Description

Today, if you visit the Low Point area along the western shore of Malpeque Bay near Port Hill, you will find only farm fields and scattered woods. For there is now nothing above the ground to indicate that for 30 years in the early 18th century this was the centre of a fairly large and peaceable Acadian farming settlement. Arsenault, DesRoches, Doucet, and Richard – all common French surnames in Prince County today– were among the names of the settlers who lived in this locality at a time when Prince Edward Island was a French colony known as Île Saint-Jean. This settlement, called Malpec or Malpeque, after the Mi’kmaq name for the bay, was the first to be located west of Port-la-Joye. It was founded in 1728 and by the middle of the century it extended along the shore of the bay from Bideford to Grand River in Lots 13 and 14. The history of this community is of particular interest because most, if not all, its population escaped the 1758 Deportation by fleeing to the mainland, and because today a great many Islanders can trace their ancestors to these Acadian pioneers who came back to resettle on the Island.