To such, therefore, I am glad to state that scattered through the Maritime Provinces, Magdalen Islands, Gaspe, St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Newfoundland, are close upon 150,000 descendants of the expelled Acadians. By far the most interesting Acadian settlement is that of Clare, in the extreme south-west of Nova Scotia. Here in a single continuous village, twelve miles long, dwells a primitive people, some 10,000 all told; wholly out of touch of the railway, and only to be seen on foot or by motor. Many travellers pass on the borders of this district without suspecting its existence, only marvelling perhaps why the railway line from Digby to Yarmouth describes such a curve inland at this part. The reason is this: When the railway was built the French priest in spiritual charge of the Clare Acadians took alarm for his flock, and by supplications and threats managed to get the line diverted, so as to cut off his parish between the railway and the sea. All the traveller sees, therefore, from the car windows is a stretch of untilled land and a succession of tree stumps. Were he to descend and push on a few miles he would come to the best road in the Province, hundreds of neat dwellings at Meteghan, Salmon River, and Church Point, and a cheerful, contented, ignorant people, living now as they have lived for a century and a half on the south shore of St. Mary’s Bay. Here,

This latter is no poetical fiction. The story of the expulsion is really fresh in the hearts of all these peasants. The Roman Catholic establishment is very strong hereabouts, one of the largest churches in the Province being here; and they can also boast of a college and convent which, I believe, as is the case with other Roman Catholic institutions in the Province, is in receipt of funds from France.

Here once dwelt a priest whose deeds and whose example still live amongst the French Acadians of Clare. I talked with a man who well remembered the worthy Curé of Montaignan.

“Born and educated in France,” wrote Captain Moorsom, “M. Segoigne emigrated from that country when revolutionary suspicion threatened the lives of all whose virtues were inimical to the views of the ruling democrats, and for the last thirty years has devoted his attention exclusively to the welfare of these children of Acadia. Buried in this retreat from all the thoughts and habits of the polished world, he yet retains the urbanity of the old French school; or rather, I apprehend, possesses that natural excellence of disposition which gives to urbanity its intrinsic value. He is at once the priest, the lawyer, and the judge of his people; he has seen most of them rise up to manhood around him, or accompany his own decline in the vale of years; the unvarying steadiness of his conduct has gained equally their affection and respect; to him, therefore, it is that they apply in their mutual difficulties, from him they look for judgment to decide their little matters of dispute.”

In French-speaking Canada one frequently comes across the priest in this dignified, affectionate, paternal character. Denied real fatherhood he consecrates his life to his spiritual children; and the virtues of such men constitute the real strength of the Roman Catholic church in Canada, amongst a simple folk to whose minds, absorbed in labour and home life, doctrine and dialectics are as the scattering of chaff on the sands of the sea.