World Acadian Congress 2024

Acadians from around the world, their descendants and their friends are invited to gather next summer for the 7th World Acadian Congress. This great celebration revolves around August 15, the National Day of Acadia, a date chosen in 1881 to coincide with the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption, patron saint of Acadia. In 1994, during the first CMA in southeastern New Brunswick, several Louisianans who participated experienced the trip as a quasi-religious pilgrimage to their Acadian roots. Every five years since, the CMA has reinforced the pride of being Acadian.

It wasn’t always the plan to get together regularly. According to legend, in the jubilation of the first congress, someone from the Louisiana delegation suggested continuing the party in Louisiana in five years. As luck would have it, this corresponded to the 300 years of the founding of the French colony of Louisiana. Launched almost as a joke, this invitation was nevertheless taken seriously. In 1999, in the middle of August, Acadians from the north and elsewhere arrived in the humid heat of Acadiana. By all accounts, it was a success, but the participants were not ready to return in the summer heatwave. I don’t blame them. From now on, it is the return to the ancestral lands of ancient Acadia for the CMA.

In August 2024, it will take place in the southwest region of Nova Scotia around three main regions: Clare, Yarmouth and Wedgeport. The programming planned so far promises to be extraordinary. The Opening Day Festival will take place on August 10 in the Clare region at Pointe-de-l’Église. It is also where the campus of Université Sainte-Anne is located, famous for its French immersion courses in which hundreds of Louisianans have learned French. “The World Acadian Congress is a unique opportunity to celebrate and highlight Acadian culture in all its diverse multitudes,” said Allister Surette, President of the Organizing Committee. “By bringing together the Acadian diaspora from the four corners of the world, including Louisiana, the event offers an unparalleled opportunity for celebrations, discoveries and reunions.

The big day, August 15 of course, will be at Yarmouth Airport and the closing show will take place at the Wedgeport Tuna Museum on the 18th. The big new thing this year is the Saturday evening Party at the Mariners Center in Yarmouth on the 17th. Between these key events, family reunions will take place. Most of the families already confirmed are common in Louisiana: Babineau, Boudreau, Broussard, Comeau, Daigle, Dugas, Martin, Richard, Robichaud and Thibodeau to name a few. Don’t be misled by the different spellings. It is indeed a single family separated by distance but united by history. Relatives by blood, by marriage or by the “Back Door”, everyone is welcome. Like Pélagie’s famous cart which brought the deported Acadians back to their homeland, travel north this summer across the continent to see our Acadian relatives and friends in Nova Scotia.