"Some things are known. Some things are not known. Some of the things that are known might not be exactly what happened. Over the course of 234 years, facts disappear or are embellished to fit the era. From the Bay of Fundy to Bayou Lafourche is a long way, not only measured by distance but also by culture." Sido and Tyrone were standing on the banks of Lafourche Bayou, somewhere in a place now called St. James Parish. Memere, Sido's Grandmother was talking. "Tell me again: why do you want to know how from the Saint Lawrence River, Jacques Marie Frazier paddled down the Mississippi to somewhere not far from where we are standing?"
"I have in my possession a French book of hours that was created in a castle on the Loire River in the late 15th century," Sido Frazier said to a Grandmother, whose comings and goings in Sido's childhood were always mysterious. "In it, there is an early map of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland -- the fishing grounds near where Acadia would be settled a hundred or so years later-- but at the time of this book of hours known only to a few. I seek a personal connection that I feel but do not know.
"Perhaps, a denouement and a new beginning to the story you seek was told in the now lost diary of Jacques Marie St Pierre Frazier. This young man, who founded our family in Louisiana, was in 1755 an Acadian fisherman, trapper, explorer. On the Saint Lawrence River, miles from his home, he was travelling alone in a Mi'kmaq-made boat when natives brought news of the destruction of his home in Grand-Pre and the expulsion of his family from their homeland.”
