Éric Dow is an Acadian artist and activist from Baie Sainte-Marie, born to an Acadian mother and a Nova Scotian father who speaks English. Bilingual from birth, he naturally pursued studies in translation in 2010 after finishing high school at Clare. He holds a bachelor’s degree in translation from the University of Moncton and a master’s degree in translation studies from the University of Ottawa. However, instead of continuing a career as a professional translator, he chose to engage, in the summer of 2017, in advocating for the rights of Acadians at the Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick (SANB) in Moncton, where he was in charge of communications. At the same time, he became co-chair of Productions pour le Peuple, a Francophone music production company from Baie Sainte-Marie, while continuing his career as the lead singer of the Acadian folk group Cy. This is the already remarkable initial path of Éric Dow. Yet, the best is to come…
The passion for minority languages
In January 2023, at the end of his term as communications director at SANB, Éric was very proud to have vigorously defended the linguistic and cultural rights of minorities in the Atlantic provinces. He had successfully organized the Acadian Tintamarre on October 25, 2022, in Fredericton, where SANB united with the leaders of the Wabanaki peoples* to protest against the New Brunswick government’s policy. Now, Éric is passionate about the preservation of Wabanaki languages and cultures, convinced that a political and cultural rapprochement with Acadians is necessary to achieve this. It is in this spirit that he committed, in the summer of 2023, to a doctoral project at the University of Moncton, while simultaneously achieving a real masterstroke…
Éric is one of the 14 scholarship recipients selected in 2023 from across Canada by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, among the most remarkable doctoral students in their field of humanities and social sciences. In its programs, the Foundation encourages its scholars, accompanied by fellows (high-level academics) and mentors (experienced professionals), to be exposed to a diversity of viewpoints to build a more inclusive society. This is what it calls training its scholars for engaged leadership. Specifically, Éric’s doctoral project aims to explore the issue of minority languages through the lens of sociolinguistics, at the intersection of language and social relations. Therefore, his research objective is to find the best ways of political and cultural understanding between Indigenous and Acadian communities.
As a result, Éric naturally relies on his professional experience and his encounters with various community leaders, as a musician and at the SANB. In the artistic field, the work done with his company Productions pour le Peuple was rewarded in 2021 with the Prix Grand-Pré. This award honors exemplary work that reflects Acadian and Francophone culture, while demonstrating excellence and originality. Éric now hopes that his doctoral project will sufficiently enrich scientific knowledge so that Indigenous languages can finally be better included in Canadian society. It is a grand design that honors this Acadian artist and activist, to whom we can only wish a bright future.
* Additional information on the Wabanaki peoples (Statistics Canada 2021): In Canada, the Wabanaki peoples (people of the rising sun) speak one of the two eastern Algonquian languages, namely the languages of the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqewi (Maliseet) peoples. In Nova Scotia, only the Mi’kmaq language is found, spoken by 0.6% of the population, while in New Brunswick, the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqewi languages are spoken by 0.3% and 0.1% of the population, respectively.
Header photo: Éric Dow (Photo Steve Caron / @lecaron).
Author: Jean-Marc Agator,
Paris Region, France.