None

In 1755, Jeremiah Bancroft enlisted to fight against the French Empire in North America. Embarking from Boston that April with 2,000 of his countrymen, his attention was focused on the objective of capturing Fort Beauséjour at Chignecto, located on the present-day border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Bancroft could not have predicted the fort's rapid surrender, nor his New England force's redeployment against the civilian population of Acadia. His journal preserves an eyewitness account of the deportation of the Acadians in the Grand-Pré area, offering readers a day-by-day account of one of the most dramatic events in Canadian history. Edited, introduced and annotated by Jonathan Fowler and Earle Lockerby, and supported with maps and illustrations, this publication marks the first appearance of Bancroft's diary in book form. It also launches "Diaries of the Acadian Deportations," a new series of history books aimed at attentive readers of Canadian history.