A Period of Transition 135

be recognized by appointing some of us to the Offices which became vacant, but we have been sadly disappointed. The fact is, when the Acadians are wanted at an Election they are brought on a par with their neighbours, but as soon as they voted manfully and help to a large extent to put a party in power, there is no more talk of them.'”

The editor of the newspaper The Examiner proved to be sensitive to the Acadians’ complaints. He asked the government to correct this situation which he deemed unacceptable, expressing the hope that the discrimination against the French in the province would soon be a practice of the past:

We hope the day is not far distant when the fact of an Islander being of French descent will not disqualify him from holding some of the positions of honour and emolument in this Island. There are twelve thousand Acadians in the Island, and though they have elected two representatives to the House of Assembly, there is no Acadian in any office of importance.'”!

The government appointed several Acadians to public office in order to placate the critics. But, in the long run, the situation did not improve very much. Acadians often felt cheated by politicians because they did not receive their share of appointments. On the eve of the provincial elections in 1893, Gilbert Buote, the editor of the newspaper L’Impartial published in Tignish, recalled for his readers the experience of previous elections. He reminded the Acadians in his riding of their weight in the electorate and urged them to elect to the Legislature a fellow Acadian who could do them justice:

Let us beware of false promises. Let us not forget that we have been shamefully betrayed in this very manner. We have already been insulted by the fact that a Frenchman was appointed Road Master and then replaced by someone else who had no right to the position; certainly, not one of us has forgotten that insult. The time has come for revenge. It is up to us to help ourselves and to prove, once and for all, to these people who have no sympathy for us that we are tired of their duplicity and clever tricks. Let us show that we are equal to the occasion by rejecting these shameful intrigues unworthy of any honest man and designed to corrupt us and to spread hatred and discord amongst us. (TR)!

Gilbert Buote was unquestionably one of the fiercest defenders of the Acadians at the time. As we shall see further on, he demanded