'Toutes sortes de vices': Possession, Healing, and Religious Convergences in Early Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia.

This article examines the 1810 case of two Acadian girls from Bas-de-Tousquet, Nova Scotia, whose behaviors were interpreted by their predominantly Catholic community as possession by malevolent spirits, prompting unorthodox healing rituals. The community’s responses reflected a convergence of diverse Atlantic religious influences, including lay Roman Catholicism, New Light evangelical theology from New England, and African diaspora spiritual practices linked to nearby Black Loyalist settlements. Limited clerical presence led Acadians to improvise rituals drawing on oral traditions and Atlantic cultural exchanges shaped by migration, trade, and social tensions, including racialized stigma and moral anxieties within the parish. The case illustrates how displaced Acadian communities navigated complex spiritual and social challenges amid broader revolutionary-era upheavals and religious ferment in early 19th-century Nova Scotia.