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LA PETITE SO

James PERRY

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One thing that was a direct influence was that I was born from a. French-Acadian family, but nobody

could

speak French.

Reflech'on on our Acadian identiry (1)

The Acadian lames Perry is an industrial electrician at Cavendish Farms, a frozen French fry manu- facturer in New Annan, Prince Edward Island. In his spare time, he is an amateur historian and genealogist. He has previously written articles for The Ancestral Home Newsletter (wwwacadian- home.org) and The Louisiana Genealogical Register. He lives in Summerside with his wife, Dianne, daughters Melanie and Carolyn and son Christopher. He can be reached at jperry@pei. sympatico.ca.

It is hard to put one’s finger on just when or where I became inte- rested about my Acadian history and heritage. Some of those feelings go back to when I was a young boy. Most of the feelings I have are of a personal nature, a sense of where I belong, who I am, why I do things the way I do. I know I am not uni- que in this interest, many people the world over search out their ancestors for many different reasons. Someone told me once that genealogy is the world’s second most popular hobby, next to stamp collecting and ahead of coin collecting. I personally like the Latter-Day Saints’ wording; they call it «Famin History Research», for without the history, all we have are names, dates and places. There is

so so much more to the story.

One thing that was a direct in— fluence was that l was from a French- Acadian family, but nobody could speak French. My family would visit my grandparents in Summerside where French was spoken; we would visit my mom’s Uncle Georges in Mont—Carmel, bringing my grandmother along. They all spoke French there. My father’s parents also spoke French. In fact, my paternal grandfather John B., as he was called, spoke and wrote both English and French fluently despite only finishing Grade 2 or 3. My materna] grandfather only learned English in the late 1930'5 and early 1940s His young daughters would read to him from their schoolbooks. I did not find this lack of French language skills unique or strange. We were «French» but spoke En- glish. We were like the relatives

whom Georges Arsenault spoke about «we were French but did not speak the language». Where

we lived at the time of my youth, it would have been better to speak Ukrainian or Inuit. There was no French language training in the schools I went to. There was no opportunity to learn even the basics of grammar and pronunciation. There was no one with whom to practise conversational French.

Our famin were Acadian Islan- ders, and my parents somehow sought out other misplaced Islanders

1 Talk delivered at the second «Forum on Acadiai

History and I-Ieritagen

held at the Acadian Museum in Miscouche on y ovember 4th, 2000 and sponsored by the Comité historique Soeur-Antoinuttc-DesRoc/zes.

La rédaction : à la nationalité acadiennes :

cet article est le 2“ sous la rubrique touchant à l’identité et voir Gordon Lavoie, Réﬂexion sur notre identitc

acadienne, La Petite Souvenance, no l7, p. 37.)

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