On this day in ...... 1755 (255 years ago today), the British colonists in Halifax, Nova Scotia, decided to expel to expel their French-speaking counterparts, the Acadians, "and to disperse them among the English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard." The forced migration arose out of the refusal of the Acadians, who'd lived in the area since 1604, "to take an unqualified oath of allegiance to Britain." "Between 1755 and 1763, approximately 10 000 Acadians were deported," amid terror, burnings, starvation, and disease. Some Acadians took refuge elsewhere in Canada, including in indigenous communities. Others went back to France or to other colonies in North America, among them Louisiana, where Cajun culture persists to this day. (credit for sculpture of the subject of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline, about the Acadians' flight)
(Prior July 25 posts are here, here, and here.)
