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No description of the Chapel has been preserved. But it would be of the simplest structure, probably of logs and having the fewest of church ornaments, perhaps a plain altar adorned with a simple wooden cross. Willard describes it merely as a "mass house", a name which the New Englanders applied generally to Roman Catholic places of worship. Small and crude, it was nevertheless the first place of Christian worship on the North shore of Nova Scotia and there were said or chanted, for the first time along the Northumberland Strait, the Roman Mass and nearby the dead committed to the grave with Christian rites and ceremony. But to Willard and his countrymen, it was the will of God to have it destroyed. We, of Willard’s faith, but of another age, shall always regret that it was not spared and preserved as a memorial of a people whose pathos and tragedy, told in prose, in poetry and in song have moved with compassion the hearts of thousands. Its historical value and interest would have been great. But the destroying flames of that hot August day of 1755, were in themselves another symbol of the fires of hate, which then inflamed Catholic and Protestant to mutual deeds of violence, torture and death. Previous to the founding of Halifax in 1749, the Acadians at Tatamagouche lived comparatively unmolested. The hand of authority touched them lightly, if at all. Far removed, as they were, from the seat of Government at Annapolis Royal and separated from it by miles of trackless forest they did much as they wished. They had never taken the unqualified oath of allegiance and probably never intended to. In winter, their isolation was complete except for those of the number who were rugged enough to undertake the journey to the Cobequid villages. But during the summer and spring, they had contact with their fellow men in Cobequid, Beausejour, Louisbourg and St. John’s Island. And they had visitors as well, particularly in times of war, when Tatamagouche though, in fact, part of a British possession was so much of a hinterland that French war parties visited it at their will and when necessary, in secrecy. Back |
