The Acadian Dykes, Holding Back the Sea
French Descendents Build a System of Farming Irrigation
Jun 8, 2009
In 1604, Samual champlain and Sieur de Mont along with a crew of about eighty men sailed from France and landed on the island of St Croix, in the Bay of Fundy. After spending a miserable winter during which half the men died of scurvy, they sailed across the bay to Monte Royale (Annapolis) where in the spring of 1605, they established the first Acadian settlement in North America.
Canadian Acadians Begin Construction of Dykes
Thus began the Acadians epic struggle to build a series of dykes to keep the sea water out, while allowing fresh water to irrigate the fertile land. They basically had to harness the sea, no easy task, even by today’s standards. But it was monumental, undertaking for a people using only horses, oxen, primitive hand tools and good strong backs.
The Acadians started construction at the edge of the marsh where the sea had formed a natural ridge at low tide. Whole Acadian families toiled on the dykes from sun up to sun down. Since it took two to four years for the fresh water to cleanse the marshes of the salt, the dykes had to be constructed near fresh upland streams or rivers.
Dykes in the Cumberland Basin measured three metres at the bottom and rose to two metres high and a metre wide at the top. At the bottom of the dyke, brush mats were constructed by laying small hardwood trees close together and alternating them end-to-end. Marsh mud and grass were used to seal the wood together. On top of the brush mat more cross ties of wood were laid. Then posts were driven at an angle into the cross ties securing the brush mat below. Sods of grass from the marsh anchored the face of the dykes further sealing off the high tidewaters. But, by the 1740s many were much larger reaching heights of seven metres high by thirteen metres wide at the base.
The most ingenious feature of the Acadian dykes were the sluices or “aboiteaus” which were a series of wooden gates designed to swing open, allowing fresh water onto the land before flushing it out to sea. Afterward, the gates slammed shut keeping the sea water out.
Acadian Technology Part of French Culture
The Acadian French were the only ones in the new world to use this method of farming. It is thought, they brought the technology with them because it had been used previously in both Holland and France
By the 1750s, the Acadian people had dyked more than 5,000 hectares of land. Acadian history reveals a diligent and tenacious people who survived both being torn between the warring factions of the France and England, and the banishment from their lands by the British during the Acadian expulsion, “derangement” of 1755.
At Tintamare, and all around the Fundy basin, many of these dykes are still standing and functional today. The Acadian dykes truly are an engineering marvel and serve as a testament to a resilient and industrious, Acadian culture.
