- The Governor General of Canada
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L'Association des Morais d'Acadie Inc.
Dieppe, New Brunswick
Grant of Arms
July 15, 2009
Vol. V, p. 460
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Blazon
Arms
Argent on a fess wavy Azure between in chief an escallop flanked by two lingonberry clusters and in base an oak tree eradicated Gules, a mullet Or;
Motto
MORE MAJORUM;
Symbolism
Arms
The blue, white and red, as well as the star, pay tribute to Acadia. The wavy line represents the ocean that was crossed to establish a new family in the New World, at Rivière-Ouelle around 1705. The lingonberries, known as “morets” in Normandy, refer to the family name, Morais, while the shell, the emblem of St. James (Jacques in French), alludes to both the scallop dish known as coquilles Saint-Jacques and the forename of the first ancestor, Jacques Morais, who settled in Caraquet, New Brunswick, and owned a parcel of land at the time of the Caraquet great land grant on May 29, 1784. The oak symbolizes the solidity of one’s roots and refers to the 2,000 oak trees given to the members of the Morais family who gathered in 2000 in Tracadie-Sheila. Those trees have since been planted around the world.
Motto
MORE MAJORUM, means “In the ancestral way”. In this motto, the word MORE refers to the family name.