We Will Remember Them:
War Memorials in New Brunswick
Acadian Peninsula
One of the aspects of New Brunswick that makes it so interesting to study is the fact that it is the only bilingual province in Canada. Francophones in New Brunswick are of diverse heritage, some coming from Québec and France. However, the historic francophone community in the province are Acadians who are geographically centred on the Acadian Peninsula (la pénninsule acadienne) which runs northeast of Bathurst and north of Miramichi.
Francophones in Canada experienced war differently than anglophone communities did. This is still the case. The most famous example of this is the Conscription Crisis of 1917 where many Québécois were in staunch opposition to the Unionist goverment's proposal to institute conscription (also known as mandatory military service). Many Acadian communities were also opposed to conscritpion; however, they also supported the war effort. Acadians disliked the federal government painting them with a broad brush. Acadians are an agrarian society, and their concerns were echoed by rural anglophones as well: maintaining ancestral lands, fishing grounds, and collective rights were more immediately important to them then going off to a war in a place they had never been. Such a debate never took place during subsequent wars.
Acadians are an heritage-minded people: family, stories, and legends are very important to them and to their communities. It is, therefore, not surprising that war memorials are so plentiful on the Acadian Peninsula. Acadians, like other francophone communities in Canada, are also historically staunchly Roman Catholic.
The map above categorizes the war memorials on the Acadian Peninsula by genre (or type). The red dots are civic; blue, military; and purple, religious. It becomes immediately obvious on looking at the map that the vast majority of memorials on the Acadian Peninsula are civic ones. This is surprising, because one would expect that, because of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the area, memorials would have been erected by church communities. This was not the case. One might also suppose that there would be fewer memorials in this area because of opposition to warfare, it seems to have been quite the opposite. Jonathan Vance writes in his book Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War that "There were few stauncher supporters of the [First World War] than Canada's clergy." It is interesting, therefore, that the church did not put up very many memorials in this area.
The map above, again, is of the Acadian Peninsula with memorials symbolized by conflict. It becomes very clear by looking at this map (and the chart to the right) what wars the municipalities in this area felt the overwelming desire to commemorate. For example, there are no memorials commemorating specifically the Great War, which speaks to the way the Acadian population felt about the war. The majority of the memorials in the Acadian Peninsula are either for the First and Second World Wars together, or for both World Wars and Korea. The emphasis on the Second World War reflects the popular opinion of that war as being an inherently just war, one that faced little opposition and where right and wrong were very clear cut.
