Vautour family rebuilds Kouchibouguac camp razed by Parks Canada, RCMP

Despite concrete barriers and ditches put in place in early April 2023 by Parks Canada staff and the RCMP, members of Jackie Vautour’s family have re-established the family camp in Kouchibouguac National Park.

The Vautour camp, near the mouth of Rankin Brook on Route 117 through Kouchibouguac Park, is ground zero in a land dispute spanning more than a half century.

From 1969-72, land for the park was expropriated from 228 families, affecting about 1,200 people. Resentment over the way the expropriation was handled is evident to this day, both from those who remember the original eviction from their land, and from their descendants.

While others left the park, Jackie Vautour’s family refused to move, and has lived by the Rankin Brook ever since. When Jackie Vautour died in 2021, some of his children and grandchildren continued living there until the camp was taken down.

For many Acadians, Jackie is a hero remembered for his unyielding refusal to give up his family’s home. Courtney Vautour, Jackie’s granddaughter, played a lead role in re-establishing the camp.

“The number of people at the camp varies, with about a dozen or so usually around,” she said. “Food and other supplies are being provided by people in the area, usually Acadians and Métis, and often the descendants of the families whose land was taken during the creation of the park.”

Vautour said the case of her ancestral land is still before the courts. She says the family has the original bill of sale for the land, and that that document says Jackie Vautour’s “heirs” would not be deprived of the land. A “sacred fire” is now burning at the camp, and the Vautours intend to keep it going until there is a resolution to the conflict.

Courtney Vautour is also very angry about her aging father being physically assaulted at the camp this spring.

“My father was alone, mowing the grass on the camp site, out of respect for his father Jackie,” Vautour said. Park officials arrived and said he wasn’t allowed to mow grass. When her father continued mowing, “they tackled him to the ground.” That incident has done nothing to help resolve the dispute.

While the situation seemed stable, three years after Jackie Vautour’s death, Parks Canada decided to break the impasse. On April 9, 2023 in a move that took many by surprise, Parks Canada staff and RCMP removed the Vautour home, some vehicles and sheds from the camp site.

Over the next 48 hours, concrete barriers were put in place, and ditches dug, in hopes of blocking access to the Vautour camp. On Canada Day, the Vautour family and supporters re-established the now historic camp.

For Courtney Vautour, the land in question is ancestral land that has been in their family for generations.  She wants to see the dispute resolved in court, and not by the sudden deployment of government force.

Today, more than 50 years after Kouchibouguac National Park was created, resentment remains over what many remember as a fundamentally unfair expropriation of land for the park. A mass is celebrated at the cemetery at Claire Fontaine in the Park each year to remember the now-deceased residents who lost their land.

The church at that site burned to the ground during the original expropriation process.  To this day, some believe the church was deliberately burned to pressure people to move out of the area to make way for the park.

The NB Media Co-op called Kouchibouguac National Park on Friday, August 31.  A spokesperson returned the call on Tuesday, September 2, and said someone from Parks Canada would likely contact the writer.

Dallas McQuarrie is an NB Media Co-op journalist living in the unceded Mi’kmaq territory of Signiktuk.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Courtney Vautour is married to Steven Augustine. We updated this article at approximately 11:40 a.m. on Thursday, September 5, 2024.