Here is a post I just put on a local history page on Facebook. It is called "Woodstock NB, memories of the past" or something similar. I figured I would post it here too.
I just bought a new police badge (seller's pic). Although not from Woodstock it is ethnolinguistical related to the town. The aboriginals of New Brunswick spoke the same language, yet not the same language. In today's world we have radio, TV, internet etc. to keep in touch. The aboriginals couldn't just hop in their cars and drive up to Grandfalls to chat with each other. Hence the Algonquin language had a standard grammar yet different nouns arose in isolation (compare words like record vs vinyl in English). Anyways the original world for porcupine in Woodstock was "Madoues". From that we can also add the suffix "kak" to mean "land of" (Again, in English compare EngLAND HolLAND etc). to get Madawaska (or Land of the Porcupine). Getting back to the idea of a standard language the aboriginals of Woodstock were never called "Maliseet". They called themselves "Wolastoqiyik". Wolastoq means "beautiful river" (In reference to the St.John river) and "ik", related phonetically to "kak" means "people of". The tribe up north (Micmac) introduced the Europeans to the Wolastoqiyik as "The Maliseet" (lazy speakers) due to their different vernacular speech. Getting back to what inspired this talk let's look at my new police badge. You will notice that instead of the standard beaver you see on the top of so many badges you will see a porcupine. Why? Well Edmundston is in Madawaska county. Little things like that is what makes collecting so exciting for me.
On a related note here is commems' link to a proposed commemorative coin for the Aroostock war.
http://goccf.com/t/191181The so called "war" briefly led to a little micronation called The Republic of Madawaska. The mayor of Edmundston is the de facto mayor of the Republic to this day.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....e/madawaska/*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***
Posted 02/23/2017 10:41 pm
