In an unpublished paper about building the Wellington Dyke on the Canard River, Brent Fox speculates that the dyke-building expertise of the Acadians possibly could have Dutch origins.

“The people of the Netherlands have been noted for [dyke-building] for many centuries,” Fox wrote. “In an indirect manner, it is possible that [centuries ago] the Dutch provided the special knowledge that helped convert the marsh and tidal lake areas of present-day Kings County into… valuable agricultural land.”

 In various papers I’ve read on the Acadians and dyke-building I’ve never found any references to historic Dutch connections. We could assume that Fox was speculating about this connection, but he may not have been. Further on he writes that in the 16^th century, “Dutch engineers were brought into France to oversee massive dyking projects.”

While bringing up a possible Dutch connection with Acadian dyking, Fox compiled a detailed history of building the Wellington Dyke. Completed in 1825, Wellington Dyke was the culmination of generations of dike building on the Canard River, first by the Acadians, then by the Planters and their descendants.

There are more than a few contrasting views on the dyke lands the Acadians struggled for generations to create. For example, Fox observes that the Acadian works on the Canard River – the cross-dykes and aboiteaux – strangely have been ignored while the “running dyke systems of Grand Pre have become well-known.” Another observation by Fox puts the dyking works on the Canard River system in perspective: “While having only the most primitive tools… these simple rural folks of the Canard River district succeeded in winning from the sea over two thousand acres of prime farmland, changing forever the geography of the river and the precious land along it.”

Writing in the book, Sods, Soil and Spades, J. Sherman Bleakney observes that where feasible, “the Acadians preferred to farm tidal marshes rather than clear tracts of the forested uplands.” Bleakney doesn’t mention any Dutch connection with Acadian dyking. However, he suggests that dyking techniques used by the Romans were adopted by the Acadians. Bleakney writes that “two thousand years later (following the Roman period) the Acadians were using… Roman construction techniques to build their own dyke walls and sluice boxes.”

In 1765, settlers who had taken up land in Kings and Hants County left vacant by the removal of the Acadians, found they were almost helpless at first in repairing and maintaining the dykes. With this realization came a petition to the government that the “french accaddians (sic) who have been hitherto stationed in this county” be used in the making and repairing of dykes. The petitioners, many of them leading citizens in Hants County and Kings County, conceded that without “their further assistance many of us cannot continue our improvements, nor plough, nor sow our lands, nor finish the dyking still required to secure our lands from salt water.”

In his history of Windsor, L. S. Loomer writes that the Acadian prisoners at Fort Edward were used even earlier than the year the petition was presented to the government. “In the autumn of 1759 a tremendous storm… had broken many of the dykes that had not been repaired since 1755. The initial expertise in their repair was Acadian, and it took a while before the New Englanders and Irishmen got the hang of it. By spring of 1762 there were Acadians employed by the new proprietors in Pesegitk, Falmouth, and Newport.”

To close off, here are two observations about the Acadians and dyking by J. Sherman Bleakney. In the book mentioned above, Bleakney writes that “after 350 million years of preparation (by geological forces) the Great Meadow (Grand Pre) was visited by the French, and there began a labour and love affair with the land that has only intensified over time.” Introducing his chapter on dyke construction at Grand Pre, Bleakney asks the readers to “envisage the first group of Acadians to arrive at the Grand Pre meadows, watching as tidal waters flooded the creeks, realizing that here were 3,000 acres of flat land (with) neither trees nor rocks to remove, and a drainage ditch system thousands of years old. All that was needed was a sea-excluding wall, easily constructed from an on-site sod quarry, the marsh itself.”