Diary of a Frenchman

Peter Martin is a senior projects editor at the University of Ottawa
Press.

Deveau has edited, translated, and annotated the memoirs of Franзois
Lambert Bourneuf with great skill and affection. Bourneuf was 72 when he
wrote his life story—for the benefit, it seems, of his constituents in
Digby County, Nova Scotia, when he was seeking re-election to the
Legislature. Parts of his manuscript have disappeared, so Deveau had to
work deductively at the start and from surviving fragments of the
story’s final third at the end. Still, it’s a marvelous tale.

Bourneauf was born in Normandy in 1787. Impressed into the French navy
in the Napoleonic Wars, he fought off France, off North America, and in
the West Indies. In 1809 he was wounded, taken prisoner, and sent to
Melville Island, near Halifax. He escaped twice, the second time
successfully, making his way to the Acadian settlement of Pubnico.
There, instead of turning Bourneuf over to the authorities, the locals
made him their schoolteacher.

Later he moved around the French Shore to St. Mary’s Bay, where he
fished and farmed. Soon he was back at sea on trading voyages, most
notably a harrowing winter passage to New York, which he recounts in
fascinating detail. Trading on his own account brought prosperity, and
Bourneuf became a shipbuilder and -owner, a successful merchant, a
justice of the peace, and a politician. But in 1855 his business
failed—through no fault of his own, he argued—and in 1859 he lost
his seat in the Legislature.

Nevertheless, when he died, in 1871, he was widely praised as a
benefactor of his community and his church. And his descendants, an
appendix records, have followed their forefather’s path.

Diary of a Frenchman—with period illustrations, maps, useful marginal
notes, and excellent design and typography—is a fine little book.
Exciting too!