It’s National Acadian Day

Bonne fête nationale de l’Acadie!

Lennie Gallant, Ouvrez les aboiteaux

From Lennie and Patricia Richard’s YouTube channel:

This is a song Lennie wrote for the third World Acadian Congress held in Nova Scotia in 2004. The aboiteaux were series of dikes and drains that the first Acadians built using the powerful tides to claim many thousands of acres of land in order to survive. The aboiteaux design would allow the moon to pull the water out of the fields on low tide but not allow it to return on the high. Ironic that Acadians themselves were later also pulled from the land with the devastating deportations and not allowed to return. The Acadian Congress gatherings were the first in 250 years to assemble over 200,000 Acadians and their Cajun cousins of Louisiana since that infamous event. The French chorus says: “Open up the Aboiteaux…Let my heart return with the waters.”

Sirène et Matelot, Acadian Girl

Merry Christmas, everybody

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale of New York.

Christmas dreams, shattered and otherwise. Soaring music and grubby lyrics. But also tenderness and hope – which, after all, is what Christmas is all about.

Merry Christmas. And a tip of the tuque to Walt Kelly, who brought joyous nonsense to Christmas when I was a boy.