JEAN LABORDORE,
ACADIEN
Jean Labordore
Upon the fall of the French fortification of Louisbourg on Isle Royal, (which is now Cape Breton Nova Scotia). Acadiens like Jean Labordore were deported by the British for their colonies in New England. Upon their arrival in the Americas, 7000 Acadiens landed in the colonies where many were ostracized and left to fend for themselves. Only by pulling together as a community did the Acadiens manage to survive and carry on some of the French language names and traditions they brought from France in the 1600’. Today only vestiges of this culture still live on in place and family names and throughout the Maritimes, New England and Louisiana.
Louisbourg, 18th Century fortified town, capital and major settlement of French colony of Ile Royal (Cape Breton I), 1713-58. In the 17th and 18th Centuries, France and Britain competed both for territorial control of the Atlantic Canada and for domination of the valuable cod FISHERIES off its coasts. In the Treaty of UTRECHT (1713), France ceded Newfoundland and ACADIA to Britain. That year the French colonized Ile Royal and founded Louisbourg, which quickly became a substantial town and seaport.
Christopher Moore, The Canadian Encyclopedia, pp 1245-1246.
Jean Labordore was an Acadian who ended up in Salem Massachusetts with his seven family members. In a petition, he complained of his treatment by the local authorities: “having at length refused him of oxen to fetch home his wood which he always cut himself, and he left them now…without victuals or firing, and a kind of house without doors or roof for when it rains they are obliged to shift their bed from part of the wett to leeward…having told one of the selectman that we were afloat in the house he said I must build a boat and sail it”.
Don Gilmour and Pierre Turgeon, Canada A Peoples History Volume 1, p. 106. |
The Lyrics
Words and music G. Scott MacLeod
Louisbourg tombe, par les canons Anglais
Nous sommes force manipule, pour les colonies Americans
165 families, rest en Acadie
Apres les deportantions de 1755
Jean LaBordore, with no roof on your home,
How did you keep your family warm?
7000 Acadiens, leur esprit loin
1/3 mort, du typhoid et cholera
Jean LaBrador, with no roof on your home,
How did you keep, your family warm?
Jean LaBordore in Massachusetts,
How did you feed the shoeless? |
Acadie (Acadia), name given to the first permanent French colony in N America. The name originated with Giovanni da VERRAZANO, an Italian explorer serving the king of France. In 1524 Verrazzano made his first trip to the New World and gave the name Arcadie to a region stretching along the Atlantic coast near Delaware, explaining the choice in his diary with reference to “the beauty of its trees”.
Pere Anselme Chiasson, The Canadian Encyclopedia, pp. 5 - 10
Typhoid (also typhoid fever) n. an infectious bacterial fever with eruptions of red spots on the chest and abdomen and severe intestinal irritation.
Pere Anselme Chiasson, The Canadian Encyclopedia, pp. 5-10.
Books:
Moore, Christopher. Louisbourg Portraits.
Doucet, Clive. Notes from Exile on Being Acadien.
Daigle, Jean. Les Acadiens des Maratimes.
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