• Congrès to end on sweet note de resistance
• Cajun roots celebrated in southern Louisiana
• Guilbeaux pray, play
• Catching the Cajun Flavor
• Simon family took route through France to reach Louisiana
• Melancons gather in Opelousas
• St. Martinville hosts Congres activities 
• Acadian festivities unite scholars 

                   Yves Cormier stood in a quiet university hallway last week clutching a copy
                   of "Dictionnaire du Francais Acadien" and feeling very much like a father
                   holding his newborn child for the first time.

                   "Ten years of study," said Cormier, a lexicographer of Acadian ancestry
                   who grew up in New Brunswick. "It's so good to see it ending at some
                   point."

                   The 37-year-old author's appearance at the University of Southwestern
                   Louisiana in Lafayette -- along with a box-load of the newly published
                   Acadian-French dictionary -- at a two-week Acadian world reunion helped
                   mark a kind of new beginning for scholars who study the experience of
                   French people who trace their roots to the old Acadie region, now part of
                   Nova Scotia.

                   Amid the hubbub of family reunions and concerts staged during the Congres
                   Mondial Acadien, scholars from south Louisiana, Canada and France met
                   and agreed to pursue their study of Acadian history, language, folklore and
                   literature in tandem, even across thousands of miles.

                   "This has been wanting to happen for a long time," said Barry Ancelet, a
                   USL professor of French and a Cajun activist. "It's absolutely one of the
                   most exciting things I've seen in my life. I'm like a kid with a new toy here."

                   While it attracted little fanfare, the gathering of academics may prove to be
                   one of the most enduring features of world reunion festivities that end today
                   with a star-filled concert at the Cajundome in Lafayette. Cajun musician and
                   poet Zachary Richard will host the 7 p.m. concert, and more than 6,000
                   tickets, available through Ticketmaster, had been sold by Friday.

                   Overall attendance estimates from dozens of events across the region aren't
                   yet available, but organizers say the Congres Mondial made history by
                   bringing together Acadian relatives and fostering close ties between French
                   communities in Canada, France and the United States. Despite oppressive
                   heat, many family reunions attracted between 500 and 1,000 people, in some
                   cases exceeding the number expected.

                   Acadian scholars fashioned a document from their hopes.

                   A cooperative agreement was signed Friday by representatives of USL, the
                   University of Moncton in New Brunswick and the University of Poitiers in
                   France.

                   The Moncton university has a leading Acadian genealogy research center
                   and was central to an Acadian world reunion held in New Brunswick in
                   1994. The French university is located in a region that was a key source of
                   French families that migrated to eastern Canada in the 1600s.

                   USL boasts a Francophone studies program that blends academic disciplines
                   and, in its Center for Louisiana Studies, maintains a large colonial records
                   collection important to studies of Acadians' migration to Louisiana.

                   Thousands of French Acadians were rounded up and deported by the British
                   in 1755, and many eventually found a new home in the south Louisiana
                   wilderness. The large Louisiana branch of the Acadian community later
                   would be labeled Cajun.

                   While navigating different decision-making bureaucracies may be
                   complicated, the cooperative venture could lead to exchange programs for
                   graduate students, sharing of research and possibly joint writing projects by
                   professors who use the Internet to trade ideas and book drafts, scholars said.

                   Research in three countries can assist with as lofty a goal as curbing
                   measures against minority ethnic groups, said USL history professor Carl
                   Brasseaux, who has published two well-known books on Acadian and Cajun
                   history.

                   "We're looking at the long-term consequences of ethnic cleansing," he said.
                   "First and foremost is to try to keep history from repeating itself."

                   Distributed by the Montreal publisher Fides, the dictionary of Acadian
                   French is a long-held dream of Cormier, who remembers being chided in
                   school in Moncton when he used terms familiar to the Acadian community
                   but no longer found in French dictionaries.

                   He set out to define and give historical background on thousands of words
                   commonly used across France centuries ago but that now are heard mostly
                   among Acadian descendants. He wants to celebrate and preserve old
                   French words such as "boucane" and "pilot," which mean, respectively,
                   smoke and small mound.

                   "Today, there's very few things that Acadians can unite with," he said. "We
                   don't have territory; we don't have political power. We have one thing: the
                   language."

                   So far, the 450-page dictionary is published only in French, a fact that
                   Cormier worries will limit its use among Louisiana Cajuns, many of whom
                   are no longer fluent in the language.

                   Even as Cormier identifies the linguistic threads that bind the Acadian
                   community, Gerald Leblanc is fascinated by how Acadian enclaves differ. A
                   poet and novelist, Leblanc, who was representing the Moncton publisher
                   Perce-Neige, attended this week's gathering of scholars to talk about
                   Acadian literature and keep an eye out for Louisiana talent.

                   In a collection it calls "Acadie Tropicale," Perce-Neige has published books
                   of poetry by Louisianians Deborah Clifton, Ancelet (under the name Jean
                   Arceneaux) and Zachary Richard. Leblanc said he loves how Cajun writers
                   are influenced by a vastly different set of ingredients, from the hot weather
                   to zydeco music to spicy food.

                   "While we have common traits, what's interesting is how we are different. I
                   can't come here and talk about winter for three hours," he said with a laugh.
                   "Geography influences the way you're going to look at the world."