From 1755 to 1763, what happened to the Acadians during the war between Britain and France?

The Acadians are described in Discover Canada as the descendants of French colonists who began settling in what are now the Maritime provinces in 1604. For over 150 years they built a distinct French-speaking, Catholic farming and fishing society on the Atlantic coast — long before Canada existed as a country and well before the war that would change their fate.

Between 1755 and 1763, Discover Canada records, during the war between Britain and France, more than two-thirds of the Acadians were deported from their homeland. Families were forced onto ships and scattered to other British colonies, to the Caribbean, to Louisiana, and back to Europe. Farms and villages were destroyed. The guide gives this catastrophe a name still used today: "this ordeal, known as the 'Great Upheaval.'" The same date, 1763, marks the formal end of France's empire in North America and the year King George III issued the Royal Proclamation.

What makes the Acadian story exceptional is what came after. Discover Canada states plainly: the Acadians survived and maintained their unique identity. Today, Acadian culture is flourishing and is a lively part of French-speaking Canada. The guide pairs this passage with a photograph of an Acadian fiddler at the Village of Grande-Anse in New Brunswick — a province Discover Canada identifies as the only officially bilingual province, in large part because of the Acadian return.

The Acadian deportation matters for the test because the Acadians are part of what Discover Canada calls Canada's three founding peoples — Aboriginal, French and British. Their survival is a concrete example of how French-speaking Canadian identity persisted even after political defeat. The Great Upheaval also explains why New Brunswick is officially bilingual today: returning Acadians rebuilt their society in the Maritimes, and their language and culture are now legally recognized.

For new citizens, the lesson is one the guide presents elsewhere as well — French and English are "the country's official languages", and the federal government is required by law to provide services in both. The Acadian story shows that bilingualism is not an abstract policy but the result of real communities, including this one, refusing to disappear.