In 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, a fictional tale of Evangeline and Gabriel, lovers separated during the Acadian deportation.
During a conversation at his home with Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Reverend Horace Connolly in 1840 or 1841, Longfellow heard the legend of two betrothed lovers separated during the Acadian expulsion. Intrigued by the tale, he went on to read Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s History of Nova Scotia, and in 1845 began work on the poem.
Although fictional and historically inaccurate in many respects, it has served as the only glimpse of the historic event for several generations of readers. The character Evangeline herself has become representative of the Acadian removal and subsequent dispersal. An Acadian presence remains strong today in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and in Louisiana, where they have become known as Cajuns.
Romanticized depictions of Longfellow’s fictional heroine, Evangeline.
Courtesy of the Nova Scotia Museum of Cultural History
The poet as he appeared ca. 1860.
Courtesy of the Cambridge Historical Society
Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pré,
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile.
Exile without an end, and without an example in story.
Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed;
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the northeast
Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland.
Standing outside the church at Grand Pré, the entire site stands as a memorial to the Acadian deportation of 1755.
Courtesy of Nova Scotia Tourism, Culture and Heritage
A gift to the town from Delores Del Rio, star of the 1929 film adaptation of Longfellow’s poem, this statue serves to memorialize the Acadian deportation and the later settlement of many Acadians in Louisiana.
Courtesy of the Louisiana Office of Tourism
Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux, the “true” Evangeline and Gabriel (from a reinvention of Longfellow’s poem by Felix Voorhies), are supposed to have met under this tree after their long separation. Under either pair of names, this entirely fictional couple, continues to symbolize the Acadian triumph over adversity resulting in their strong presence in Louisiana today as Cajuns.
Courtesy of the Louisiana Office of Tourism