I have been travelling between Moncton and the Acadian Peninsula for the best part of the last two decades and for some reason, the city of Miramichi, smack bang between the north and south halves of the province, always had a gloomy feel to me. Maybe it is because I always went through there in late fall, when everything is gloomy and Halloween decorations are out. Maybe it is because when I was a child that city was devastated by one of the most infamous serial killers in canadian history and I picked up the stress and fear of the adults around me.

I knew that an Island in the bay of Miramichi was a leper colony for a few years in the 19th century. The one that was later moved to Tracadie, but it wasn’t the only island in the area with a creepy back story…

Around grade four, I rented out a comic book about acadian history. At one point, during the Great Upheaval, the main characters found refuge among the acadian militias led by Joseph Boishébert. The camp was ravaged by disease and famine and people even had to eat animal hides (I did not even knew you could eat that!). That was the dreadful famine at camp d’Esperance, that the Musée Acadien describes as “A winter in Hell” where people were “reduced by the famine that overwhelmed them to eating the leather of their shoes, carcasses, and even the excrement of animals. Decency obliges me to leave out the rest”

What could that indecent “rest” be?

Whatever it was, the island where it took place still bears a deformed version of the name “Boishébert”. It is called Beaubears island, on the Miramichi river, just upstream from the town of the same name. I had driven by that island for over a decade before I learned the connection.