Acadian Village in Caraquet, NB

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For our last day at the cottage, we spent the day at the Acadian Village. It was a nice sunny day, although the wind was chilly, so it was a great day for exploring a historic park. This is a huge historic park that displays the way of life of the Acadian people (maritime French Canadians), from about 1775 through to the mid 1900’s.

All the costumed interpreters are going about their typical day as you go through and they explain to you what they are doing. It was much like the Ukranian Village near Edmonton. It was really well done. Paul enjoyed going into each of the houses and other buildings to see what they were doing. Marc liked feeding the animals. At the oldest house, the fellow actually let the boys come into the pen to collect eggs. That was a highlight for Marc. Because there were very few people visiting, you really got a personal visit at each place. The blacksmith make a square nail and give it to Paul and me. The tinsmith made us a little tin whistle. The printer even gave Paul a special printing since his grandpa Lebel used to be a typesetter. It was a really neat village because they had alot of the different old trades being demonstrated. We saw wool being spun, but also a demonstration on carding and spinning flax into linen, which was new for me. The cooper (barrel maker) shop was very neat to watch too. There was also net weaving, birch broom making, flour grinding at the mill and sawing wood at the sawmill. There was the whole range of Acadian house styles too. They are quite different from the traditional Quebec French house. We had been there from about 11 am to almost 4 pm, so it was a long day of walking for the boys. Marc had a brief stroller nap, but they were both very tired.

We returned home for a bit of beach play time and Claude did us up a great fisherman’s feast for dinner. We had lobster, scallops, Matane shrimp, cod, mussels, salmon, sole, trout, halibut. Are you salivating yet? The boys just had the fish. It was an amazing dinner. I am going to miss this. After supper we wandered the beach looking for interesting shells and sea glass. It is supposed to rain tomorrow so this is probably our last beach day. By tomorrow night we will be inland.

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