Land of Evangeline Trail, 1930
by: Rémi Belliveau
Henri Hébert's Evangeline statue, erected in 1920, is best known as a powerful symbol of the Acadian Deportation, but it is also a relic of a bygone era in Nova Scotia's tourism industry. In the half-century leading up to the Second World War, Longfellow's fictional Acadian heroine was recuperated on a large scale by various bodies, who turned her into a veritable mascot. At the height of this phenomenon, one could leave Boston aboard the steamship S. S. Evangeline, disembark at Yarmouth, board a Dominion Atlantic Railway train decorated with Evangeline logos, and set off on the Land of Evangeline Route towards the Evangeline statue in Grand-Pré; all while sipping an Evangeline Pale Dry Ginger Ale and nibbling Evangeline Cookies. This silkscreen [simply to be framed] seeks to highlight the absurd nature of the fetishization of this peasant Acadian character by a ruling class of non-Acadian English-speaking aristocrats by modifying the composition of a stamp published by Royal Canada Post in 1930. Here, the name CANADA is replaced as the official banner by a territorial fiction called EVANGELINIA, where the Evangeline cult is transformed into a Disneyland-like capitalist dystopia. Represented in this way, Grand-Pré National Historic Site - with the statue of Evangeline in the foreground - takes on the function of a seat of power in the new jurisdiction of "Evangelineia", where Saint-Charles-des-Mines Memorial Church serves as a public service building - its spire decorated with the letter E pennon.