Unveiling of the Coat of Arms of the Association des Bourgeois d'Acadie

I learned very quickly after I became Governor General that one of the more interesting duties of the position is granting coats of arms.

The custom is an ancient one, dating back to the 12th century, but Canada gained heraldic authority only in 1988. Since that time, the Governor General of Canada has been head of the Canadian Heraldic Authority.

Almost 600 coats of arms have been granted since 1988 to municipalities big and small, and the new Canadian territory of Nunavut will soon be receiving its arms; to universities and colleges; to individuals; and to associations of families, most of them right here in the Acadian region of New Brunswick.

There a common link between these institutions and individuals : all wish to be identified as Canadian.

Coats of arms are a badge of honour, but first and foremost, they are symbols of identification and solidarity.

In adopting its very own coat of arms and crest, the Association des Bourgeois d'Acadie is observing an old and honourable tradition.

I am doubly pleased to be taking part in this gathering : first because I was thrilled to discover that I am a descendant of Jacques Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan, the first couple to settle in Port-Royal in 1641, and second because this event is being held in a community in the Memramcook Valley -- in Lourdes, where my mother was born and where a lot of my relatives are from.

The symbols you have chosen to represent your members are simple and eloquent. They of course include the Acadian colours and star, emblems ideally suited to an association of Acadian families.

Acadian filmmaker and poet L�onard Forest gave us a description that applies perfectly to all our family associations and to yours in particular. Being Acadian, he wrote, means being a descendant of great family which through good times and bad, has gained and guarded an image of brotherhood and collective joy. Being Acadian means sharing a memory.

Your coat of arms and crest evoke the memory of the first ancestor with the cord of St. Francis of Assisi, and echoes the name of the vessel in which Jacques Bourgeois set sail from France to establish a great family and a new country.

His profession as a surgeon is depicted by an early surgical instrument and the well-known eight-pointed Maltese cross, the emblem of the orders of Malta and St. John of Jerusalem. The Maltese cross is familiar to Canadians because of the thousands of volunteers who serve the public.

There is also a reference to the sea, as the ocean was the road between Europe and the New World of America. For Antonine Maillet, the sea means a great deal more. Cut into the flesh of an Acadian, she once wrote, even one from the deepest of the deep back country, and salt water will flow from his veins.

The pioneers needed tremendous courage to pull up stakes and leave their homeland to set down roots in a new and sometimes difficult country. That courage is reflected in the motto your association has chosen : ENSEMBLE VERS L'ID�AL, together in search of perfection. Those words pay tribute to the past and reach out to the future.

I hope these heraldic symbols unite you so that the Association des ourgeois d'Acadie can carry on what L�onard Forest so accurately described as a life of "lasting harmony".