9

THE
IRON BOX AT
FRENCH CROSS

MORDEN

I am a writer of horror fiction and a teller of ghost stories. I like nothing better than to put a good old-fashioned scare into people. Still, there are events in this world far scarier than my meagre pen can dream up. One such event was the expulsion of the Acadians.

During the late 1600s a population of about one hundred French families settled in Acadia, which at that time consisted of the territories of northwestern Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and eastern Quebec, as well as part of modern-day New England.

At the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, a beaten France was forced to sign the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, ceding Acadia to the British, who decreed that Acadia would now be known as Nova Scotia.

At first the occupation was peaceful. The trouble began in 1754, in the middle of the French and Indian War, when the British government demanded that all Acadians living within the borders of Nova Scotia take an oath of allegiance to the British crown.

When the Acadians refused to sign the oath, the British government decided to deport the remaining Acadians and the expulsion officially began.

Hundreds of Acadian homes and settlements were burned to the ground. Families were torn apart and the Acadians were systematically shipped to new homes on both sides of the ocean. They were dispersed to the thirteen colonies, France, Georgia, England, St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Louisiana, where the refugees formed thriving “Cajun” settlements.

In later years, the government officially apologized to the Acadians, yet the expulsion remains a black mark on the scrolls of Canadian and Maritime history.

I found the roots of this story buried in the pages of a short article I found in the March 18, 1889, Halifax Herald. It takes place in a little town called Aylesford, situated midway down the north shore of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley.

On the northern shore of Nova Scotia, facing the Bay of Fundy, is a massive and formidable wall of cliffside, a naturally formed defence against the sea and any invader. Unfortunately the cliff-side seawall also makes a particularly nasty fence .

Directly across from the town of Aylesford is a break in the seawall that the old folks used to call French Cross. Some say it earned its name because of the large cross the Acadians left behind them as they fled their British expellers, while others believe that the name is meant to simply mark the place where the French crossed the Bay of Fundy. Nowadays this location is better known as the town of Morden, a name that echoes strangely the French word for death: mort.

In 1755, Acadians living in Grand Pré and Canard were forced to surrender to the British army.

Several hundred of them were held prisoner in the confines of the Grand Pré parish church, surrounded by a legion of well-armed British redcoats. In the harbour a small flotilla of British ships were eagerly waiting, ready to bear the surrendered remains of the Acadian population to an as yet unknown destination.

The news flashed down the Gaspereau River, spreading like a plague that touched the heart of every Acadian inhabitant in the region. A meeting was called to decide how the remaining Acadians in the area would deal with the British victory. They were split between flight and surrender. About sixty Acadians headed up the river, keeping away from the roads and the clear waterways for fear of the British.

The journey was a costly one. Their supplies quickly ran out and they were forced to subsist upon a diet of berries, fresh fish, and whatever game they caught. Dysentery broke out among the refugees. They were at the mercy of the elements without benefit of any kind of medical aid.

They hid in the Aylesford hills and began digging a series of graves for the increasing number of their dead that eventually came to be known as the French Cross Burying Grounds, a make-shift graveyard in a barren sandy field near where they camped. The refugees lacked even a clergyman to sanctify the burials.

The Mi’kmaq helped the Acadians as best they could, bringing in the game and medicines they foraged. Thus, the Acadians were supplied with deer and moose, and they were able to for- age mussels from the rocks of the shoreline. Partridge and rabbit supplemented their meagre diet. The Mi’kmaq steeped alder leaves to treat fever and stomach ailments and to wrap about festering wounds; boneset, bearberry, and poplar leaves were used to treat colds.

The Acadians continued to hide as the autumn dragged slowly into the winter. The Mi’kmaq kept them fed and informed of the goings on in the outer world. They decided that their best plan of action was to stay at French Cross until the early spring, and then to cross the Bay of Fundy and journey on towards Quebec where the French were still welcome. They erected their winter tents over the graves of their people by a brook that emptied itself down into the waters of the Bay of Fundy, where they remained safely concealed from the English forces. They could watch the sea and chart the course of the English sailing vessels. They waited there until the spring. Throughout the winter the Mi’kmaq had helped the Acadians construct enough canoes to travel safely in. They worked through the winter, peeling the birch trees and laying the bark.

By the spring the Acadians were ready for their escape. They said goodbye to their rudimentary huts and hide tents and the graves of their fallen loved ones. They erected a large wooden cross to watch over the makeshift graveyard, then loaded into the canoes and paddled across the tumultuous spring waters of the Bay of Fundy.

No doubt many looked back and saw that large wooden cross make its silent promise to keep watch over their dead. The Acadians made their way to New Brunswick, and most never bothered trying to travel any further. There were friends and family and farmland aplenty. What more did they need?

In later years the British found the graveyard. Perhaps in the heat of war they might have laid waste to it, but years after the old war had ceased, they simply viewed it as the remains of a sad story. Yet night after night, for years to come, the treasure hunters would make their way into the darkness of the French Cross Burying Grounds. Treasure-dowsers and vagabonds alike would root through the bones and the dirt, hoping to find the remnants of French treasure. It was whispered that before fleeing Acadia, the refugees had buried what treasure they couldn’t transport in a large coffin-shaped iron box that was supposed to be buried some-where in the graveyard.

Again and again, the treasure hunters sought out the fabled French Cross iron box, yet all who searched for it ended up poverty-stricken. Men swore that their picks and shovels and pry bars bent and twisted in the hardened Acadian dirt, and many claimed that they were chased from the burial grounds by a long yellow spirit. Others swore that every time they dug down with shovels, they would strike the iron box, and it would travel through the dirt. No matter what the story, the end result was always the same. The treasure was impossible to find.

There are many guesses as to what this treasure might hold. Most talk of golden coins, rare gems, and other valuable collectibles that a typical Acadian dirt farmer might have tucked beneath his seed corn and plow.

For myself, I think the treasure might have been something far more prosaic — perhaps a cherished French psalter, a chalice and candle sticks, or maybe even a portrait of great-grandpère. Who knows? The treasure may be out there still, ready to be dug. Or perhaps it’s just a ghost of a treasure, a fantasy wish that’s destined never to be found.