In the first week of August, I made a pilgrimage to my family’s homeland. It was mostly a whirlwind drive around the stunningly gorgeous landscape of New Brunswick and Gaspésie (Gaspe’ Peninsula). We covered over 1000 miles in a few days, trying to see absolutely everything. I saw the towns my family founded and lived in for generations. Found the graves of so many of my relatives, in French settlements as well as in a Mi’kmaq community. Life and the landscape are so different; I have still not adapted to life back home in New Hampshire. My dreams at night are consumed by the place, and I wake up disoriented, wondering where I am.

The experience that most profoundly affected me was our visit to Saint Anne du Bocage, in Caraquet, New Brunswick. It was built by my 6th-great-grandfather, Alexis Landry, in the late 1700’s. To this day, the doors stand open, and it is considered a very sacred place to so many. I am no longer a practicing Catholic. But the moment I walked in, I was overcome. I sat in one of the pews and cried for a very long time. It has taken me some time to digest, and start to understand what I was feeling.

My avatar in our virtual world chapel, trying to figure it out…

I have spent the past few years building a family tree. Building a mental picture of people’s lives. Reconstructing the bits of me encoded in names, dates, places, occupations, even how many cows they owned. I had never understood, really considered them family, loved ones, until I sat in that chapel. Every single one of my great-grandparents had sat where I was sitting. And had felt the way I did right then, in that sacred place, at that moment. They are all present there, with me. I understood their faith. The joy they felt, despite hardship. Their peace in the rhythm of life all around them. My ancestors did not write a lot. I have no books, or letters written by them, all those generations ago. They simply experienced life. And this was the only way and place in the world where they could speak to me. And it is beginning to explain so much about my life, and the longings I have for a home that I never really knew.

I grew up Catholic and was deeply devout as a kid. My Grandfather would bring me to church every Sunday and teach me what he knew of our faith. As I grew older, we moved away to a different town. The Catholic churches that we attended were so different. A lot of rules, a lot of talk of hell. I drifted away. Then later in life, I came to associate Catholicism with all of the horrors we hear about every day. The sexual abuse. The hypocrisy. The atrocities committed against Indigenous children in residential schools. There is a huge disconnect between the religion I grew up in, and the church that I see in the rest of the world. I do not believe that I was simply seeing it through the innocent eyes of a child. The religion I grew up in was truly different. It was a very old and different form of Acadian Catholicism still practiced by immigrants like my Grandparents. It was nurtured in isolation from all the wars and evil in Europe, and by kindred Mi’kmaq people who shared and shaped our faith, and in a lot of cases, became our family.

For the past few years, I have been taking a deep dive into honoring and learning about my Mi’kmaq ancestors, who were not just a single ancestor, but a steady presence in our family over the generations. Traditionally, they have been very devout Catholics, blending Mi’kmaq beliefs with those of the church with little contradiction. I had a hard time coming to terms with that, thinking, as most people would, that they were coerced or forcibly converted. I learned that for so many generations, the Mi’kmaq and Acadians lived in peace and real friendship.

This year, I was invited to attend Red Lake Nation College. It is an Ojibwe tribal college. I am NOT Ojibwe, but I find that we have so much in common. They are honestly the most naturally good-hearted people I have ever met, not only at school, but in everyday life. At the core of their beliefs (and mine!) are the Seven Grandfather Teachings. I will not enumerate them here. But at their core are love, forgiveness, humility, kindness, the interconnectedness of all of us and our world, truth, not only speaking the truth, but living it as well. When I first read of them, in so many words, I found that I had already known them. My Grandfather knew them and lived them. It was at the heart of what I learned at church as a kid. Something that seemed absent from other Catholic churches, doctrine and practice, I experienced later in life. How can this be?

I learned that the Ojibwe, far away from the Mi’kmaq and Acadians, had also experienced a parallel history of friendship and good relations with the French. Many intermarried, their families forming the Métis Nation of Canada. Many Ojibwe adopted Catholicism. And for some, their faith endured, even after the horrors of the residential schools. It being a blend of their traditional beliefs and those of the church.

Even in the face of what we know of history, I have a pretty radical proposal to put forward. European missionaries “converted” indigenous peoples all over the world, mostly through force and coercion. But in the case of the Mi’kmaq and Ojibwe, they were the ones who converted the Europeans and profoundly changed them. I can not speak for Ojibwe or other Mi’kmaq, for that matter. But I can say that the faith that I was raised with bears very little resemblance to any other that I have seen or experienced in the world. And when I sat in that chapel, I remembered. And in that moment, I understood what was in my ancestors’ hearts. They had a deep faith and reverence for creation in everyday life that sustained them, that transcended what we see as organized religion. I also understand that many today will disagree. And that is ok. This is my own journey, with my own family.

That being said. Any devout Catholics reading this will be dismayed that I am very unlikely to return to Catholicism. But, like the Vampire Lestat, in the Anne Rice novels, you might see me lurking in the back of the church. With a broken heart, and longing for a home I can never return to.

Running a high-quality, 6-room bed and breakfast in Caraquet over the 92 days of summer (June, July, and August) can expect to bring in between $57,400 USD and $114,200 USD in gross revenue (approx. $78,500 CAD to $156,000 CAD).

Your exact income depends on your occupancy rate and your average daily rate (ADR) during the peak festival season. [1]

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Summer Revenue Scenarios

A 6-room property operating for 92 days has a maximum summer capacity of 552 room-nights. The potential revenue breaks down across three operational tiers:

Financial Metric	1. Conservative Tier	2. Moderate Tier	3. Optimistic Tier
Average Nightly Rate	$160 USD ($218 CAD)	$190 USD ($260 CAD)	$230 USD ($315 CAD)
Summer Occupancy Rate	65% occupancy	78% occupancy	90% occupancy
Total Room-Nights Sold	359 nights	431 nights	497 nights
Estimated Gross Revenue	$57,408 USD	$81,806 USD	$114,264 USD

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Action Plan to Maximize Summer Revenue

1. Implement Dynamic Weekend Pricing
   • Raise weekend rates by 20% to 30% relative to weekdays.
   • Mandate a 2-night minimum stay for Friday and Saturday bookings.
2. Capitalize on the Acadian Festival Peak
   • Double your standard nightly rate during the high-demand festival weeks in August.
   • Require a 3-night minimum stay to capture maximum occupancy security. [1]
3. Incorporate Upsell Packages
   • Package rooms with local excursions, such as Acadian Historical Village passes.
   • Offer high-margin add-ons like picnic baskets, local wine pairings, or late checkouts. [1]

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Hidden Costs to Anticipate

• Housekeeping & Laundry: Hiring staff or using services to turn over up to 6 rooms daily will eat 10% to 15% of revenue.
• Food & Beverage: High-quality gourmet breakfasts generally cost $7 to $12 USD per guest in raw ingredients.
• OTA Booking Fees: Platforms like Booking.com or Airbnb claim a 3% to 15% commission per reservation. [1]

Would you like to build out a detailed expense breakdown to find your net profit, or calculate a year-round revenue model that includes the shoulder seasons?

During the off-peak months, room rates drop significantly, and the average price per night in Caraquet falls to between $90 USD and $125 USD (approx. $124 CAD to $171 CAD). [1, 2, 3]

Because Caraquet is a seasonal coastal destination, demand drops sharply after the Acadian Festival ends in mid-August. Many smaller B&Bs shut down entirely for the winter, while year-round operators experience a massive dip in occupancy. [1]

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Seasonal Rate & Revenue Breakdown

The off-peak season is divided into two distinct periods, radically altering what a 6-room boutique B&B can bring in:

1. The Shoulder Season (September – October / May) [1]

• Average Nightly Rate: $105 USD to $135 USD ($145 CAD to $185 CAD).
• Occupancy Rate: Expect a modest 30% to 45% occupancy, driven primarily by fall foliage tourists, weekend road-trippers, and business travelers.
• Estimated 6-Room Monthly Revenue: $5,600 USD to $11,000 USD per month. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

2. The Deep Low Season (November – April)

• Average Nightly Rate: $90 USD to $105 USD ($124 CAD to $145 CAD).
• Occupancy Rate: Occupancy plummets to a quiet 10% to 20%. November and February are historically the lowest-earning and slowest months in the region.
• Estimated 6-Room Monthly Revenue: $1,600 USD to $3,800 USD per month. [1, 2, 3, 4]

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Off-Peak Operational Realities

• The Utility Trap: Heating a large, historic 6-room Canadian property during harsh New Brunswick winters can cost more than the revenue brought in by a handful of off-season bookings.
• Commercial Hibernation: Because major attractions like the Acadian Historical Village close for the winter, tourist traffic disappears. [1, 2]
• Pivot Strategy: To survive the winter, local hosts often shift from nightly B&B rentals to offering discounted monthly rentals for traveling nurses, corporate contractors, or university students.

Due to a clerical error, I found that I was mistaken about the details of my Grandfather’s childhood. So I must concede that there was not an abandoned little kid surviving in the wilderness of New Brunswick for three years. I was projecting my own childhood on to my Grandfather, and unjustly impugning the parenting skills of my Great Grandparents.

However. This is still a great story. 🙂

My family is from Grande Anse and Caraquet, New Brunswick.
I have been trying to learn some of the reasons why my family left their farms and homes, in what is today, a really beautiful, idyllic place. Towns where they were founders, and had fought hard, being the few to survive and escape genocide in 1755.

While searching the train passenger manifests during the time my family left, there were thousands of people leaving the province at the same time.

This is the result of querying a research AI about the region’s history during that time period.

Looking at passenger manifests around 1915–1918, you’re seeing the tail end of a migration that had already been underway for decades. To someone tracing individual families, it can absolutely look like a sudden exodus because entire extended families often left within a few years of one another.

Several factors came together.

1. The “Acadian Exodus” was primarily economic

The biggest reason was simple: there wasn’t enough work.

Northeastern New Brunswick was heavily dependent on:

• small subsistence farms
• fishing
• lumber camps
• seasonal work

Families were large—often 10 or more children—and farms were continually divided among heirs until many became too small to support another generation. Wages in the Acadian regions were among the lowest in Canada.

Meanwhile, American industry was booming.

2. New England was hiring thousands of French-speaking workers

Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire desperately needed labor for:

• textile mills
• shoe factories
• paper mills
• railroads
• granite quarries

Acadians could often work alongside Québécois and other Acadians, so language wasn’t nearly as much of a barrier.

Entire neighborhoods of places like:

• Lowell
• Lawrence
• Manchester
• Lewiston
• Biddeford
• Fall River

developed large French-speaking populations, making migration even easier because relatives and neighbors were already there.

3. Railroads made migration much easier

By 1916, the Intercolonial Railway connected much of New Brunswick to New England.

Someone from Caraquet, Bathurst, Néguac, or Campbellton could board a train and, after a few connections, arrive in Boston or Manchester in a day or two.

Passenger manifests from this period therefore record large numbers of Acadian families traveling together.

4. World War I accelerated movement

The war had mixed effects.

Many young men enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

But wartime industry in the United States was expanding rapidly, and although the U.S. did not enter the war until 1917, factories had already begun producing goods for the Allies.

Industrial wages in New England could easily exceed what someone earned in rural New Brunswick.

5. Social networks created a chain migration

Perhaps the biggest factor was that migration became self-perpetuating.

One brother would leave.

He’d write home:

“There’s work here.”

A cousin followed.

Then sisters.

Then parents.

Then neighbors.

Soon an entire parish might have dozens of former residents living in the same American city. Historians describe this as chain migration, and it became a defining feature of Acadian emigration.

Was there a specific crisis in 1916?

Not usually.

Unlike the 1755 Deportation, there wasn’t a single event forcing people out.

Instead, 1916 falls within a long period—roughly 1890 to the 1920s—when New Brunswick experienced one of the highest rates of out-migration in Canada. Contemporary observers worried that entire rural communities were being drained of young people. Historians now argue that, beyond economics, many rural residents felt isolated from the modernization taking place elsewhere in North America, making cities like Boston, Saint John, and Vancouver increasingly attractive destinations.

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4

Grande-Anse, on the Acadian Peninsula, was a small fishing and farming community. Around 1900, it had several structural disadvantages:

• The local economy was seasonal. Fishing, logging, and small farms all provided income only during part of the year.
• Farms had been subdivided over generations until many could no longer support large families.
• There were relatively few industries that offered year-round wages.
• Population growth was rapid, meaning there simply weren’t enough jobs for young adults.

By contrast, Lowell represented almost the exact opposite.

In 1916, Lowell was still one of the largest textile manufacturing centers in the world. Although the city’s peak had passed by the late nineteenth century, its enormous mills still employed tens of thousands of workers. French-speaking immigrants were especially welcome because mill owners already employed large numbers of French Canadians from Québec. An Acadian arriving from New Brunswick could often find coworkers who spoke essentially the same language.

For many Acadians, the move wasn’t viewed as permanent at first. They expected to:

• work in the mills,
• save money,
• perhaps buy land back home,
• or return after a few years.

Many never did.

Why Lowell specifically?

This is where family networks became incredibly important.

Imagine one young man from Grande-Anse leaving in 1905.

He gets hired at a mill.

He writes home:

“They’re hiring. I can get your son a job.”

The next year his brother comes.

Then cousins.

Then neighbors.

Eventually, an entire street in Lowell might be home to families from the same parish in New Brunswick.

By 1916, this process had been going on for decades. Passenger manifests often show multiple unrelated families from Grande-Anse traveling on the same train because they were all headed toward the same established community.

Lowell’s “Little Canada”

Lowell contained a large French-speaking district often called Little Canada. While it was primarily populated by Québécois immigrants, Acadians fit into that community very naturally. They found:

• Catholic churches with French-speaking priests.
• French-language schools.
• French newspapers.
• Mutual aid societies.
• Grocery stores carrying familiar foods.
• Boarding houses owned by other Acadian or French Canadian families.

In many ways, they could cross an international border without immediately feeling like strangers.

Grande-Anse had another challenge

The Acadian Peninsula didn’t industrialize as quickly as southern New Brunswick. Places like Moncton and Saint John offered more factory and railway employment, but Grande-Anse remained heavily dependent on traditional occupations. As rail travel became easier, it often made just as much economic sense to continue on to Massachusetts, where wages could be two or three times higher.

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There’s a good chance your relatives were following earlier families from Grande-Anse who had already established themselves in Lowell by the late 1800s. Once one branch succeeded, it was common for siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, and even unrelated neighbors from the same parish to follow over the next 10–20 years.

The Robin Company’s influence

By the early 1800s, the Jersey merchant firms—especially Charles Robin & Company and its successors—controlled much of the cod fishery around the Baie des Chaleurs and later established a strong presence in Caraquet and surrounding communities. Grande-Anse fell within this commercial sphere.

A fisherman from Grande-Anse often didn’t:

• own the boat,
• own the nets,
• buy supplies with cash,
• or sell fish on an open market.

Instead, he received everything on credit from the Robin store.

At the end of the season he brought his cod to Robin, who determined:

• the value of the fish,
• the price of the supplies,
• and whether the fisherman still owed money.

This was the famous truck system.

A cycle that was hard to escape

The truck system wasn’t always intentionally abusive—it also allowed families to survive bad fishing years—but it created a structural dependence.

A typical cycle looked something like this:

• Spring: borrow salt, hooks, food, flour, molasses, and clothing.
• Summer: fish all season.
• Autumn: deliver the catch.
• Winter: discover that the catch barely covered the debt.
• Next spring: borrow again.

Many families lived this way for generations. Because there was little cash circulating, it was difficult to accumulate savings, buy land, or start an independent business. Historians note that merchant credit tied fishermen to particular firms and communities, limiting their economic mobility.

Why this mattered by 1916

Here’s the interesting part.

The Robin Company’s dominance had already begun to weaken by the late 1800s as the cod trade changed, competition increased, and the economy gradually shifted toward cash transactions.

But many Acadian communities, including those on the Acadian Peninsula, were left with the legacy of that older system:

• few local industries,
• little accumulated capital,
• dependence on seasonal work,
• and limited opportunities for the next generation.

So when a son from Grande-Anse heard that he could earn regular weekly wages in a Lowell textile mill, the comparison was stark:

• Grande-Anse: seasonal fishing, uncertain income, often debt.
• Lowell: cash wages every week, even if the mill work was exhausting.

For many families, that was enough to tip the balance.

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One thing that has always struck me is that the Acadian migration to Lowell wasn’t just people leaving poverty—it was people leaving an entire economic system. Their grandparents had lived in a merchant-credit economy where fish was almost a form of currency. Their children found themselves earning cash every Friday in a Massachusetts mill. That transition, more than any single event, explains why so many Acadian families from places like Grande-Anse boarded those trains between 1900 and 1920.

I came across this on social media. It is a bit harsh, but some important lessons. It is elitist, and kind of a lonely proposition. But basically you have work to do. Don’t let the idiots bring you down. 🙂

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1. Eagles fly Alone and at High Altitudes. They don’t fly with sparrows, ravens, and other small birds.

MEANING; Stay away from narrow-minded people, those that bring you down. Eagle flies with Eagles. Keep good company.

2. Eagles have an Accurate Vision. They have the ability to focus on something as far as 5km away. No matter the obstacles, the eagle will not move his focus from the prey until he grabs it.

MEANING; Have a vision and remain focused no matter what the obstacles and you will succeed.

3. Eagles do not Eat Dead things. They Feed only on Fresh Prey.

MEANING; Do not rely on your past success, keep looking for new frontiers to conquer. Leave your past where it belongs, in the past.

4. Eagles Love the Storm. When clouds gather, the eagle gets excited, and the eagle uses the storm’s wind to lift itself higher. Once it finds the wind of the storm, the eagle uses the raging storm to lift itself above the clouds. This gives the eagle an opportunity to glide and rest its wings. In the meantime, all the other birds hide in the branches and leaves of the tree.

MEANING; Face your challenges head on knowing that these will make you emerge stronger and better than you were. We can use the storms of life to rise to greater heights. Achievers are not afraid to rise to greater heights. Achievers are not afraid of challenges, rather they relish them and use them profitably.

5. Eagles Prepare for Training; they remove the feathers and soft grass in the nest so that the young ones get uncomfortable in preparation for flying and eventually fly when it becomes unbearable to stay in the nest.

MEANING; Leave your Comfort Zone, there is No Growth there.

6. When the Eagle Grows Old his feathers become weak and cannot take him as fast and as high as it should. This makes him weak and could make him die. So he retires to a place far away in the mountains. While there, he plucks out the weak feathers on his body and breaks its beaks and claws against the rocks until he is completely bare; a very bloody and painful process. Then he stays in this hiding place until he has grown new feathers, new beaks, and claws and then he comes out flying higher than before.

MEANING; We occasionally need to shed off old habits no matter how difficult; things that burden us or add no value to our lives should be let go of.

Never give up. Be an Eagle.

– Author Unknown

For the past couple of months, to aid me in my even older new adventure of learning French, I have started experimenting with Suno, an AI music creation tool. I have a very musical mind, and my French-translated songs are really helping me absorb new words.

Here are some samples of songs:

Are You Going to the Caraquet Fair? (the old folk song)

Hyacinth – Flower of Spring

Jacqueline (about a distant ancestor in the 1600’s)

The One Who Stayed
a song about the Ojibwe migration from my homeland in Canada, centuries ago. This is a rough draft.

It’s Your World (a french cover of a Gil Scott Heron song)

The full collection can be found at: https://groovyverse.com/music