Le Grand Réveil Acadien: 250 years in the making

Come fall, Cajuns will awake to Le Grand Réveil Acadien — The Great Acadian Awakening — a nine-day event in October to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Acadians to south Louisiana.

Events and celebrations, scheduled for Oct. 3-12, will be held in Lake Charles, Houma, Lafayette and New Orleans.

“I want to blow it out of the water,” said Mama Redell, Grand Réveil Acadien board member, who attended her first Congrès Mondial Acadien in August 2014 that was held in New Brunswick and Maine. “Seriously, I am so pumped. I really need to pump up our people here.

“Our Acadien cousins celebrate it much bigger than we do,” she said. “I mean unbelievably much bigger than we do. We need to wake up our people. We really need to really wake everybody up here.”

Although details are still being worked out, the celebration will go deeper than area festivals do with emphasis on family reunions, Acadian history, genealogy studies and Acadian connections around the world.

“What it is,” Redell said, “is our Acadian heritage. It’s about our whole culture. Our language, our music, our food, our way of life. It is, oh, my God, we’re so unbelievably connected to all these people around the world. We always think we’re the only one’s here,” she said. “I was blown away.”

It all begins in begins in Lake Charles and then moves to Houma, Lafayette and New Orleans, as well as all of the towns in-between, because, “that’s where the Cajuns are,” Redell said, who got the idea of including the smaller towns after her 2014 Congrès.

“I got to go to all of the little small towns. The delegation didn’t get to do that, but I took it upon myself to make sure to meet the people,” said Redell. “And was floored by the amount of people in Maine that could speak French.”

This year marks the second Le Grand Réveil Acadien; the first was held in 2011. In general, the idea is to hold the celebration in-between Congrès Mondial, which is held every five years.

In 1999, south Louisiana hosted the Congrès in a no-bid affair, and it will probably be the last time, too. Since 1999, bids were taken from Acadian communities to host the event.

Randy Menard, president of Le Grand Réveil Acadian, said a bid was made to host the 2014 Congrès.

“And when we were not awarded the Congrès, the people that worked on the bid decided, ‘Why let our work fall by the wayside and go unused?’” said Menard. “‘Why don’t we start maybe a little Congrès on the off years?’”

Although Congrès was held in south Louisiana in 1999, Menard said those behind the bid felt that it would probably not return for budget constraints (last year’s Congrès had a nearly $8 million budget), hurricane season and the August heat.

“There’s no way we can compete with that here,” Menard said of the budget, adding that the local contingent put in an October date, but Congrès administration would not budge on the established August period.

“It’s tied to the Aug.15 time frame, and that’s just not a good time in Louisiana to have those kind of events outdoors,” Mernard said. “No. 1, it’s still hurricane season; No. 2, if not a hurricane, it’s still very, very hot.

“Because they refuse to move (the date), we just don’t think that we’ll get it back here,” he said.

Menard is quick to say there are no hard feelings.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “No. Absolutely not. And we always participate in theirs. Louisiana Acadie, on behalf of the state and all those tourist bureaus in the Acadiana region organized the Louisiana Day at the Congrès in Canada this past year.

“It was a big success,” said Menard. “Everybody up there, they love Louisiana. They’re interested in meeting the Louisianans and the their relatives from Louisiana and seeing what mystique is, I guess, about Louisiana and the food and the culture and the character.”

Le Grand Réveil Acadien – The Great Acadien Awakening

•Oct. 3-4 Opening Ceremony, Lake Charles

Opportunity for tours of the area communities special activities will be offered

•Oct. 7 Houma

Main Attraction - International "Acadian Cross Monument," activities and tours

•Oct. 8 Rayne Frog Capital of the World

Murals, antique tour , coking demonstration how to make frog cookies, Cajun music and concerts

•Oct. 8-11 Lafayette

Traditional boat building conference, Vermilionville (Oct. 8)

•Oct. 9 - Acadian focused activities at Lafayette Convention Center

•Oct. 10 - Family reunion

•Oct. 11 - Tintamarre, French Mass, music and cuisine, Festivals Acadians et Creoles, Girard Park

•Oct. 12 - New Orleans

Closing ceremony with the 250th anniversary of the Acadians' arrival in south Louisiana