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Kedgwick, N.B.
My name is Jean-Paul Savoie. I am from Kedgwick, New Brunswick, Acadie. I don't know if you can say it in English but de l'Acadie, in our mind. I live in a small community of maybe 2,000 people, in a territory surrounded by wood where there's one city called Saint-Quentin and there's around 5000 people. And certainly enough, the Acadian came to live in this territory. It was for two main reasons. One was a movement of colonization by the church to create a Catholic force between the Kamarouska and the Gaspé coast, and they encouraged people to come, and the other was the fact that there was work because we are in a forest and they had to rebuild Campbellton who had, there was a big fire and pressure to come and work in the forest here. So the village developed, developed to our need, you know. There was a railroad, so my grandfather came as a cook in the forest, built a hotel and the story of the village was around that hotel, and jail, and the liquor store, and the church. So being isolate, they developed a competition, and the competition was negative for a long time because they fought against each other. But they weren't on an island, so they had to fight with somebody. So they fought with their neighbours. We're all French and it became negative for a long time. Then something happened in Kedgwick where we had a priest called Armand Plourde who, who in his mentality he think he had to help the poor. I guess that was his objective to help those who were having a hard time. Help the poor. He knew, so he decided to do politics and he gave a gift to Kedgwick people, like, he politized them, make them political animals, and, but also was political animal himself. But he left us that dimension of being political. The people still has the power if he wants to take it. The people will always have the power and that's what he gave us, so we are a very politized village and Saint-Quentin-Nord is like that also because they follow a little bit our example. But Saint-Quentin, they were political, but they were using the politics like government. They had a judge and they had lawyers, so they were more playing the game of politics inside. We're playing the politics with the power of the people. And now, for the last ten years, I could argue that don't exist anymore because the new leader, the new generation recognize that that's not the way to go first, but also that the need to be united is there because there were not too many people and everything has been given. The wood has been given. The land has been given. So we got to be together to survive here and preserve. So that, we evolved to that level not because we were, we wanted it, but because we had no choice, and I always argue that people don't change attitude because they are good. They change because they are scared, scared to die, scared to lose, scared not to survive and that's what is happening now. We got to unite and we are uniting and it's very interesting because I always argue that Saint-Quentin is married to half the people of Kedgwick, and Kedgwick is married to half the women of Saint-Quentin. So we're all family and it's time to know, to recognize them and work together, and that's what's happening now, it's very interesting.
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Title: Kedgwick, N.B.
Description: Jean-Paul Savoie talks about the politization of the people of the region of Kedgwick, N.B., during the 1970s.
Subjects: villages
Source: Connections Productions
Language: English
Date: 2007-03-06
Creator: Connections Productions
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