Cassie Deveaux Cohoon (1935-2019)
The mail came with mixed emotions this week passed. We were excited to finally see the French edition of Cassie Deveaux Cohoon’s historical novel Jeanne Dugas of Acadia (CBU Press 2013), an excitement tempered by the knowledge that Cassie was recently killed in a freak truck-pedestrian accident near her home in Montreal (Sept. 3, 2019). She was 84.
Jeanne Dugas d’Acadie is published by Les Éditions La Grande Marée, of Tracadie-Sheila, New Brunswick. Distribution will be by Prologue, Boisbriand, QC. Publisher Jacques Oulette was kind enough to provide a number of copies of the book that we have shared with the original creators of the cover art. Copies have also been deposited with the CBU Library and Beaton Institute. We posted earlier about the launch of the new book duringFrench edition of Jeanne Dugas available in time for Congrès Mondial – you can read that post here.
Cassie is to be buried in her native Chéticamp, Cape Breton, a place she physically left many years ago, but kept forever in her heart. Cassie was an excellent researcher. She was meticulous and had a terrific memory. A descendent of a family prominent in Nova Scotia’s Acadian history, she felt driven to tell the Acadian story through the eyes of women. In 2007 she self-published the historical novel Severine, in which she explored the lives of ordinary women whose stories have not had the same prominence as men and politics and war.
The experience of writing that first book led her to pursue the story of Jeanne Dugas, a story which arose from the simplest of second-hand accounts from which she reconstructed Dugas’s remarkable life. Cassie’s novel was in part responsible for Jeanne Dugas being designated a person of national historic significance, by the government of Canada.
Born of Acadian parents at Louisbourg, Jeanne Dugas (1731-1817) and her husband Pierre Bois were among the founding families of the Acadian village of Chéticamp in 1785. Descended from one of the three most prominent families in Acadia, Jeanne Dugas and her family lived for more than thirty years under direct threat of capture and deportation by the British militia and attacks by pirates and privateers. Both the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site and the Acadian cultural centre in Chéticamp (Les Trois Pignons) shared in the honour of commemorative celebrations.
The French translation of Jeanne Dugas’s story was a long time coming and we wish La Grande Marée every success.
Cassie is survived by her son, one sister and two brothers.