Acadian Memorial Park, Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia

A poor quality, divided back postcard from the Photogelatine Engraving Co. Ltd. of Ottawa, probably published around 1930 (although I grant you that it has lasted 80 years fairly unscathed). It was in 1930 that the church in this (at the time) privately-owned park was completed.

To the right you can see the statue of “Evangeline,” the subject of the poem by Longfellow. The poem tells a fictionalized tale of the very real expulsion of Acadians from the Canadian Maritime Provinces — Acadia — between 1755 and 1763 by the British. A great many Acadians wound up in Louisiana, and you have doubtless heard their descendants referred to as “Cajuns”.

The Canadian government acquired the park in 1957, and today it is known as the Grand-Pré National Historical Site.

I purchased this card in Nova Scotia in 2002, in a shop not too far from the park.