News and Reflections: "The 9th of May and Me" -- by Joanne Doucette -- May 10, 2023

"The 9th of May and Me" ... by Joanne Doucette. Re-printed with the permission of the author.

"The 9th of May"

There is an age old question in the Maritimes, “So, who are your people?”

Good question. Years ago, I told a neighbour that I was of mixed descent, Mi’kmaq and French and English. My neighbour responded, “But that can’t be. You’re so clean and you work so hard and you don’t drink!”

Many of us with similar background share a deep sense that we were second rate. I certainly did growing up but, exploring the Doucet/Doucette history helps.

We are descendants of Acadians and Mi’kmaq people. Jean-Baptiste Doucet (1717-1792) was among the navigateurs in Ile Royale in the 1740s. His grandfather, Germain, was a Mi’kmaw. But the 1740s meant disaster for my ancestors when the British attacked Cape Breton.

For New Englanders, the attack on Cape Breton was a religious crusade, as well as an act of outright economic opportunism. "A people of God may be called of God to go forth to war against their enemies" …"Fast for success in the expedition against Cape Breton“.

It was brutal both the British and the French offered bounties for scalps. Of 1745 it was said "Everyone Did what was Right in his own Eyes."

My great aunt Susan (1843-1946) married George Brewer. Susie was an herbalist -- well known for the “Indian” teas that she sold. Great-aunt Susan Doucette told this story to my father when he was very small. It was passed down to her and passed down to me:

"One time a terrible illness swept through the people of Ingonish and, as was the custom, they went up the Clyburn Brook through the passes into the mountains, away from the village, until they died or got better. This was so they did not spread the disease. One day, those of the five families that survived the pestilence were going down the valley to have a mass said in thanksgiving. But from a lookout they saw a sight they had never seen before: a British man-of-war in Ingonish Harbour. As they came closer they saw that the village was deserted, not even a dog in sight. The mission church was surrounded by soldiers in red coats.” In despair, weakened by disease and hunger, the survivors stole away back up the valley into the boggy highlands of Cape Breton where a false step meant drowning. They went over to the west side of the Island for a time and down the Margaree Valley, escaping to safety.”

History confirms her story. The 9th of May 1745 was a turning point for my family.

"On the 8th [of May] the Prince of Orange and the Defence weighed anchor at 4 P.M. and sailed northward. They captured a shallop, but turned it adrift in a snowstorm. On the 9th they reached Aganish [Nigonish] Bay and burnt a town of 80 houses. They also destroyed the towns of Bradore and Bayonne, as well as St. Ann. At noon they started back for Louisbourg, but were forced to lay to until the 12th on account of stormy weather."

Capt. Joseph Smethurst from Marblehead, Massachusetts, commanded the Prince of Orange. The Connecticut sloop Defence was under Captain John Prentice. The New England raiders carried on a scorched earth policy, pillaging, looting, burning, killing. They excelled at surprise assaults. The British wanted to wipe Cape Breton free of both Acadians and Mi’kmaw. People slipped quietly away through the woods and canoed hundreds of miles to safety.

Selections from the public Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia: ¨”We do hereby authorize and command all officers civil and military, to annoy, distress, take or destroy the savages commonly called Mic-macks wherever they are found; and we further by and with the consent and advice of His Majesty`s council do promise a reward of ten guineas for every Indian, Mic-Mack , taken or killed to be paid upon producing such savage or his scalp if killed, to the officers commanding at Halifax, Annapolis Royal, or Minas."

Many Acadians of Isle Royale were deported, but those of mixed ancestry and Mi’kmaw were not taken prisoner except to torture information out of them.

According to family story, we fled up trails to the Indian Rising and from there across Cape Breton. My relatives showed me the trail. When I went back to Cape Breton, I back-packed alone along some of those back trails of the Mi’kmaq and they called me the “spirit walker”.

Some refugees fled to Prince Edward Island, some to the Magdalen Islands, some to Newfoundland. It was along a well-known trade triangle: Cape Breton, Magdalen Islands, PEI. There were canoe routes, trails and portages from Bay of Chaleur to St. Lawrence River. Also there were portage routes from St. John River Valley to St. Lawrence: well-travelled, came out near Riviere du Loup.

My ancestors fled to Quebec, probably by way of Chaleur Bay, and Restigouche River. From the Restigouche the route went to the Matapedia River and a short portage to the St. Lawrence River. The refugees of 1745 ended up in Charlesbourg, near Quebec City, a centre for Acadian exiles.

After 1745 Ingonish no longer had French inhabitants although Mi’kmaq returned to the traditional hunting and fishing spots.

As time passed, “country wives” found themselves ostracized in Quebec City and even in Nova Scotia, those of mixed ancestry were looked down on. Francis Doucet left Quebec and returned to Cape Breton sometime around 1801. In 1813 Francis Doucet, aged 45, born in Quebec, was a farmer living at the Gut of Canso, leasing 130 acres of barren, rocky land on Grant 130. He had no military experience but was a member of Captain John Higgins’ Company, Second Regt., Cape Breton Militia, Eighth Military Division.

He had married Elizabeth Marie who has no last name in the church records. He and Elizabeth Marie had five sons and a daughter. The Doucet family lived in Mabou – near Brook Village behind the Meagher farm.

The family later moved to Little Bras d’Or where there were many others of mixed Acadian-Mi’kmaq ancestry. Later still they moved to New Waterford and worked in the coal mines. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, my family returned to the ancestral home in Ingonish where my grandfather had inherited some land from the Hawleys.

Francis and Elizabeth Marie’s son James married Mary Hawley, one of the United Empire Loyalists, Connecticut Yankees, who came as refugees to Nova Scotia on HMS Argo in 1783. It is clear that some of the five children blended into the Mi’kmaq, but that James took a different path, never fitting into the largely Scottish Mabou.

Our Family name in Mi’kmaq is Sa’kati, meaning spruce needle, spruce. A Francis Doucet, 32, appears in the Micmac Census of 1841. This makes him the right age to be the son of Francis Doucet and Elizabeth Marie. Another Doucet, Louis Doucet (born around 1811), founded the Mi’kmaq line of Doucettes in Cape Breton and is believed to be another son of Francis and Elizabeth Marie.

That’s some of the answer to the question, “Who are your people?” But not all, of course. Ancestry and identity are complex. The first member of my immediate family to get papers proving the right to Canadian citizenship was my mother, Margaret Stevens, an English war bride who had a Jewish grandmother, a Socialist sailor father, and a mother who drove a motorcycle well into her senior years. None of it is simple, but would we want it any other way?

-- Joanne Doucette