David Stonehouse Features

A royal ruckus over the Acadian man

New Brunswick's Lieutenant-Governor is proud of his appointment.
But as a former standard-bearer for Acadian nationalism, some of his old comrades see him as a traitor to their cause.

By David Stonehouse

FREDERICTON -- Hermenegilde Chiasson sits perched on an antique cream-coloured loveseat in the front room of his new estate, a sprawling 19th-century mansion perched on the banks of the St. John River.

The brilliant fall sun beats through a wall of windows. He sips at morning tea, and ponders where he finds himself.

It beats imagination for this 57-year-old artist, filmmaker, playwright, nationally acclaimed poet and son of a poor fisherman from a northern New Brunswick village bound by poverty.

But what astounds him is not the rags-to-riches fairy tale or the modest opulence of the Lieutenant-Governor's estate where he suddenly finds himself ensconced as this province's regal representative. It is the unrelenting criticism that nips at his heels. Worse, it comes from his own heartland -- Acadia, where some view him now as a traitor.

It stings, and it mystifies.

"I don't see where the controversy came from," says Chiasson, whose passion for Acadia cemented him as an icon of Acadian arts and culture. "There are so many that are positive, so many good letters. But then you have three or four . . ." he says, trailing off. "And of course I am an artist. And artists are in the business of being loved. We want to be loved -- that is our weakness, I find."

That is a weakness, he says, he is now trying to overcome.

Chiasson, adored by judges for such august honours as the Governor-General's Award (twice nominated, then third time a winner in 1999 for his book of poems, Conversations), the Prix France-Acadie and France's prestigious Chevalier de l'Ordre francais des Arts et Lettres, now finds himself in a quagmire that doesn't want to quit.

The roots of the controversy reach back to 1755, when the British began to expel more than 10,000 French-speaking residents of what is now Nova Scotia -- driving them off to France and the United States. Some evaded capture and fled to New Brunswick. Ever since, Acadians have struggled to uphold their traditions, culture and language. Today, roughly 250,000 francophones live in New Brunswick.

Some now resent that Chiasson pledged allegiance to the Queen in taking the lieutenant-governor's post, that he now serves her, that he is balking at pursing the long-simmering nationalists' cause of seeking an acknowledgment from Her Majesty that the British were wrong to oust their Acadian ancestors.

But there have been two other Acadians who served as lieutenant-governor in this province without causing such a stir. This goes deeper -- to Chiasson's vivid art, his poignant writing and his vigorous defence of Acadian culture.

"Artists and poets express the soul of a people," says Jean-Marie Nadeau, a staunch Acadian nationalist and the most barbed among the critics, despite the fact both men consider each other to be friends." By accepting that -- it is just too much."

Nadeau, a former president of La Societe des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick and one-time editor of the French daily newspaper L'Acadie Nouvelle, feels betrayed. For many Acadians, he says, it is not a time for rejoicing.

"Like if I were Scottish or Irish or Welsh -- I wouldn't feel comfortable having one of my compatriots accepting that kind of job," he says. "I preferred him as an Acadian king of visual arts and poetry then as a British king representing the Queen."

Hermenegilde Chiasson was born in 1946 in the northerneastern New Brunswick community of St-Simon, a coastal village founded during the Acadian deportation. The young Hermenegilde was surrounded by artistic influence. His father sketched. His mother quilted. One of the few children at the time to finish all 12 grades at the local one-room school house, Chiasson still remembers how all the young people just walked away from the village as soon as they were old enough.

"Acadie was just some kind of a breeding ground, then you left. If you had anything going for you, you would leave. For the young intellectuals and young artists -- artists, period -- if you had something going you'd leave."

Chiasson left too. He was among the first to attend the Universite de Moncton, a francophone institution that launched an era of progress for Acadians when it opened in the 1960s. It was there he picked up his passion for the arts -- a passion that drove him on to more study in New York and Paris. But a devotion to his homeland compelled his return.

Chiasson's poetry has reflected a deep sadness about Acadia -- its tragic history, the miserable poverty generations since have suffered through. In a society rooted largely in folklore, he has served as a symbol of changing times.

"He represented modernity as Antonine Maillet represents folklore and tradition. He was a leader in that sense, too -- Acadian culture wanted to be modern, and he was that incarnation," says Raoul Boudreau, director of the French department at the Universite de Moncton.

Chiasson was among the fiercest defenders of his society -- a period which he now calls his "angry young man days." Over the years, he has blasted artists who have left Acadia for Quebec yet still claim intimacy with the community. He has argued for language purity, criticizing" chiac" -- a mangled blend of English and French commonly spoken by Acadians in southeastern New Brunswick.

And he once took aim at Jean Chretien in a 1992 documentary, Acadie a venir (Acadia to Come). ("I'm not very proud of that film," he says sheepishly.) Chretien was ushered back to Parliament two years earlier in a by-election in New Brunswick's Beausejour riding. The 71-minute film, says a National Film Board summary, questions whether the largely Acadian area is well served by a man who is "foreign with their history, their culture, with their fight."

It was Chretien, though, who chose Chiasson for this new post. On Aug. 15, the Acadian national day, the Prime Minister announced his choice with a statement hailing the artist and writer as "one of New Brunswick's most celebrated cultural figures."

Plenty were surprised by the choice, if only because of Chiasson's well-known nationalism. It didn't take long for the inevitable question: Would he be seeking an apology from the Queen?

He made it clear he was not going to get involved. When he was sworn in days later, he did not broach it explicitly. But it was there.

"For us Acadians," he said in his speech, "the past is often the source of a great sadness from which we all strive to free ourselves. I am convinced today, as I always have been, that we will be able to do this only through our absolute confidence in the future as the bearer of an immense promise -- a promise that we must fulfill and that we will ultimately have to accept to counterweigh our unfortunate history."

Those fighting for an acknowledgment from the Queen were astonished, disappointed, angry -- never mind that the Queen will take her counsel on this issue from the federal Canadian cabinet, not from him.

The controversy has lingered since, the plaudits and barbs playing out in the letters pages of the French press here for weeks. There are some who glow with pride that one of their own has been elevated to such a prestigious post. The most ferocious, of course, are the critics.

Claude Roussel, an Acadian sculptor, finds the criticism "deplorable," the quest for a royal acknowledgment futile: "We all know what happened. In all societies, I guess there are unfortunate things that happened. To pay attention to the point where it stifles our existence today, I think that is bad."

Sitting in the front room of Old Government House, Chiasson casts his mind to the controversy and remembers a poem he wrote once, Unfinished Dreams. It is about a young woman drifting off to sleep who dreams of another deportation.

He wants to see that haunting end.

"The deportation is like the original sin in a way -- it is like a mark that you had when you were born if you are an Acadian. You have to deal with that," he says.

"There are people who will deal with it by experiencing a great deal of pain, which translates into anger. And there are other people who have experienced that pain and they will translate it into some kind of rebirth in a way, saying 'Yes this was a very bad thing.' But then we have to move along."

He confesses that until the last decade he was a man "more into discourse than into action." But no more.

"I said to myself, 'Yeah, you can be a nationalist and you can rely on symbol' -- which would be the flag, the anthem, the tradition, folklore, cuisine, whatever," he says. "At some point, I decided, 'No if you want to be a nationalist you have to contribute something concrete.' This is how you inscribe yourself in history."