connection, Collège Sacré-Cœur
In 1887, the Ligne Caraquet was connected to the railway network, and in 1899 the Collège Sacré-Cœur was founded. The driving force behind the building was the Curé Joseph-Théophile Allard. He was aware that in the face of English opposition to a French institution of this kind, it would be difficult to move forward on this issue, especially since Bishop James Rogers of Chatham had already closed a college in 1882, namely the Collège Saint-Louis in Saint-Louis, which had only been founded in 1874 -de-Kent, because it was "too Frenchy" for him. The same applied to the Collège Saint Michael in Chatham, which closed in 1880. However, construction began in 1894 without any explanation of what was being built there. It was only with the opening of the presbytery of Sainte-Anne-du-Bocage that it became clear that the building would not be a presbytery, but a college. The bishop initially refused to agree, but finally gave in so that operations could begin on January 9, 1899. From the following year the Collège was allowed to award university degrees. The number of students quickly grew, so the building had to be enlarged, in which the municipality of Caraquet participated.
The years 1902 to 1905 in France were marked by the struggle for secularism. In 1902 3,000 unauthorized church schools were closed, then many orders, and finally many clergymen came to Canada as a result of the law separating church and state . In 1903 five priests came to Caraquet. Caraquet was hit by a typhus epidemic in 1910, and a priest died of tuberculosis in 1912. In the same year Curé Allard died and the Collège set a record with 165 new students. But on the night of December 30th to 31st, 1915, it burned to the ground for unknown reasons. It was rebuilt, probably due to the poor train connection, not in Caraquet, but in Bathurst. After the ruins had served as a quarry for the house builders from Caraquet for a few years, the École régionale von Caraquet, later called École La Nacelle, was built on the site. It was closed in the 1990s, and in 2000 the city acquired the site and built a cultural center there.
In 2003 and 2009 Caraquet was the cultural capital of Canada.
economy
The economy of Caraquet is mainly determined by its coastal location and now also by its history, including tourism. There is a fishing and sea port. Some beaches and other tourist attractions, such as the historic Akadien village, can be found in the area. In addition, the place relies on its cultural charisma for reasons of cultural maintenance, but also for economic reasons. Numerous visitors are attracted to the Academy Festival, which takes place every year in August. It has its climax on August 15th, the national holiday of the Acadians. In addition to the hotels and guest houses, the numerous fish restaurants also benefit from this.
Education and culture
With the Collège Sacré-Cœur a place of Francophone education was established in 1899, but in 1915 a fire destroyed the building.
The Théâtre populaire d'Acadie , the oldest French-speaking theater in the province, has existed since 1974 .
media
New Brunswick's only daily Francophone newspaper, L'Acadie Nouvelle , appears in Caraquet.
Museums
The Musée Acadien de Caraquet has been dealing with the French colonists, the Acadians, and their expulsion and return since the mid-1960s. Near the city is an open-air museum (Village Historique Acadien), which is dedicated to the culture of the Acadians. It opened its doors on June 28, 1977, with 17 building complexes representing the period between 1770 and 1900. This spectrum was soon expanded to include the period up to 1949. With its 8,000 exhibits, it is the largest museum in the maritime that deals with Acadian culture. The most important buildings include a train station, a barn, the Goguen mill, the Hôtel Château Albert, the McGraw, Ward, Onésiphore Turgeon and Chiasson houses, the Thomas cooper, the sheet metal production, the winch, the homarderie, where the lobster was processed , finally a covered bridge typical of the region.
There is also the Éco-Musée de l'huître , the oyster museum (675 Saint-Pierre Boulevard West).
literature
- William Francis Ganong: The History of Caraquet and Pokemouche , New Brunswick Museum, Saint-Jean, 1948.
- George FG Stanley: The Caraquet Riots of 1875 , Acadiensis 2 (Fall 1972) 21-38.
- Clarence LeBreton: La Révolte acadienne - 15 janvier 1875 , Éditions de la Francophonie, Moncton 2002.
- Clarence Lebreton: Le collège de Caraquet: 1892-1916 , Éditions du Fleuve, Hull 1991.
- Samuel P. Arseneault: On est venue, c'est pour rester. Caraquet, the Development of an Acadian Identity , Ph.D., Queen's University, 1988 (four microfiches).
Web links
- Ville de Caraquet. Capitale de l'Acadie , city website (English / French)
- Arrêté sur la sauvegarde du patrimoine municipal no.185 de Caraquet , June 2005 (List of listed buildings, PDF)
Remarks
- ↑ Statistics Canada - Census Caraquet 2011
- ↑ Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc: Les réfugiés acadiens au camp d'Espérance de la Miramichi en 1756-1761: un épisode méconnu du Grand Dérangemen , Parks Canada.
- ↑ Rosemary E. Ommer: "All the Fish of the Post". Resource Property Rights and Development in a Nineteenth Century Inshore Fishery, in: MH Watkins, HM Grant: Canadian Economic History: Classic and Contemporary Approaches , McGill-Queen's Press, 1999, pp. 61-77, here: p. 62.
- ↑ This and the following, according to Rosemary E. Ommer: From Outpost to Outport. A Structural Analysis of the Jersey-Gaspé Cod Fishery, 1767-1886 , McGill-Queen's Press, 1991.
- ↑ The troop now also included Sam Wilcox, Peter Manderson, Robert Manderson, James Loggie, George Loggie, Dudley Wells, Philip Perlay, Hugh Marquis, John Cassidy, Donald McGruer, Allan Rand, Isaac Clark, Charles Call, William Reid, James Chapman , John Gifford, Henry Burbridge, Henry Bannister, William Carter and William Fenton (George FG Stanley: The Caraquet Riots of 1875 , Acadiensis 2 (Fall 1972) 21-38, here: p. 28).
- ^ Culture and Arts , city website.
- ^ List of performances ( memento of November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
- ^ Website of the theater ( Memento of December 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Website of the museum ( Memento of January 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), archive.org, January 19, 2015.