By Steve Moyer | HUMANITIES, January/February 2010 | Volume 31, Number 1

( …) But the Acadians most of us don’t know much about are the many who chose not to go, and who remained in what is today the province of New Brunswick and the state of Maine. These descendants of French settlers, some of whom had arrived in Acadia more than a hundred years before “Le Grand Dérangement,” or the Great Expulsion, fled into the woods and lived as refugees, learning survival skills from the native peoples of the St. John Valley. The river there now forms part of the U.S.–Canadian boundary between Maine on the south and New Brunswick and Quebec to the north.

The Maine Humanities Council has helped fund a booklet and CD, Voici the Valley Cultureway, and a website that serve as companions for anyone visiting the francophone towns that lie on both sides of the St. John River. A website on the newly renovated Catholic church now serving as cultural museum in Mont-Carmel, Maine, also with funding from the council, is forthcoming, possibly as early as spring 2010.

This hundred-mile stretch along the international boundary may seem isolated to most U.S. citizens, but it’s actually Main Street Canada to folks north of the border. Today about fifty-five thousand people, mostly of French heritage, live in the Valley, but there is a significant Scots-Irish population as well. Also forming part of the mosaic are descendants of the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq Indians who intermarried with French-speakers. They are known as Métis and have often helped bridge cultural gaps.