Dr. Naomi Griffiths

Naomi Griffiths is the most important English-speaking historian of the Acadians. Her reputation has led to lecture tours sponsored by governments and universities across the Atlantic as well as in North America. Even more impressive, her work is fully accepted by the Acadians themselves. There is not a grain of prosiness in her writing; it is brisk, trenchant, as if she were impatient to get at the truth. Her history of the Acadians is based upon extensive research in municipal archives on both sides of the Atlantic, and her most recent monographs have widened our perceptions of Acadian society, indeed, laid foundations for a distinctive interpretation of Acadian historical experience. There is really no one close to her in quality; one wonders what Acadian history could have been without her.