July 28th, 6:00 p.m. ~ Acadian Deportation "Day of Commemoration"
Memorial Service held at St.Martin De Tours & The Acadian Memorial Meditation
Garden St.Martinville ~
Brenda Comeaux Trahan, Curator Director of the Acadian Memorial and Monsignor Douglas Courville of St. Martin De Tours invite all Louisiana Acadian /Cajuns and friends to join in a spiritual Memorial to remember the Acadian victims who died during the years of the deportation.
As mandated by the Queen's Proclamation of December 9, 2003, and with the support of the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette, we request that all churches in the Acadiana region please toll the church bells at 6:00 P.M. on July 28th, 2009 in remembrance of the day that the Acadian Deportation Order was signed by the British officials in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The signing of the Order by the British Lt. Governor Charles Lawrence brought about the Diaspora which commenced on September 5, 1755 and resulted in the cruel removal of Acadians from their homelands in Acadie, now present-day Nova Scotia.
Warren Perrin, instrumental in bringing awareness to the Canadian Parliament comments, "Over 250 years after the defining tragic event of Acadian history, we will pause to remember the unparalleled saga of our ancestors because, as was stated in dictum by William Faulkner, ' The past is never dead. It's not even past '
The desirability of an official apology to the Acadians became the subject of debate in the Canadian Parliament and within the Acadian community.
In 2003, the Society Nationale d'Acadie, -- the largest Acadian organization in the world-- wrote directly to the Queen of England "asking that she ' recognize the wrongs done to the Acadian people as a consequence of the deportations from 1755-1763' in order "to turn the page definitely on this tragic episode in our past". As I look back upon the Petition For An Apology, which I launched in 1990, I'm very gratified to have played a role in bringing about this closure."
Following the Commemoration ceremony, please join those in attendance for a prayerful procession to the Acadian Memorial Deportation Cross and the closing ceremony.
Thereafter, there will be a short reception and later a communal dinner at local restaurants in St. Martinville, Louisiana (Dutch treat).
