Application to host Congrés Mondial Acadien submitted
By J. Anfenson-Comeau
LSN STAFF WRITER
EUNICE – The Louisiana bid to host the 2014 Congrés Mondial Acadien has been submitted, and Cultural Events Management Consultant Rachelle Dugas feels that Louisiana has a strong chance of being chosen.
“Of the three places bidding, Louisiana’s bid is the most developed, because we’ve been working on it for the past year and a half,” the New Brunswick native told Kiwanians last Thursday.
The other two locations bidding to host the Acadian get-together are Quebec and “Acadie of the Lands and the Forest”, a new region comprising communities near the borders of Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine; neither has hosted the CMA previously.
Louisiana hosted the second CMA in 1999, which featured 80 Acadian family reunions, as well as three major concerts and academic conferences centered on economics, culture, women’s issues, genealogy and genetics.
The bid was submitted in the end of March, and last month, the three-member selection committee visited Louisiana.
Dugas said the decision has most likely already been made, but the announcement will be made on World Acadian Day, August 9, at the 2009 CMA, being held this year in northeastern New Brunswick.
Even though Louisiana hosted the CMA in 1999, bid promoters feel it’s time the state again hosted the event, which is expected to draw as many as 200,000 Acadians from across the world for three weeks of family reunions and cultural events.
Dugas said the event would be held across Louisiana’s 22 southwestern Acadian parishes, from the Texas border to LaFourche Parish.
Three main events would be held on the weekends, but all communities in the Acadiana region would be invited to showcase themselves and host events and family reunions, Dugas said.
Separated by the Grand Dérangement, or Great Upheaval, which began in 1755 when the British exiled them from what is now Nova Scotia, Acadians throughout eastern Canada, New England, Louisiana and elsewhere in the world share a common French dialect, culture and traditions.
Dugas said she hopes that by hosting the 2014 CMA, Acadians from elsewhere in the world can be made more aware of how coastal erosion, wetland loss, population dispersal and the loss of the French language is threatening to destroy the unique Cajun culture of Louisiana.
“Louisiana’s bid focus is on asking Acadians to come to Louisiana to support the preservation of French here,” Dugas said.
Louisiana’s bid has been sponsored by Louisiane-Acadie Inc., a non-profit organization which works to foster connections between Louisiana’s Cajuns and Acadians worldwide.
More information can be found at the web site for Louisiana’s bid, www.cma2014.com, including a French-language video made to support the state’s bid.
Information on CMA 2009 in New Brunswick can be found at www.cma2009.ca/.