Site

Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada occupies several hectares of upland overlooking the vast Grand-Pré marsh. Secured from the mighty Minas Basin tides by Acadian hands, the marsh was the agricultural basis of the Acadian community established in the early 1680s. New England soldiers under Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow, of Massachusetts, deported the Acadians of Grand-Pré and burned their homes in the fall and winter of 1755. Today, few traces of the Acadian community remain.

After the Deportation, the British government granted the former Acadian lands to settlers from New England known as Planters. Oral tradition among the New England colonists suggested that the old Acadian Church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines once stood on the grounds now occupied by Grand-Pré National Historic Site. They also said that the ancient willow trees, which can still be seen today, had been planted by Acadian hands. Until the early 20th century, numerous stone lined depressions, thought to be the ruins of the Acadian houses, could be seen in and around this land.

Treasure hunters began digging here in the 1880s, when the site was still farmland. The diggers, none of whom were trained archaeologists, discovered numerous "French Acadian relics," all of which have since been lost. They first uncovered a stone lined well at the top of a slight rise near the willows. Farther to the east they dug up a coffin and traces of human remains.

In an effort to protect the site, local businessman and Acadian descendent John Frederic Herbin purchased the land in 1907. The following year, he conducted excavations near the well. He uncovered foundations of a "large building" and the remains of a fireplace. Herbin believed this to be the remains of Saint-Charles-des-Mines. Unfortunately, he left no notes or photographs of his excavations. Herbin seems to have taken some of the stones from this ruin and used them to build, around 1909, a stone cross to mark the site of what he believed to be the old Acadian cemetery. Unable to raise funds to further develop the memorial site, Herbin sold the land to the Dominion Atlantic Railway in 1917 for development as a tourist attraction.

The popularity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie drew hundreds of tourists to visit Grand-Pré every year by train. In 1920, the railway company erected a bronze statue of Longfellow's fictitious heroine, Evangéline, sculpted by Louis Philippe and Henri Hébert. In 1922, the Acadian community constructed a memorial church with funds they had raised. Builders constructed the memorial church upon the ruins Herbin identified as belonging to the parish church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines. Again, no archaeological investigation was undertaken at this time.

The railway company carried out extensive landscaping work all over the property. Parks Canada continued and extended this landscaping work after the Government of Canada purchased the property in 1957. Today, because of this landscape work, virtually no trace remains of the ruins observable in Herbin's day.

Parks Canada archaeologists have conducted excavations at Grand-Pré National Historic Site on numerous occasions since the early 1970s. None of these projects focused on the location of the church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines. This raises the question: Is Saint-Charles-des-Mines actually located at Grand-Pré National Historic Site? Despite over a century of digging, nobody has yet produced tangible evidence to answer this question.

In the summer of 2000, archaeologist Jonathan Fowler and geophysicist Duncan McNeill brought new technology to attempt to answer this question. They employed the Em-38b created by Geonics, a geophysical instrument that can 'see beneath the sod'. They soon discovered that the manicured lawn of Grand-Pré National Historic Site conceals numerous hidden archaeological sites.

Their initial work led to the creation of the Grand-Pré Archaeological Field School Project in 2001, a partnership between the Société Promotion Grand-Pré, Parks Canada, Saint Mary's University. The goal of this ongoing project is to rediscover traces of the destroyed Acadian village and Saint-Charles-des-Mines Church.

We invite you to examine the historical, geophysical, and archaeological evidence that the excavations at Grand-Pré have revealed thus far. We encourage you to analyse the data and answer our research question for yourself: Where is the lost church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines?

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Interactive Map

Explore the area surrounding Grand-Pré National Historic Site by clicking on the images below the map corresponding to the numbers on the map. Note: Each of the blue squares on the map represents one square kilometer.

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