First was the Prime Minister's visit in February. Then we got a couple visits from the premier.
And, thanks to the ongoing World Acadian Congress, we got a couple more special visitors, starting with this person you may be familiar with:
Mme. Jean had a sort of simpering quality about her that I didn't know what to make of, and she was always smiling. But she's a good speaker, that's for sure. Oh, and she took the opportunity (She was in Tracadie-Sheila, up the bay from us) to reveal to all and sundry that her great-great-great-great-great Grand-dad was an Acadian deportee from way back. Boy, that went over great. They're still talking about it.
That was last Thursday. Then on Saturday, we had this guy:
Michael frikkin' Ignatieff, the leader of the opposition, here in Miramichi, waving the Acadian flag and ringing the bell for the great Tintamarre, the part of Acadian Day where everybody makes as much noise as they can, with a few instances of "vive l'Acadie!" thrown in.
He seemed okay at ease, and sounded in person remarkably like Leonard Nimoy when not playing Spock. Oddly, his PR person, talking privately with me and the guy from the Times, said he was pretty shy, it's his wife who's the massive extrovert.
We interviewed him, of course, but we didn't really use any of it, aside from some nice things he said about Acadians and anglo New Brunswickers working together.
He brought an entourage with him:
You may recognize Dominic LeBlanc on the left, in the remarkably unflattering novelty Acadian tie. The other guy is an MP from northern NB, Jean-Claude d'Amours. They seemed nice enough, although Dominic was a little baffled when a local volunteer firefighter accosted him about the city supposedly conspiring to steal his fire hall.Ah. Small town politics.
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