FRENCHVILLE (AP) – Nearly 250 years after being kicked out of Canada, Acadians are receiving an apology.

The Canadian Federal Cabinet this week approved a proclamation of apology from Queen Elizabeth to the Acadians, who were deported from Canada between 1775 and 1783 by British forces who took over their land.

The apology will be signed next week by Governor General Adienne Clarkson, the queen’s representative in Canada. The British monarch had referred the apology request to the Canadian Federal Cabinet, which endorsed it.

“This is important because it makes historic records a fact, and the Crown is admitting it caused irreparable damages to the Acadian people,” said Euclide Chiasson, president of Canada’s National Society of Acadians, who had asked for the apology.

Starting in 2005, July 28 will be recognized as the anniversary of the English Deportation Order of 1755. The order forced the Acadians to leave and has never been rescinded.

The Acadians were French settlers of land that is now the Maritime Provinces, including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and parts of eastern Maine.

By the 1760s, the British controlled much of the area and were encroaching upon French land. Thousands of Acadians were pushed out and fled down the East Coast and north to New Brunswick. The lands left behind were confiscated and given by the British crown to loyal British subjects.

The actual number of deported Acadians is unknown, but is believed to be in the thousands. Hundreds died during the military conflict.

Their trials were immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline,” the story of two lovers who are separated by the deportation and only meet again as Gabrielle is dying.

The deportation sent French-speaking people into Maine and as far south as Louisiana, where resettled Acadians became known as Cajuns.

Maine passed a resolve 10 years ago asking for an apology from England on behalf of the large population of Acadians in Maine. About 40 percent of Maine residents have French roots, although many are linked to Quebec.

Those asking for the apology sought no compensation but hoped to dissuade reports that the deportation never existed.

“It was something they could no longer refuse because it was an embarrassment to the Crown,” said Judy Paradis of Frenchville, president of the Maine Acadian Heritage Council, speaking French.

AP-ES-12-05-03 1149EST

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