“These People No Longer Want to Be without a Country”
Kouchibouguac National Park was born in pain. In July 1969, the federal and New Brunswick governments agreed to create a protected natural area on the province’s east coast. To achieve this objective, the authorities expropriated the land of more than 250 families, mainly of those of Acadian descent living in eight particular villages.
Like the entire legislative program of New Brunswick Premier Louis Robichaud (1960-1970), the park was a response to the imperative of “modernizing” the province. It was a social engineering project conceived by civil servants, who saw it as an opportunity to relocate a so-called “unproductive” population to “growth centres.” From the point of view of Parks Canada, the measure was primarily aesthetic: the aim was to make the area a natural environment devoid of all traces of human activity. This approach was commonplace at the time.
Following the mobilizations at the Université de Moncton in 1968, Acadian neo-nationalists interpreted this displacement of Acadian families as a manifestation of the continued subordination of Acadians in the province. In the mid-1970s, activists like Jackie Vautour went so far as to resist expropriation through legal action and land occupation. Violence sometimes broke out, as was the case in the spring of 1980 (Le Soleil, April 16, 1980).
Against this backdrop the Front commun de solidarité aux expropriés (Common Front of Solidarity with the Expropriated) was launched. The cause resonated with Quebec nationalists, who saw it as yet another encroachment by the federal government into land-use planning. The appeal was also intended to mobilize support when a special commission of inquiry was announced in May 1980. Submitted in 1981, the report proposed, among other things, amending the compensation formula for expropriation and granting fishing rights to the expropriated.
For its part, Parks Canada ceased the practice of expropriation in the 1970s. Today, the government agency acknowledges that “many families were greatly affected by the expropriation process during the establishment of national parks and historic sites” (Parks Canada, 2019).
Title of the document : Appel à la solidarité de toutes les associations et organismes francophones au pays!
Date : May 22, 1980
Reference: : University of Ottawa, Centre de recherche sur les francophonies canadiennes (CRCCF), Fonds Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, C84/29/13.
To learn more about this topic:
Online
Le retour des voix au Parc national de Kouchibouguac.
Office national du film, Kouchibouguac, 1978, 74 min.
Parc Canada. Programme de laissez-passer pour les familles expropriées.
La Forest, Gérard V., et Muriel Kent Roy, Report of the Special Inquiry on Kouchibouguac National Park Conclusions and Recommendations, October 1981.
Printed sources
« Aucune évolution du conflit au parc Kouchibouguac », Le Soleil, 16 avril 1980.
« Enquête sur le parc Kouchibouguac », Le Soleil, 16 mai 1980.
Babin, Aryane. L’expropriation du territoire de Forillon. Les décisions politiques au détriment des citoyens, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2016.
Campbell, Claire (dir.). A Century of Parks Canada, 1911–2011, Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2011.
Rudin, Ronald. Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance, and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016.
Rudin, Ronald. « Making Kouchibouguac: Acadians, the Creation of a National Park, and the Politics of Documentary Film during the 1970s », Acadiensis, vol. 32, no 2 (été/automne 2010), p. 3-22.
Rudin, Ronald. « The First French-Canadian National Parks: Kouchibouguac and Forillon in History and Memory », Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada, vol. 22, no 1 (2011), p. 161-200.
