Grand Pré National Historic Site of Canada
Introduction and Background
Statue of Evangeline in front of the commemorative church at Grand-Pré.© Parks Canada / Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia / 03.36.04.04 (11)
Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada commemorates Grand-Pré area as a centre of Acadian settlement from 1682 to 1755 and the Deportation of the Acadians, which began in 1755 and continued until 1762.
In designating Grand-Pré as a national historic site in 1961, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada also recognized the strong attachment that remains to this day among Acadians throughout the world to this area, the heart of their ancestral homeland. Grand-Pré is a symbol of the ties that unite them.
The area around the Minas Basin was a centre of Acadian settlement from about 1682 until 1755. In all, some 2,200 Acadian men, women and children were deported from Les Mines, almost a third of the nearly 6,000 Acadians deported from Acadie in 1755.