Grand Pré cultural landscape

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Grand Pré cultural landscape
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem
Grand-Pré National Historic Site.jpg
The landscape at Grand Pré
National territory: CanadaCanada Canada
Type: Culture
Criteria : (v), (vi)
Surface: 1323 ha
Buffer zone: 5865 ha
Reference No .: 1404
UNESCO region : Europe and North America
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 2012  (session 36th)

The cultural landscape of Grand Pré is located on the south bank of the Minas Basin , about 85 kilometers northwest of Halifax , in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and covers about 1,320  hectares , plus buffer area, in eastern Kings County . It is bounded to the east and south by the Gaspereau River and to the west by the Cornwallis River . Its center is in the settlement of Grand-Pré , which gives this cultural landscape its name.

The cultural landscape shows the development of agriculture as well as the dykes and lock systems built to protect them, beginning by the Acadians in the 17th century. To protect the low-lying swamp from the tides of the salty seawater of the Bay of Fundy , the French settlers used the traditional dyke construction techniques of their homeland. It is therefore an extraordinary testimony to an agricultural way of life in a coastal region with one of the highest tides in the world. The tidal range in the Minas Basin near Hantsport is around 10 to 15 meters. In the marshland they operated a polder economy and extracted fertile bran soils from the sea . The diked land is criss-crossed with drainage ditches. So-called "aboiteaux" have been built into the dikes so that the water from these ditches can drain away. These are wooden non-return valves under the dams which swing open at low tide and close at high tide.

At the same time it is also a memorial to the Acadians and their way of life as well as their deportation from 1755 ( Le Grand Dérangement ). Until then, the area was the center of Les Mines , one of the Acadian settlement areas. The poem Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow also deals with the deportation of the Acadians .

In 2012 the site was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO .

Before the landscape became a World Heritage Site, parts of it were declared a National Historic Site of Canada , the Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada , in 1982 .

Web links

Commons : Grand-Pré  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hantsport (# 282) Tidal Prediction. Fisheries and Oceans Canada , accessed August 1, 2019 .
  2. ^ MG Hatvany: The Origins of the Acadian Aboiteau: An Environmental Historical Geography , Historical Geography, 30 (2002): 121-137.
  3. ↑ Sites in Iran, Malaysia, Canada, Slovenia, Spain, Germany, Portugal and France on UNESCO's World Heritage List. UNESCO World Heritage Center, June 30, 2012, accessed July 9, 2019 .
  4. ^ Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada. In: Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved August 1, 2019 .


Coordinates: 45 ° 7 ′ 6 ″  N , 64 ° 18 ′ 26 ″  W.