Cajun roots
 

I am a South Louisiana Cajun who wants to visit Nova Scotia area to see areas where the French Acadians lived before deportation. I have only 1 week. What do I need to see? Someone suggested Grand Pre Historic Site. What else?
Merci!

If you have one week, you might want to look at working your way from Grand Pre National Historic Site to the Port Royal/Annapolis Royal area (and possibly on to the Acadian Shore region near Yarmouth (depends on your travel style and speed).

I'm most familiar with the Grand Pre area. The site has a small interpretive centre, the Memorial church and the grounds themselves. It's quite interesting. In the area around the site, you can also see the land that was reclaimed from the sea by the Acadian dykes.

This link might be useful: http://www.novascotia.com/en/home/di...e/default.aspx

You might want to expand your research, if not your short trip, into neighbouring Nouveau-Brunswick, or New Brunswick. Here's the government's site http://www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca/Se...anCulture.aspx

While Nova Scotia will have some historic sites and villages, I agree with Southam's suggestion of New Brunswick. I've only explored Moncton in NB and I think of it (perhaps wrongly) as the closest thing there is to Acadian & Urban. The favorite part of my visit was hearing the remarkably-different-from-Quebec melodic Acadian French spoken in the city's restaurants. Main Street has a fun vibe on a weekend evening.

The area from Digby to Yarmouth is known as the District of Clair. Very French in character- churches, St Ann's University, etc. Also, in Cap Breton Island, the area of the Cabot Trail (around Cheticamp) is very French. These two ares plus the area mentioned in New Brunswick are the areas the French re established upon their return or escaped to during the deportation as they were the farthest away from the English center of Halifax.
Send for the government tour guide. It has lots of reading and history.