First Century After the Expulsion 51

RETURNING TO THE ISLAND

The expulsion of the settlers signalled the end of the French regime on Ile Saint Jean. Fort Amherst was built by the British near the remains of the fortifications of Port LaJoie. A garrison of 190 men ensured the protection of the new British territory until the end of the Seven Years War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Several years later the garrison was withdrawn and the fort abandoned for good.

As already mentioned, many Acadians were able to escape depor tation from the Island by taking refuge on the mainland. A few families managed to remain hidden on the Island. An examination of the history and genealogy of the principal Acadian families living on the Island today shows that most of them experienced at least a few years of exile. This confirms what the Bishop of Quebec, Monseigneur Joseph-Octave Plessis, wrote in his diary on the occasion of his pastoral visit in 1812:

Most of them abandoned their lands for two or three years, others only came back after the peace of 1763. Still others, having settled elsewhere, forgot their former homeland and never returned. (TR)!

The first statistics that provide information on the Island Acadians after 1758 are those of the surveyor, Samuel Holland. He reported in 1764 that he discovered approximately thirty Acadian families whom the British authorities at Fort Amherst considered prisoners of war’. Samuel Holland gives the following description of the pitiful cir- cumstances in which they were living:

They are extremely poor, and maintain themselves by their industry in garden- ing, fishing, fowling, etc. [...] The Acadians now have recourse to little cabins or huts in the woods, where they are screened from the violence of the weather, and at the same time have the convenience of wood for fuel. Here they live on the fish they have cured in the summer, and game which they frequently kill, as hares and partridges, lynxes or wild cats, otters, martins, or musk rats, —none of which they refuse to eat, as necessity presses them.’

Four years later another surveyor, Alexander Morris, enumerated the Island population. He counted sixty-eight Englishmen, almost all of whom were employed in the fishery, and 203 Acadians. The latter,