Kouchibouguac Park's controversial land expropriation told in new book

The stories of the resettlement of people from a number of Acadian communities when Kouchibouguac National Park was created have been told in a new book.

Professor Ronald Rudin, a history professor at Concordia University wrote Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park after spending several years interviewing some of the displaced families.

The creation of the park in 1969 by the federal and New Brunswick governments eventually led to the expropriation of land occupied by over 1,200 people from mostly Acadian families. Rubin said he became interested in the story of the Kouchibouguac resettlement while working on another Acadian project that involved visiting historical sites.

They did what they could and were really quite ingenious with some of the strategies they had to follow to make a go of their lives.- Ronald Rudin

"We were in Saint-Louis-de-Kent and we were sitting at a picnic table. Everyone else on the tour was Acadian and they would tell me stories that they didn't think I would know.

"We were only a kilometre from the park and they started telling me the story of the 1,200 people being removed, the need to remove people so tourists could see the nature pure without the intervention of a human presence."

Information Morning - Moncton13:18Creation of Kouchibouguac

Concordia University professor Ronald Rudin talks about his new book Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance and Remembrance.

Rudin said the story ultimately reached the part about Jackie Vautour, who refused to move and remains on his land. His story is a powerful one, with confrontations with police and the bulldozing of the family's original home.  

"It's pretty stunning when you've never heard this story."

Little found

Rudin was sure someone had written about what happened but soon found out other than the story of Vautour and his family, there was little else to be found.

"No one ever agreed to leave. Some people left quietly, but they didn't ask to leave. But the government often put it that way."

To find the stories of the other displaced people and families, Rudin went through archival records.

"In Fredericton, for instance, there's a file on every single family that was removed and you could find out a lot about what their lives were like before the park."

Rudin said he was interested in seeing whether the stories being told about the families being poor were as bad as officials made it sound. 

"What you come to understand is, they were poor, no one tried to deny that, but they had figured out a way to be able to make a go of their lives on a fairly thin resource base.

"Premier Louis Robichaud, ironically the first Acadian premier of New Brunswick, thought he was doing them a favour by having them leave."

Rudin said it took him time to get the families to warm up to him. He added many, for good reason, were suspicious of outsiders after not being treated well during the expropriation process.

"A few of the former residents befriended me and they had friends in their own circle help, and in the end I couldn't have written the book without them."

Rudin had tried to make contact by attending community picnics and the residents return to the park for the first time and said it didn't always go well, but he understood why.

"For many of them that was an emotional event when they came back. Many had not returned to the park for almost 40 years. They were there to meet friends, they weren't there to talk to a history professor."

Rudin said many would question if he worked for the park and wondered if the park or government was trying to do something to them.

Own economy

After hearing the many stories, Rudin said he realized these families who lived on that land, although poor, had an economy that worked for them that the government couldn't see.

The professor said he talked to people about how their lives worked.

"When they fished they weren't fishing to sell fish on the market, they were fishing it to feed their families."  

Rudin said their way of living off the resources and helping each other out wouldn't show up in government statistics, leading officials to believe they didn't produce enough to continue living there.

"This story came up time and time again of how people looked out after each other, so it's ironic that the government had this whole great plan not only to create the park, but also fix the people."

The plan was to help them with a rehabilitation program because the government believed they had made bad decisions with their lives.

But Rudin said they had actually made good decisions.

"They did what they could and were really quite ingenious with some of the strategies they had to follow to make a go of their lives."

Rudin said the characterization of the families was often not fair and untrue.

As a result of how these families were treated, Parks Canada has now changed its policy on how parks are created and how people living there are treated. Nothing is done without consultation and no one is forced to move from the area.

In addition to the book, Rudin said the families stories can be found on a website called Returning the Voices.

The website, the winner of the 2014 Public History Prize from the Canadian Historical Association, shares the stories of former residents through 26 video portraits embedded in a map of the territory at the time of the expropriation.