a former French colony on the Atlantic coast of N. America, which included the present Maritime Provinces and adjacent parts of Quebec and New England.
1754  [The French] made settlements in the country then called La Cadia. . . .
1835  On the counsel of Cardinal Richelieu, the French had determined to re-assert their title to La Cadie, which included every portion of New Scotland.
1923  The Maritime Provinces of the present Dominion, or at any rate Nova Scotia, were not in Canada properly so called, but bore the name of La Cadie or Acadia, and the great North-West was an unknown land.