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Ecclesiastical Kinship at Pointe-de-l’Église: A Case of Church and Community Formations
Currently, as of summer 2025, the former Église Sainte-Marie in Nova Scotia's municipality of Clare faces the threat of possible demolition. Amid declining church attendance among Canadians generally, hundreds of communities across the country have faced such a predicament in recent decades. Underutilized and decaying church buildings have been demolished and replaced by other structures. I suggest here that the case of Sainte-Marie is distinct, setting it apart from many chu
Colby Gaudet
Aug 2915 min read
Primary Source Analysis: Quaker Philanthropy and Indigenous People in the Maritimes
My interest in the history of religion often gravitates to the topic of Christianity and Indigenous people. I’m particularly compelled to study the ways that Christian groups interacted with Indigenous people in the contexts of settler colonialism.
Colby Gaudet
From Rural Roman Catholic to Urbane Freemason and Transcendentalist? Louis A. Surette in Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia and Massachusetts
In a previous post, “ Ecclesiastical Kinship at Pointe-de-l’Église ,” I discussed the ‘presbyterial household’ of the Abbé Jean-Mandé Sigogne. Among the children who lived (for a time) as part of this ecclesiastical kin-unit were three Surette brothers from Argyle Township, near Yarmouth. These boys were sons of Athanase Surette and Louise d’Entremont, Acadian parishioners at Sainte-Anne-du-Ruisseau.[1] Louise and Athanase produced a prodigious family, having twelve children
Colby Gaudet
Primary Source Analysis: Letters between an Acadian Mother and Son, 1849–1852
The following is a series of letters between Cécile Melanson (née Murat) of Pointe-de-l’Église, Nova Scotia, and her son, Stephen (or Étienne) Melanson of Boston, Massachusetts. As I’ve written for the Acadiensis blog , Cécile Murat was not Acadian by birth. Born in 1780, she was a child of French parents living in Boston and was later adopted by an Acadian couple in rural Clare. In 1800, Cécile married an Acadian, Jean-Baptiste Melanson (brother of Samuel Melanson in my prev
Colby Gaudet
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