Acadian historical Village.

On Saturday we spent most of the day at the Acadian historical village. The Acadians are the French that settled in what is now New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Maine in the 1600's. France and England fought over the provinces for almost 200 years, before England and then Canada go the Maritimes and the US got Maine. The Acadians in New Brunswick don't seem to identify much with Quebec. They were very poor and isolated until the middle of the last century. The government tried to forcibly assimilate them by requiring schools only teach in English and not include any religious (read Catholic) education. From several of the docents at the history village we got the impression they are still fighting this battle in their souls. We talked to some English speaking New Brunswick citizens later at our campground and they indicated that the Acadians were trying to remain isolated and did not encourage children to become educated and move beyond the small community. Anyway the village was interesting.

View of the coast as we drove to the Village

Huge church on the way to the village

Another coast view

These pictures from the village are especially for Sherry Archer and Jeanne Leser
Here they are taking the plant part of the flax and with this they beat the stalks to separate the fibers. 

Then the fibers are taken to the table on the right where they are repeatedly drawn thru a board that looks like it has a bunch of square nails with points up in lines. This makes the fibers separate even more. Then they are spun into thread.

Here the thread is woven into cloth

This is a shirt made from the material. Men and boys wore the shirts which would last for 8-10 years of daily wear. They also made bed linens which they claim never wore out. Each washing made the material softer. 

I love this very old sewing machine.

This shows the two types of spinning wheels they used for spinning wool. The larger is the more primitive. The wheel had to be turned by hand so the woman wouldhave to stand the entire time. The smaller one has a pedal to turn the wheel.

This is for Tom, a hand powered mortiser.