We often forget that the Great Upheaval continued until the early 19th century. Here is the incredible odyssey of Guillaume Petitpas, an enlightening illustration of these endless wanderings across the Atlantic.
Guillaume was born around 1730 in Port-Toulouse, on Île Royale (today, St. Peter’s, Cape Breton). In 1752, he lived in L’Ardoise, still on Île Royale. He was the grandson and son of a navigator. After the fall of the Louisbourg fortress in 1758, the Acadians were expelled from Île Royale. The chart below summarizes the incredible Atlantic odyssey of Guillaume Petitpas (each crossing corresponds to a year and its associated commentary).
1758. After the fall of Louisbourg, Guillaume is deported by the British to La Rochelle or Rochefort.
1764. He marries in Rochefort, where he works as a carpenter, and then settles in Miquelon, the largest of the islands in the Saint Pierre and Miquelon archipelago. He then works as a fisherman and carpenter. In 1763, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, France had indeed regained the archipelago to establish fisheries, but not military fortifications. This provision would have serious consequences for its inhabitants.
1767. Bad luck, Guillaume is repatriated to France along with all the Miquelonnais. It is true that the Acadian refugees made up more than two-thirds of the archipelago’s population, estimated at 1,250 people. Little involved in fishing, these former settlers preferred to live on Miquelon, an island with poor soil. With the archipelago’s resources being limited, the government had chosen to restrict its settlement to activities related to fishing, which are concentrated in Saint-Pierre.
1768. The government unexpectedly does a U-turn. Undoubtedly the Saint-Pierre merchants had pleaded the Acadians’ case. The Miquelonnais are allowed to return to the archipelago. For ten years, with courage and ingenuity, they rebuild a better life as fishermen, farmers, and day laborers, until the American War of Independence.
1778. Fate strikes the Acadians a second time. Great Britain blames France for its support of the American insurgents and seizes the undefended archipelago. The toll is dreadful, as everything is destroyed -houses, stores, stables, fishing facilities. The 1,400 inhabitants of the archipelago are deported to France, and Guillaume Petitpas returns to La Rochelle.
1785. Guillaume resettles in Miquelon. Indeed, two years earlier, France had regained possession of its colony through the Treaty of Versailles and allowed the return of its settlers at the king’s expense, provided they made themselves useful.
1793. Unfortunately, the horizon darkened for a third time. After entering the war against revolutionary France, the British took control of the archipelago. This time, they did not destroy the homes and facilities, but kept the 1,500 inhabitants in place under very harsh conditions. In 1794, faced with their stubbornness to remain loyal to France, they decided to imprison them in Halifax. Guillaume therefore went to Halifax with his family.
1797. Guillaume and his family were sent back to France, to Bordeaux, in a homogeneous group of 133 Miquelonnais, likely as part of a prisoner exchange. For these refugees, victims of the endless conflict between the French and the British over control of the archipelago’s fisheries, the Great Upheaval ended in Bordeaux, but left them in a state of deep destitution.
In 1804, Guillaume died in Bordeaux at the age of 75. In 1815, the definitive retrocession of the archipelago to France allowed, the following year, the lasting return of the settlers.
Header image: image by Greg Montani from Pixabay.
Jean-Marc Agator
Paris, France
Source
Agator, Jean-Marc ; Le Grand Dérangement s’arrête à Bordeaux
(in French).