SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick (AP) – A university professor from Montreal is making a movie and writing a book about the 400th anniversary of the French landing at St. Croix Island, the doomed settlement that was ultimately the birthplace of Acadia and Canada.

Ron Rudin, chairman of the history department at Concordia University, was in New Brunswick last week with a film crew documenting the planning and the lead-up to the 10-day anniversary commemoration that starts June 25.

“I’m interested in questions of what people remember and what people forget,” said Rudin in a telephone interview from Montreal.

“I find it interesting because they make those decisions based on their current lives – not whatever happened 400 years ago.”

Organizers of the St. Croix 2004 events are remembering the arrival of 79 French explorers, including Samuel Champlain and Pierre Dugua, who settled on St. Croix Island, along the border between Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick, in June 1604.

Through re-enactments, concerts and lectures, they are remembering the harsh winter that wiped out half the settlers as well as the Passamaquoddy Indians and their relationship with the French.

Rudin will record the anniversary events in New Brunswick, Maine and France and others related to St. Croix 2004.

His research will take him to France, and next year he’ll be in Nova Scotia following Champlain’s trail from St. Croix Island to Port Royal in 1605.

“It’s a bit of an odd project for a historian, of course. The thing that I’m studying hasn’t happened yet,” Rudin said.

Rudin’s film, “Life After Ile Ste-Croix,” is expected to be completed by the fall.

His book, “Remembering and Forgetting in Acadie,” will be his seventh and he expects to complete it in 2006.

AP-ES-06-06-04 1901EDT