Grand Pre

Grand Pre air view from south, 1931

Grand Pre, Nova Scotia

Halifax Subdivision (Mile 46.24 from Windsor Junction), Mile 62.46, (from Halifax)

• Next Station East: Horton Landing
• Next Station West: Wolfville

Facilities & Features

• Grand Pre Station
• Grand Pre Water Tower

Commerce & Industry

• Four apple warehouses
• Livestock Loading ramp

Description & History

Grand Pre was settled by Acadians about 1680 and grew to become the largest of the Acadian settlements around the Minas Basin. The village was destroyed in 1755 during the Acadian Expulsion. New England Planter settlers arrived in 1760. Grand Pre became a productive farming area but town and village life concentrated on the nearby harbour at Wolfville. When the Windsor & Annapolis Railway arrived in 1869, Grand Pre was initially served by only a small W&A station on the south side of the mainline along with a team track for freight.

However a line of willow trees and an old well associated with the vanished Acadian village across the track from the station quickly became a scenic attraction for tourists attracted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Evangeline" which was set at Grand Pre. The W&A promoted the surrounding landscape to attract American tourists. In 1907 a Wolfville resident with Acadian roots, John Frederic Herbin, bought the land across from the station believed to be the site of the Acadian church so that it might be protected and built a small memorial cross.

Herbin sold the land to the DAR in 1917 on the condition that Acadians be involved in its preservation. The railway made major investments at the site hiring a landscape architect to work with the DAR's head gardener to create a large memorial garden at the site. In 1920 the Dominion Atlantic erected a statue of Evangeline created by the Canadian sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert. The railway donated a piece of the land in the park to the Acadian community to build a memorial church in 1922. A new picturesque, log-cabin stye station was built on the north side of the tracks in 1925 connected to the park by landscaped paths. The church opened as a museum in 1930 jointly run by the Acadian community and the DAR.

The early 20th century saw a major expansion of the apple industry at Grand Pre. A small apple warehouse built to the west of the station before World War I was enlarged and joined by three larger apple warehouses. Apple company warehouses included the British Canadian Fruit Association, later R.W DeWolfe by the station; the Nothard & Lowe, later Red Bar Fruit Company and the Grand Pre Fruit Company.

After the decline in passenger travel in the 1950s, the DAR sold the memorial gardens to Parks Canada in 1957. The station was eventually closed and moved to nearby Evangeline Beach where it was converted into a summer cottage. The apple warehouses fell out of use as the apple industry in the Annapolis Valley declined in the 1950s and were demolished one by one. The last warehouse, the Grand Pre Fruit Company warehouse, was converted into a carpentry shop and dance studio in the 1990s but was destroyed by fire in 2008.

Today an interpretive centre at Grand Pre occupies the site of the old fruit warehouses and tells the story of the Acadian settlement of Grand Pre and includes displays on the railway's promotion and development of the site.

Operations & Orders

Grand Pre became a destination for passenger specials carrying tourists to Grand Pre as well as Sunday picnics specials and special Apple Blossom excursions run from Kentville. Double-headed passenger specials with locomotives coupled end-to-end would use the Grand Pre siding to reverse the run around the passenger consist so a locomotive could reverse the direction of the excursion train and return to Kentville.

Gallery

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  1918 Track Chart of Grand Pre

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  Grand Pre circa 1890s.

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  Village of Grand Pre - promotional postcard.

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  The Flying Bluenose, Train No. 124, at Grand Pre, circa 1910.

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  Photographic postcard of Grand Pre circa 1915.

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  Cover of Highlights of Nova Scotia History showing the New Yorker passing Grand Pre.

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  Circuit camera shot of Evangeline statue with station and warehouses in the background, 1922.

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  Detail of circuit camera shot of Evangeline statue with the station, and warehouses in the background, including the Grand Pre Fruit Company Warehouse to the far left, 1922.

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  Photograph of Grand Pre showing the Grand Pre memorial church; the Grand Pre Water Tower and apple warehouses, including the Grand Pre Fruit Company Warehouse at the far right, circa 1925.

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  Grand Pre, air view from the south with the Grand Pre Station, Water Tower and fruit warehouses with the memorial park behind, 1931.

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  Grand Pre air view from east with the Grand Pre Station, Water Tower and memorial park with Wolfville in distance, 1931.

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  Post card made from Air view of Grand Pre Station, Grand Pre Water Tower and Grand Pre Park, 1931.

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  Grand Pre Memorial Park entrance with DAR sign, 1941.

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  View of the Memorial Park Entrance. Date unknown.

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  Topographic map from Kentville to Hortons Landing circa 1956.

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  DAR No. 1046 with short five car freight traverses the marshes just east of Grand Pre station, on Monday Oct 8, 1956.

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  Dominion Atlantic Railway RDC 9059 at Grand Pre, circa Sept. 5, 1970.

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  RDC pulling into Grand Pre, circa 1973.

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  Grand Pre Park featured on cover to Dominion Atlantic Dayliner brochure June 17 to September 26, 1977.

References & Footnotes

• 1969 Memorandum of General Information

External Links

Grand Pre, Parks Canada, National Historic Site

Landscape of Grand Pré UNESCO World Heritage Site

Michael Gagné,"Memorial Constructions”: Representations of Identity in the Design of the Grand-Pré National Historic Site, 1907-Present", Acadiensis, Volume XLII, No. 1 Winter/Spring - Hiver/Printemps (2013)

http://www.landscapeofgrandpre.ca/a-century-of-tourism-agriculture-and-lieu-de-meacutemoire-1907ndash-present.html

http://www.acadian-cajun.com/grandpre.htm