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Where do the Acadians fit into the story of Canada’s founding? July–August 2009
Once, the French colony of Acadie ranged across what are now the Maritime provinces and present-day Maine; its first settlements are the earliest instances of a permanent French presence in North America. Concordia historian Ronald Rudin provocatively observes that the Acadian story offers an alternate genealogy of French Canada, challenging the dominant account—myth, as it turns out—that Champlain’s 1608 founding of Quebec City marks “the beginning of French…