Acadian Heritage Week, which kicked off over the weekend, continues all this week with a series of Francophone events. In conjunction with Festivals Acadiens et Créoles , Acadian Heritage Week highlights the history of the Acadians with lectures, exhibitions, and a French Mass tonight at 5:30 at St. John Cathedral. The event is sponsored by the many groups promoting French language and culture in Louisiana and Canada. Click here for a calendar of events for the week.
There will also be representatives in town all week promoting the 2009 Congrès mondial acadien, slated for New Brunswick next August. Look for the CMA booth on Festivals Acadiens et Créoles grounds. There will be a drawing to win a free trip for two to the event. Only festival-goers filling out a ballot on-site will be eligible to win the week-long, all expense paid trip to the Acadian Peninsula for Congrès mondial acadien. On Sunday, at noon, the legendary Acadian band, 1755 will perform at the Scène Atelier. In the 1970s, an era marked by political and cultural turmoil, 1755 broke through barriers separating the ‘two solitudes’ (Francophones and Anglophones) of New Brunswick. Nicknamed, the ‘Beatles of Acadie’, with their unique blend of traditional roots music and rock, they gave Acadians a band to call their own.
Band member Roland Gauvin and Cajun musician Louie Michot will be touring Acadiana schools this week, offering a workshop for French immersion students entitled “Discovering my Acadian Roots.” The workshop is designed to teach children about their heritage and the connection they have to Acadie du Nord , in Canada. For more information about the workshops and the 2009 Congrès mondial acadien, visit the website or call Rachelle Dugas at 291.5489.
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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