Gerald Breaux, executive director of the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission, has just returned from a nine-day jaunt in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to visit the towns that will host the 2009 Congres Mondial Acadien and to drum up support for bringing the 2014 congres to Louisiana. "When anyone found out my name is Breaux, they'd hand me their cards, with their name, Breau, without the x," he says. "They'd ask me, 'How did you wind up with that x on your name?'" That's about the only difference despite the distance from Lafayette to twin city Moncton. "You can tell they are our ancestors," he adds. "They look just like us."
I am on my way to Moncton today, traveling with a second wave of Louisiana Cajuns, mostly journalists, exploring the Acadian Peninsula during a week-long festival celebrating all things Acadian.
We arrive at Moncton at 11 p.m. It's raining and cool. Our guides, a passel of them, meet us at the airport, and they are so warm and friendly and make us feel welcome in spite of the late hour. Their accents sound like ours, English mouthed with the soft consonants of French. Some of us tail off for another adventure, but it's after midnight and I need to get to the computer before I forget everything, and we need to be up early.
Michel Fernand Despres, his name literally means "from the field." This is what he tells me. There are 900,000 people in New Brunswick. Last year they spent $120 million on beer. "We do not abuse our alcohol," he says. I think he means we don't spill beer on the floor. "Every house has a guitar. Every second house has a fiddle. Every forth house has a piano. Everybody knows how to sing. In the middle of winter, there's nothing else to do, next thing you know, there's 100 people at your house, you're having a party and there are 3 live bands."
"There are only two family lines here in New Brunswick." Despres adds. He's from Rogersville. "But I've got a gazillion cousins in Louisiana."
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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