This weeks we were assigned two readings, a timeline and an article. Both on the same topic, Acadian history, but using different formats to get the information across. We got the CBC timeline titled The Acadians and an article by Naomi Griffiths Acadian Identity: The Creation and Re-creation of Community.
An Acadian Identity: The Creation and Re-creation of Community by Naomi Griffiths as the title says is about the development of Acadia in pre-confederation Canada. I think that Griffiths in her writing did a very good job at presenting facts about the development of Acadia including things like the government, to religion, population, and the deportation. She also explained what moved her to Canada which was Dr. A. G. Bailey, professor at the University of New Brunswick, she included Dr. Bailey a few times in her article, quoting him as he guided her in her studies. She also used information from Mason Wade who talked about the origin the deportation, Genevieve Massignon a french scholar who studied the “European ancestry of the Acadians” (p330). She also source Guy Fregault who talked about how the deportation wasn’t exactly genocide but “eighteenth-century politics” (p336). at the end of Griffiths article she cites Donald Kelley as he believes that it was in fact the idea of bringing people together. I think that Griffiths did a great job using other sources to bring her information together with great detail. She included important times in the acadian history that made it what it is today.
The CBC timeline of the acadian history was a nice informational visual of all the important events that happened to the Acadians throughout history. Starting from before Acadia in 1604 continuing to when Acadia started in 1605, all through the back and forth from french to english ownership, oath of allegiance, then giving great detail on deportation in 1755, then after the confederation with first Acadian congress, to finalizing the timeline in 2004 marking the 400th anniversary of founding Acadia. The timeline went through 400 years of detailed, yet short, information about the first permanent french settlement.
Both the article and the timeline had equal amount of information about the same topic using different formats to get the information across. Having both the article and the timeline I was able to use them together to help follow the information and better understand the Acadian history.