L’Acadie de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard / The Acadians of Prince Edward Island

All are invited to attend the book launch events for L’Acadie de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard / The Acadians of Prince Edward Island by Georges Arsenault. The first event will take place on July 3 at 7 pm at the Acadian Museum in Miscouche, with a second event scheduled for July 4 at 6:30 pm at Le Carrefour in Charlottetown.

Today, hundreds of unidentified photos pile up phones and computers. Historically, images were treasured and preserved. Arsenault’s book highlights the cultural and historical importance of carefully documented and organized photo collections. In some ways, this book is like an old-fashioned family album, except that it illustrates the ordinary life of not just one, but many Acadian families. Most of the photos are informal snapshots taken by Acadians themselves, dating from the late 1800s to the 1960s. The snapshots take the viewer back to a time of large families, subsistence farming, and when the church was the centre of village life. 

With this book, Arsenault has created a bilingual portrait of Island Acadians of yesteryear.

 An Acadian historian and folklorist, Arsenault has been writing about PEI’s Acadian community since the 1980s.The French edition of his first major work, The Island Acadians: 1720-1980, won both the Champlain and the France-Acadie awards. He has published several translated books on Acadian folklore, including Acadian Legends, Folktales and Songs from Prince Edward Island. His Acadian Mi-Carême: Masks and Merrymaking—winner of the PEI Book Award—and Acadian Christmas Traditions explore Acadian customs across Eastern Canada.