2004 marks the 400th anniversary of Acadian settlement in North America. To commemorate this auspicious occasion the Nova Scotia Legislative Library has created a small website devoted to the Évangéline myth, which details the experiences of a young Acadian woman who devotes her entire life to finding the man she loves from whom she was separated at the time of the deportation. Évangéline searches all through what was to become the United States of America for her true love, Gabriel, tragically finding him on his death-bed in a Philadelphia infirmary.

The Nova Scotia Legislative Library has a large Évangéline collection and has digitized a small portion of it to make it available to the general public. This digital collection includes:

Background Information

A brief examination of the historical context of Évangéline. This section includes a map of Grand Pré as it appeared at the time of the deportation and the text, in English, of the original deportation order.

Poems

• Various editions of Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1853.
• A French edition of the poem translated by Pamphile LeMay in 1912.

Original Letters

• One letter details how Longfellow came to write the poem.
• The other, written by Henry’s brother, Samuel, introduces and verifies the first letter.

Collections

• Books: a small collection of select titles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the library's holdings on Évangéline and the Acadian deportation.
• Images: a brief glimpse of the many images to be found in the copiously illustrated Évangéline Collection.
• Collage: This offers a collage of other images to be found in the Évangéline Collection.

We hope that you enjoy this concise preview of some of the Acadian selections that the Nova Scotia Legislative Library holds.