First Century After the Expulsion 67

PEOPLE OF THE SEA

While the Acadians were essentially farmers before the expulsion, they were forced by circumstance to become fishermen after they returned. The transformation was so profound that the French histor- ian, Edme Rameau de Saint-Pére, noted in 1859 that a large proportion of the Acadian population made their living from the sea and had lost interest in farming. He made the following observations:

...the ocean has become their friend, their foster parent, their refuge, their homeland, as it were. Thus their settlements are always located along the coastline; they even seem to mistrust land-based trades, and it is not without reluctance that they ever agree to settle inland with no view of the shore. (TR)**

During the stormy years of the deportation, the Acadian refugees along the Atlantic were able to survive to a large extent from hunting and fishing. After the Treaty of Paris, the men were recruited in large numbers by British fishing companies. These Acadians were therefore guaranteed some measure of protection and means of survival. This was a common situation throughout the region. At the time of the 1768 census the heads of the forty-one Acadian families on Ile Saint Jean, enumerated in five different localities, all fished for Englishmen who owned most of the fishing vessels. The Acadians did, however, own two schooners, five shallops and one sloop®».

Several months after his arrival in 1770, Walter Patterson, the first governor of the Island, observed that the Acadians had been hired by several British subjects to fish during the summer. They were paid with clothing, rum, flour, gunpowder and rifle bullets®**. They were also employed in boat-building.

In the years following the conquest, British investors were mainly attracted to the Island by the fishing industry. The products were exported to Quebec, Halifax and Boston*’: codfish, and oil and skins from seals and walruses. This trade was curtailed, if not eliminated, during the 1770s by the American Revolution. Indeed, the Island was in such a state of economic disarray that all commercial activity of importance came to a halt in the fishing industry during this period. Henceforth, clearing and farming the land became a priority for both the proprietors and the colonial administrators. It was not until the middle of nineteenth century that the fisheries regained a degree of