Alan Melanson, 10th-generation Acadian
Alan Melanson, leading candlelight tours of the oldest English Graveyard in Canada since 1992.
Archaeologists say they've made a promising discovery at Fort Anne, Canada's first national historic site, by using ground-penetrating radar to explore a burial ground.
Fort Anne is located in Annapolis Royal, N.S., and became a national historic site in 1917.
Alan Melanson, a local resident and 10th-generation Acadian, believes his ancestors are buried at Fort Anne, and he says it's important to know for sure.
Andrew Tolson Photography
There are 234 headstones on the site in what's believed to be the British cemetery. The earliest stone was erected in 1720 and is the oldest known gravestone with a British inscription in Canada.
But it's also believed there are 2,000 people buried at Fort Anne in an Acadian burial ground with no visible traces.
Results of the Ground-Penetrating Radar survey of an area which through oral history was thought to hold unmarked Acadian Graves. November, 2018. Boreas Heritage Consulting
"I've read parish records, I've heard oral stories, but I find the arbiter of history is archeology.
This is the cradle of Acadia," said Alan Melanson. Anybody who's Acadian in the world traced their roots to this particular area."