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To adapt the opening lines of Anna Kareninay no two deported peoples s stories are alike; each is unhappy in its own way. While Tolstoy wrote "families" not "deported peoples,"2 my adaptation makes the point that all forced exiles are uniquely traumatic for those who endure them, and not comparable in any measurable way. Accordingly, the comparative context offered in this paper will not include an international sco recard upon which one group s forcible removal is ranked against others. The aim is to begin a discussion that places the well-known Canadian event, the Acadian Deportation, in a context beyond that of Canadian history. Sadly, deportations and other forms of population removal have been much more common than most of us might have realized.3
First one must make clear what definition is being used. "Deportation" is a term whose meaning sometimes shifts according to the writer, speaker and/or context. For the purpose of this paper the definition will adhere to the Oxford English Dictionary ', which gives "carrying away, forcible removal, especially into exile" as the primary meaning. Some historians have insisted an international border must be crossed for a removal to be a true deportation. This is how the term is used for individuals today, who are removed from one country to another. Some have applied that definition to historical groups, and concluded that the Acadians were not really deported in 1755 but simply transported from one British colony to various other British colonies. Such an interpretation is unacceptably narrow. Any transportation of people against their will into exile, that is, away from their traditional lands regardless of whether an international border was crossed or not, this paper defines as a deportation.4
To speak of comparisons we of course need a baseline summary of the Acadian Deportation. In truth the Deportation was not a single event, though there is a long tradition of using the singular to refer to what in reality were many separate population removals across an eight-year span. The best-known incidents are those of the first wave, which occurred in 1755. There were three main phases that year: first from the Chignecto Isthmus (where lies the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia); second from the Minas and Pisiquid areas...