Foreword
Even as a young child, my brother Bruce had an insatiable curiosity. It wasn’t unusual to see him rummaging through drawers, peering into our family’s old cedar chest, or sneaking into the attic to discover untold secrets and treasures.
He loved the company of older folks, who would regale him with stories of their childhoods and family history while he peppered them with questions and begged to see pictures.
He was fascinated with graveyards and visited them every chance he could get.
So, it was no surprise to anyone when he chose to study history in university.
By the time my brother had made the decision to enter show business, after six years of university, he was already a trained historian. He sang back-up for me both on tour and on several of my albums. In the years we toured the world together, he carried his passion for history with him, seeking out landmarks of significance everywhere we performed. Celebrity had made me reclusive and he would drag me from my hotel room and insist that I accompany him. Each tour was a fascinating history lesson and his enthusiasm was infectious. He singlehandedly changed my lonely life on the road.
I remember him forcing our chauffeur to stop at a churchyard in the English countryside so that he could stand over the gravesite of Winston Churchill. I must say that I was caught up in that special moment, too.
So when Bruce informed me that he was writing a historical novel based on the life of Piau Belliveau, it seemed like the natural thing. After all, Piau had been part of our family folklore for as long as I can remember.
In the book, my brother summons our Acadian ancestors, skillfully weaving their stories into the fabric of the novel and lacing them with such passion and detail that they are hard to resist. Knowing that the majority of the characters existed, and the events actually occurred, allows the reader to be easily transported back in time, unconcerned about which of them is fictional and which is historical.
I felt it was very courageous of Bruce to allow Piau to tell his own story. It is a risky business to channel the thoughts and words of a main character. It reads as a memoir but has the sense of a journal being written. Allowing Piau’s voice to be heard makes the narrative sound more authentic. Seeing the historical players in the story through Piau’s eyes allows the reader to penetrate his character and experience the people around him in an almost mystical way.
And there is Piau’s singing voice, a personal touch, coming from an author who himself has an extraordinary singing voice. We were told that our great-grandfather Damien Belliveau, a descendent of the novel’s hero, was famous throughout the Acadian community for his magnificent singing voice. Using song in the novel to add the special meaning that music provides in the everyday lives of people everywhere is a nice touch and resonates to my very core! The times of celebration and sorrow in Piau are accompanied by French songs from the period, songs that tug at the reader’s heart- strings. And of course, the unique sound and tone of my voice and that of my brother’s had to have come from somewhere. Why not from Piau?
I cannot ignore the perilous and heartbreaking journey that the Acadians were forced to endure during the Acadian Expulsion. When I filmed a music special for television several years ago in my native Nova Scotia, one of the filming sites was the Church of St. Charles at Grand Pré, the place where Acadian men were torn from their families, homes, and lives, were locked up in the church, and finally packed off on to ships and inhumanely exiled to far-off places. As I toured the museum, I found myself imagining the hopeless cries of the mothers and children. I became so overcome by the feeling that this place created in me that I found it difficult to proceed with the taping. I recovered, however, and proceeded to tell Piau’s story on camera: of his capturing of a British ship and the violent encounter that event created. I will leave that story to the storyteller here but I must say reading the novel resurrects those intense emotions in me.
The story my brother has told is not only an Acadian story; it has a universal message. Those who were affected by this tragic story and survived, have descendants in all parts of the globe. Because this is such a momentous event in our history, its story is remembered by hundreds of thousands of people of Acadian descent throughout the world. Piau represents just one of these amazing stories and the tale of his courageous journey has been long overdue in the telling and deserves to finally be heard.
— Anne Murray
Introduction
This novel is closely based on the life and times of Pierre Belliveau, an Acadian folk hero and also an ancestor of mine. Known as Piau, Pierre was a central figure in Acadian history, helping some of his fellow Acadians to escape the British expulsion of his people in the 1750s. He was the leader of a group that eventually settled in what is now New Brunswick, establishing a settlement there.
You may wonder what motivated me to resurrect an Acadian patriarch 210 years after his death. Why not leave him to the world of cultural myths remembered by those whom author Antonine Maillet describes as “the Acadian nation”? Is it because I am a direct descendant of Piau and therefore I feel an obligation to tell his story? Perhaps. After all, he has been part of my consciousness for most of my life. I have collected a lifetime of stories about him and the Acadians from my maternal grandparents, whose own parents and grandparents and earlier ancestors had never married outside the Acadian community; from stories passed on by word of mouth by others; and from other stories published by uncles and cousins who happened to be Acadian historians. So it is natural that I, as a trained historian myself, should want to explore and relate the story of Piau’s life and great achievements. It may sound odd, but I have the mystical feeling that it was not I who chose Piau, but, rather, it was Piau who chose me. This claim requires a leap of faith on the reader’s part, I know, so I will leave it at that. My own journey to discover Piau deserves some explanation, however.
Surprisingly, the seed for this book began with my unearthing of an ancient Protestant Bible in the dresser drawer of my Acadian grandmother. A budding historian even at the age of ten — some, however, might think I could be better described as a snoop — I intuitively had a distinct impression that the Bible was forbidden fruit. According to my grandmother, who eventually caught me red-handed perusing the well-worn volume, this was the King James Bible that had been passed down to her through her father. Ironically, although the book was a treasured family heirloom, those into whose hands it had come were forbidden to read it, because it was not approved by the Roman Catholic Church. This Bible plays an important role in Piau. To my supreme sadness, the Bible was burned when my grandparents’ home went up in flames in the late 1970s.
My Uncle Harry, who was an author and Acadian historian, informed me that the Bible had belonged to one of our ancestors whose name was Piau Belliveau. It was he who first told me of the exploits of this ancestor, famous for leading his people during the expulsion of the Acadians. Not only was my uncle obsessed by our illustrious ancestor, but he was also an authority on Colonel Frederick DesBarres, who was connected in history with Piau. Their story also appears in the book.
My family, ever rich in historians, produced a written account of Piau’s life that was published in a reputable magazine while I was still in my teenage years. The author was my cousin Edward “Ned” Belliveau. Inspired by his account, I set about to find out everything I could about my famous forebear. This pursuit has continued to this day. What a journey it has been, reading about Piau in nineteenth-century histories and listening to personal accounts of his life from centenarian cousins of my Acadian grandmother.
So, there existed a considerable amount of written material on Piau, not to mention the great amount of oral history that was available about him. Still, I felt that Piau’s life hadn’t yet been properly told, and I knew that I was the