On the northwest coast of Cape Breton Island, Acadians are gathered in the village of Cheticamp and its region, within the most French-speaking of the three subdivisions of the municipality of the County of Inverness[1]. Although the fishing industry has dominated the region’s economy since the village was founded in 1785, tourism offers promising growth prospects. The famous Cabot Trail runs along the region’s coastline, from village to village, then crosses Cape Breton Highlands National Park, offering spectacular views of beautiful landscapes. Thanks to the good positioning of their village at the southwestern entrance to the national park, the Acadians of Chéticamp can take full advantage of the economic dynamism of northern Cape Breton.
Moreover, the geographical distance has largely contributed to preserving the traditional and Francophone culture of the Acadians of Chéticamp region, even though they were long penalized at school for their education in French[2]. At the beginning of the 20th century, faced with a miserable economic situation, they had to choose, in a salutary manner, a way of life that protected their economic future: cooperation. Here’s why…
Poverty as a perspective
It is 1790. Fourteen pioneer heads of families from Chéticamp have just received a concession of 2,800 hectares of land that the government of Cape Breton Island is asking them to distribute among Acadian families. Called the Quatorze Vieux, these pioneers are considered the founders of the village. Until 1830, other Acadian settlers did settle in Chéticamp and along the coast, forming a string of adjacent villages with a homogeneous population that was predominantly French-speaking. What were they looking for in this remote region, with its mountainous and poor soil, which tolerated little more than subsistence agriculture? Attracted, of course, by the prospects of employment in the fishing industry, they did not, however, expect to experience such a degree of dependence.
In 1790, the Robins, bilingual Anglican merchants from the island of Jersey, had been operating a fishing station on the island of Chéticamp for about twenty years. Among the fish caught, cod was the species that kept best, once dried. Moreover, it sold best on international markets. To supply this flourishing industry, the Robins recruited many Acadian fishermen and other workers, forming a permanent but captive workforce. In fact, they exercised a ruthless monopoly on the fishing industry in Chéticamp until the end of the 19th century, with catastrophic consequences for their Acadian employees and their families…
For the most part, the Robin Company owned the boats and the fishing gear, which it rented to Acadian fishermen for a tenth of their catch. The fishermen were not paid in money but were credited with cod that was counted in the fall. In exchange, they received food from the company store or bought it on credit, which tied them to the company. This very strict credit sales system, combined with deplorable working conditions, generated nothing but debt, poverty and bitterness among the Acadians. Worse still, the only merchant competitors of the Robins, the Lawrences, practiced the same system. Despite the initiatives[3] of their most influential French-speaking priest, Pierre Fiset, to break this monopoly, the Acadians needed a real collective surge to obtain their economic liberation and escape poverty…
The surge of cooperation
The collective awakening came in 1915, when a group of fishermen from Chéticamp founded the very first sales cooperative in the Maritimes. In reality, their visionary initiative only anticipated a formidable cooperative movement that would spread throughout the Maritimes in the 1930s. This liberal Catholic-inspired movement, born in Nova Scotia, in Antigonish, advocated adult education and the creation of cooperatives to meet the needs of their members, whose profits were redistributed to them. Under the influence of this movement, it was in Chéticamp, much more than in any other Acadian region, that cooperatives enjoyed success with the population.
In 1980, six cooperatives in the Chéticamp area founded the Conseil coopératif acadien de la Nouvelle-Écosse to discuss their problems and solutions. In addition to two cooperative stores and two credit unions, the other two founding members were the fishing cooperative and the Chéticamp craft cooperative. The latter was established in 1963 to manufacture and sell Chéticamp hooked rugs, a unique form of craft that has become world-renowned. The history of these two cooperatives is a wonderful illustration of the region’s economic reconversion, even though they did not survive a difficult economic situation.
In 1992, the collapse of fish stocks on Canada’s east coast prompted the federal government to declare a moratorium on fishing for cod and other groundfish. This sudden halt caused a deep crisis in the fishing sector in Chéticamp, also leading to the closure, in 2006, of the only fish processing plant, which left 200 workers unemployed.
At the same time, collective consultations explored possibilities for diversifying the regional economy in the cultural tourism sector. This is how the Centre de la Mi-Carême was born in 2009 in Grand-Etang, on the Cabot Trail. As for the Chéticamp craft cooperative, which was able to boost the hooked rug industry, it proved unable to cope with its financial difficulties and had to close its doors in 2014. Hooked rugs have, however, remained an Acadian tradition deeply rooted in the cultural and economic life of the region, the memory of which is carefully preserved by the museum at the Les Trois Pignons Centre.
Today, the Chéticamp region has seven cooperatives, including the community radio station CKJM. The cooperative movement still exercises a form of power of influence that the weak political representation of Acadians has never been able to ensure.
In memory of Acadian history
Société Saint-Pierre, owner of the cultural and information Centre Les Trois Pignons, has a mandate to develop the Acadian and Francophone community in the Chéticamp region. On August 15, 1990, it erected a plaque in honor of the Quatorze Vieux of Chéticamp. Every year, it organizes the Festival de l’Escaouette, guardian of the Acadian heritage of the Chéticamp region. Similarly, all year round, the Centre de la Mi-Carême organizes various events and workshops at the heart of Acadian traditions.
In the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, interpretive and commemorative plaques recall that an Acadian village, Cap-Rouge, existed until the 1930s north of Chéticamp, spread over several hamlets. In 1936, the federal government expropriated the Acadians of Cap-Rouge to allow the creation of the national park, while the Scots of the neighboring village of Pleasant Bay were spared. Well integrated into the Cabot tourist trail, these places of remembrance should not make us forget the painful episodes that the Acadians experienced in their history.
Header image: Anselm Cormier Co-operative Development Centre of the Conseil coopératif acadien de la Nouvelle-Ecosse in Chéticamp (Author ICCNS, licence CC BY 2.0).
Author: Jean-Marc Agator,
Paris Region, France.
English translation: Jean-Pierre Bernier,
Greater Toronto Area (ON), Canada.
Main sources
Ross, Sally et J. Alphonse Deveau ; Les Acadiens de la Nouvelle-Ecosse, hier et aujourd’hui ; Les Editions d’Acadie, Moncton, 1995.
LeBlanc, Barbara & la Société Mi-Carême; A Community Reborn from Crisis; Historic Nova Scotia, accessed June 24, 2024.
Conseil de développement économique de la Nouvelle-Ecosse ; Community Profile, Chéticamp region, 2023.
[1] Subdivision A of the County Municipality of Inverness, where 43.9% of the 5,207 residents are still able to conduct a conversation in both official languages (Statistics Canada 2021).
[2] See on this site the generic article “A long fight for education in French”.
[3] For example, thanks to him, a ferry service between Chéticamp and Pictou was established in 1886 so that the Acadians would have access to a railway and better markets.