Could there possibly be any more COMEAU in one place?
Brian Gabriel Comeaux
New Orleans Times Picayune
http://www.nola.com
Evangeline's country
A ticket to a play in southwestern Nova Scotia turns into a close encounter
with 'French cousins' who embrace visitors from Louisiana.
06/30/02
By Millie Ball Travel editor
CHURCH POINT, NOVA SCOTIA -- Denis Comeau was selling tickets to the
stage
play of "Evangeline," or "Evangeleen," as the wiry onetime carpenter
pronounced it. Marc Comeau, no direct relation, was playing Gabriel,
and
one look at the devilishly handsome actor with dimples and dark curly
hair
and smiling brown eyes made it easy to understand how a real life
Evangeline might have pined her entire life for this long lost love.
A few miles east on Route 1, at Café Chez Christophe, Paul Comeau, a
balding, gray haired man with a cropped graying mustache, no direct
relation to Denis or Marc, was cooking fish cakes and an Acadian dish
called rapure for diners, who were being served by Elizabeth Comeau, a
cheerful middle aged woman who's married to a Paul Comeau, but not the
one
in the kitchen.
Was anyone here not named Comeau?
A day or so later, Denis led the way through a couple of cemeteries,
one
from the 20th century, the other from the 1770s in Clare.
Fog was drifting in this July afternoon when we drove on a narrow back
road and arrived at the old, isolated cemetery by the bay. A chill
enveloped us. His hands clasped behind his back, Denis strolled past a
playhouse-size chapel and a half-dozen simple wooden crosses tilting
and
scattered in the white picket-fenced plot about the size of a suburban
backyard.
"During the winter of 1755, Pierre Bellevue and 120 Acadians found
refuge
here and escaped the deportation," a historic marker says. "The site
was
blessed in 1774."
"It was the first cemetery in Clare," said Denis. "Look here." He
pointed
to one of the crosses that had been stripped of paint by the weather.
"
'François Comeau, 1701 to 1785.' He was my great-grandfather seven
times.
We can date our family back to the 1300s."
In addition to Comeaus, the newer cemetery beside Route 1 was studded
with
granite stones with other names familiar in south Louisiana:
Thibodeau,
Boudreau, Le Blanc, Melanson (yes, with an s), Dugas, Gaudet, and
Thibault
-- that's Teebo, for those who aren't from Louisiana or eastern
Canada.
"Louisiana people tell us we're just what they're looking for when
they
come up here," Denis said. "There was a family who came a few years
ago
just to see 'Evangeline,' and they met people and stayed a week and
were
interviewed on the radio and given a party before they left."
Evangeline Trail
The Municipality of Clare is a 30-mile or so stretch along the
southwestern coast of Nova Scotia from St. Alphonse to Weymouth,
encompassing 11 or 12 blink-of-the-eye communities. The heart is
Church
Point, which will be the site of the opening ceremonies of the 2004
Congrès Mondial Acadien, the huge Acadian family reunion that first
was
held in Moncton, New Brunswick, in 1994, then in Louisiana in 1999.
Clare is near the bottom end of the Evangeline Trail named for the
heroine
of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem about the fictional
Evangeline
and Gabriel, separated forever in the 1750 expulsion of Acadians from
Nova
Scotia. Legend says she waited for him in vain under an oak on Bayou
Teche
in St. Martinville.
A Web site promotes the Evangeline pageant that runs in Church Point
every
summer. So, even though I had thought I'd spend more time on whale
watching expeditions and sitting in a rocker overlooking the Bay of
Fundy
and its tides, I went to see "Evangeline" too.
And met Denis Comeau, who changed my plans, as can happen when a
Louisianian hooks up with a local in Clare. This evening, Denis, the
assistant manager of the acting troupe and assistant director of
"Evangeline," was doing double duty selling tickets in the auditorium
at
Université Sainte-Anne, next door to the Sainte-Marie Church, "North
America's largest wooden church."
Denis, 50, has strong opinions. "People in Moncton think they're
Acadie,
but they're not. Acadie is here," he said. Moncton is considered by
many
to be the center of Acadian culture because more Acadians live there
than
here. But the Clare Acadians are a staunch group; the community is
involved in the entertaining, sophisticated pageant that includes
music
and dance numbers. An English translation is available over earphones.
After the play, Denis called over Danny LeBlanc, 54, a salesman with a
Santa Claus beard who portrays a priest. He shook hands and said his
brother-in-law played for a while with Cajun musician Zachary Richard.
"He
was the first Cajun I met, 25 years ago, and the thing that surprised
me
so much was that Zachary's French was so much like ours." LeBlanc
beamed
and said, "Every time I meet someone from Louisiana, I say, 'Welcome
home!' "
F'sure, cher.
Anyone for rapure?
Actually, I'd had my introduction to this enclave of Acadian culture
about
an hour before the show. Someone by the auditorium had said Café Chez
Christophe down the road in Grosses Coques would be a good place for a
pre-theater Acadian dinner.
I doubled back on Route 1, which, like Hwy. 1 and Hwy. 308 that
parallel
Bayou Lafourche from Lockport to Donaldsonville, La., is lined with
houses
and stores and churches that seem loosely linked, although little road
signs notify drivers every now and then that they are in yet another
village. Instead of being beside a bayou, there's the Bay of St.
Mary's --
Baie Ste. Marie -- on one side and on the other a Wyeth-esque
landscape,
with grassy fields and backyards with clothes drying on lines.
The restaurant looked like a dozen other cottages, except for a small
identifying sign. The entrance was on the side, through a foyer with a
washer and dryer topped with half-empty boxes of fresh tomatoes and
strawberries. There was a Gibson refrigerator.
A Robert De Niro look-alike read a newspaper at a corner table near an
old, unused stove with a Master Card sign stuck on it. Every now and
then,
he'd talk in French or English to a guy at the next table. They
switched
languages mid-sentence.
"I'm from Louisiana," I said to the 50ish waitress in bermuda shorts,
shirt and running shoes. She smiled broadly. "Everybody from Louisiana
likes this restaurant."
She suggested we order chicken and dumplings, fish cakes, and maybe
rapure
de paurnes. Rapure is a local concoction of potatoes with the starch
taken
out or something like that. Paurnes are clams.
There was Acadian music on the tape player; it sounded like Cajun
music;
maybe it was. A blond grandmother from another table leaned over and
said,
"My daughter plays the fiddle here on Thursdays. She's been to
Louisiana."
Paul Comeau was busy in the narrow, home-size kitchen, peering over
boiling pots and skillets and sticking pans in the oven. Elizabeth and
another waitress bustled about. She brought the rapure.
I tasted the salty, glutenous dish. I gagged. I jotted in my notebook:
"Vile. Maybe an acquired taste?" Chicken and dumplings were a big
improvement.
At 7:30 p.m. a family of four walked in by the washer and dryer.
"Sorry,"
said Elizabeth, "once we serve these people, there won't be any food
left."
Lunch with the "lovers"
Another day, Denis took me to see lyrical watercolor paintings of
local
scenes by Denise Comeau and stopped inside a couple of the local
churches.
And he invited Evangeline and Gabriel to join us for lunch at Havre du
Capitaine, a restaurant and B&B -- live music on Friday nights -- in
Meteghan River, yet another in that string of tiny towns.
Someone ordered baked beans with molasses and fish cakes. Someone else
ordered rapure. "We all grow up with rapure," said Marc Comeau, aka
Gabriel. "Everybody makes it different. Some use molasses, others
butter."
Ginette Cottreau, aka Evangeline, a 27-year-old high school teacher
with
the pretty pertness of Katie Couric, joined in as we all talked about
what
they call the grand dérangement. "We all started at the same place,"
said
Ginette. "There were 10,000 Acadians before deportation and only 4,000
Anglican English in the whole province."
Grand Pré, a three- to four-hour drive, near the far end of the
Evangeline
Trail, was the setting of the 1755 expulsion in "Evangeline," nine
years
before the first Acadians arrived in Louisiana. Grand Pré is a
national
historic site, and there's a nice statue of Evangeline and another one
of
Longfellow. But, said Denis, making a face, "Nobody speaks French in
Grand
Pré." It's English.
As are Port Royal, where there are replicas of buildings erected by
the
first French settlers who arrived in 1605, and Annapolis Royal, where
there's a rebuilt Acadian cottage in the lush and lovely Annapolis
Royal
Historic Gardens. All English. The French were thrown out, remember?
"The condition when some of us returned was to assimilate," said Marc,
23.
"We were forced to spread ourselves out on farmland the English didn't
want. It's why Acadians are all over New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and
Prince
Edward Island. We were sent to farm land the English did not want." He
smiled. "But I am still French, still Catholic and we still have our
own
Acadian culture."
The chicken rapure arrived. Ginette added butter. It was crusty. It
was
good. Really. Forget clam rapure.
French education
They talked about the French immersion program at Ste.-Anne's; 170
students from Louisiana were here last summer. All three said they
speak
Acadian French at home.
"But if an English person walks in a room with 180 French people,
everyone
will switch to English to make them comfortable," said Denis.
The subject of French versus English schools turned the conversation
intense. When Ginette was in elementary school, everything was taught
in
French; high school was bilingual. "Now in my region, they are
building
two high schools, and they want the French students to go to the
French
school and the English students to go to the English school."
"Canadian law has a charter of rights, and you're allowed to have a
school
if you're in the minority," Denis said. But, he complained, "It's not
the
French we speak. My daughter came home from school, and her teacher
had
marked the Acadian words wrong, and put them in standard French.
"I'd like to see the teachers, instead of marking the word wrong, take
it
and write it on the board, and say, 'This is the word we say. In
France,
they say this. In Wedgeport, they say this. In Louisiana they say this
word.' Why don't we expand the language?"
"I was in Halifax at the university, and they put me in an advanced
French
class, and I was lost," Ginette said.
"When our ancestors left France in 1604, they spoke the king's
French,"
Denis said. "Because of our isolation, the French language evolved
naturally. In France, Cardinal Richelieu and the Academy Française
dictated what was right and wrong. So theirs is a bastardized French."
Marc winced. "That's harsh."
"But it's true," said Denis. "I'm getting emotional."
Family connections
We switched to talking about the Acadian families. "So how do you know
which Comeau is which?" They all laughed.
"I," said Denis, "am Denis à Adolf à Nicholas."
"And I," said Marc, "am à Paul à Alfred à Auralien. That's Paul, my
father, and Alfred, my grandfather, and Auralien, my
great-grandfather."
"I worked at a museum in my village," said Ginette, "and the ladies
would
ask 'Who are you?' And I'd say, 'I'm Ginetta à Andra à Lellis à George
à
George.' You don't need to give your last name in my mother's
village."
But why do their names not have an x at the end, like so many do in
Louisiana?
Many Acadian and Cajun families have said it's because illiterate
Acadians
marked an x behind their names written by others on legal documents.
Even
Denis Comeau told the often mentioned story. "When I was a child, I
saw
older folks do this," he said.
That explanation infuriates Carl Brasseaux, a Cajun historian at the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who has spent time at the
university
in Church Point.
"That story is insulting, and perpetuates the negative stereotypes of
Cajuns that have been embraced and internalized," said Brasseaux.
"There's
no basis to it whatsoever. The truth is there are about a dozen ways
to
get the 'o' sound in French, and there was no attempt to standardize
the
spellings of French surnames until the 19th century." He said the
first
federal census in Louisiana was in 1820, after Louisiana became a
state,
and the Louisiana judge in charge spelled many of the local names with
eaux.
So there.
It's not the sort of thing they worry about in Clare. Like their
Louisiana
cousins, they celebrate life and argue over the best way to fix rapure
in
the same way Cajuns discuss jambalaya, and who's playing the best
music.
"We do more of a jig, not a two-step," said Marc.
And they talk about preserving their culture, just like in Louisiana.
"You
know," said Ginette, "most think the deportation was a tragedy, but if
it
hadn't happened, we might not have come together and had this pride in
our
culture."
. . . . . . .
Millie Ball can be reached at mb...@timespicayune.com or (504)
826-3462.
IF YOU GO TO NOVA SCOTIA . . .
Area code: 902
Canadian money: Last week, $1 U.S. equaled $1.50 Canadian, an
excellent
deal for Americans.
Getting there: An overnight ferry (800-341-7540. www.scotiaprince.com)
runs through October from Portland, Maine, to Yarmouth, N.S. There's
also
a high-speed catamaran from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth and a year-round
ferry
from St. John, New Brunswick, to Digby, N.S. (888-249-7245). If you
fly to
Maine and rent a car, make sure in advance it can be taken into
Canada. Or
fly to Halifax and rent a car there. You need a passport or proof of
citizenship to enter Canada.
Where to stay:
L'Auberge au Havre du Capitaine (Captain's Haven Inn), Route 1,
Meteghan
River. (902) 769-2001 (phone and fax), www.havreducapitaine.com.
Hardwood
floors, quilts, some whirlpools and fireplaces, porch overlooking bay
and
sunset. $50 to $65 U.S.; breakfast $4.
Le Manoir Samson Inn, Route 1, Church Point. (888) 796-8605,
www.destination-novascotia.com/evangeline/manoir/. Motel within sight
of
the University of Ste.-Anne. About $50 to $60 U.S.
Mountain Gap Inn, Smith's Cove, between Digby and Annapolis Royal,
(800)
565-5020, www.mountaingap.ns.ca. This is a family-oriented, homey
resort
with cabins and motel units. We sat happily in porch rockers
overlooking
the Bay of Fundy, watching the ferry from Digby to St. John's. About
an
hour from Church Point. $65 to $175 U.S.
Trout Point Lodge, E. Kemptville, (877) 812-0112, www.troutpoint.com.
An
hour or so inland from Church Point is this wonderful, isolated log
lodge
run by three former New Orleanians who owned Chicory Farm on the north
shore and Chicory Farm Cafe in New Orleans. Go just to relax. Rooms
begin
at $165 U.S. per couple with no meals, $280 for two meals and $300 for
three meals.
"Evangeline": Ginette Cottreau and Marc Comeau once again will star in
"Evangeline" in Church Point (Pointe-de-l'Église) July 12-Aug. 17. It
runs
indoors at 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays (English version),
outdoors at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays. English translations available.
Tickets
are $15 (Canadian) for adults, $13 for seniors and $9 students. (902)
769-2114; fax (902) 769-2930; www.evangelinetheplay.com or
www3.ns.sympatico.ca/evangeline1/.
Other things to do: Whale watching tours, Grand Pré, Port Royal,
Annapolis
Royal, Digby.
More information: The Municipality of Clare, (877) 462-5273, fax (902)
769-3713, www.munisource.org/clare/. The Evangeline Trail, (866)
260-3882
(although it would not go through last week), www.evangelinetrail.com.
Nova Scotia Tourism, (800) 565-0000, www.novascotia.com. For
information
on the Acadian Reunion in 2004, call (902) 424-2041, www.cma2004.com.
06/30/02