How Tyler LeBlanc looked into his Nova Scotia roots and uncovered a connection to Acadian history
Ashly July | | Posted: August 14, 2020 10:06 PM | Last Updated: August 14, 2020
Tyler LeBlanc is a writer and storyteller from Nova Scotia's South Shore. LeBlanc grew up unaware of his Acadian heritage, but after being inspired to look into his family history, he uncovered their connection to the Acadian Expulsion, where around 12,000 Acadians were deported by the British in the late-18th century.
Through research, LeBlanc was able to piece together historical records and archival documents about the lives of his Acadian ancestors. He documents the trauma and turmoil they endured during the Acadian Expulsion for his debut nonfiction book, Acadian Driftwood.
LeBlanc spoke with CBC Books about writing Acadian Driftwood.
Contextualizing history
"To write a story about settler-on-settler conflict on Indigenous land was a bit of a challenge. The expulsion of the Acadians was a terrible event. A lot of people were negatively affected by it. But in comparison to what happened to the Indigenous people who were here, it's not as bad.
To write a story about settler-on-settler conflict on Indigenous land was a bit of a challenge.
"I didn't want to take away from the fact that the Acadians were also European settlers. They, at least, were given the courtesy of being expelled. They weren't outright massacred as the Mi'kmaq were.
"If I was going to tell a story that's predominately about settlers clashing, then I needed to acknowledge that this is still framed within a larger history — where there is a larger group who were victims of even worse crime."
Inspired by a friend
"I don't have any connection to Acadian culture or to French culture. We were an English-speaking family and I had a pretty standard Nova Scotia upbringing. I had a job doing bike tours with an Acadian guy; he casually asked about my last name, considering that LeBlanc is the most common Acadian surname.
I don't have any connection to Acadian culture or to French culture.
"He was curious if I was related to a lot of the LeBlanc families in the area. I didn't really know anything about my name, or if I had any relations up there. I didn't have an answer to that question."
Uncovering family history
"It was fun and illuminating to be able to trace the history. I was able to go as far back as the 1630s. It was interesting to see that I had this connection to an event I was exposed to by way of spending most of my life in Nova Scotia.
The entire Acadian community was scattered around the world. A lot of people assimilated, died or got lost along the way.
"The entire Acadian community was scattered around the world. A lot of people assimilated, died or got lost along the way. I still don't really feel much more connected to the culture by writing this book — but I do feel more connected to the much larger group of people who have Acadian heritage.
Piecing it together
"Writing the book took a really long time. I wanted to write it by using these distant ancestors of mine who were all siblings. I wanted to follow their experiences as an attempt to talk about the expulsion in general.
"They were just regular old people who had no reason to ever show up in a history book, or to have any journals or documents that would be recovered. I had to dig around their experience, expanding circles outward to try to make the most plausible idea of what happened to them.
"So, if I knew that one of the characters was sent to Pennsylvania, I wasn't going to have a written primary account of what happened to that individual. But I could make a plausible and educated guess about what that specific person experienced.
"I felt it was an important way to create actual faces and characters so that this wasn't just a book about 12,000 people being forced off their land — it was about what these individuals were doing and what they faced."
Lesser known stories
"The reason people aren't aware of this story is probably a product of colonialism. There's a kind of bias within the history of this country.
The reason people aren't aware of this story is probably a product of colonialism.
"There's been a pretty consistent suppression of just how terrible the genocide against Indigenous people was, or how terrible Canadians of Black and Asian heritage were treated throughout the years.
"It falls into that list of experiences where, if it wasn't shining a positive light on the British Canadian version of events, then it was going to be underplayed."
Tyler LeBlanc's comments have been edited for length and clarity.