Doucet: Viola Léger helped immortalize l’Acadie. Here’s one way to honour her memory

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There are two great narrative poems written about Acadie/Acadia.  The older is “Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The younger, “La Sagouine,” was written by Antonine Maillet. Longfellow’s poem of a young Acadian girl separated on her wedding day from her fiancé at Grand Pré defined public remembrance of the Acadian exile for more than 100 years. From the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, there was hardly a school child in North America who could not quote the opening lines: “This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss and in garments green, Stand like Druids of Eld … ”

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The story of a girl searching for her lost love was well-known in the New England Acadian exile community, but it took a great poet to memorialize it.

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Times change. Common school reading lists have disappeared and the memorization of poetry has fallen out of favour. Evangline exists today more as an advertising device in New Brunswick and Louisiana than a flesh-and-blood poem. And there have been so many terrible events in the 20th century that even the deaths and drama of the Acadian exile has been lost.

Antonine Maillet’s prose-poem La Sagouine couldn’t be more different. It is the story of an old woman, a washerwoman who has spent her life cleaning other people’s houses. It’s not romantic in any way. The principal character is not a beautiful young woman at the start of her life but an old woman approaching the end. It’s about survival in the world as it is, not as it was imagined.

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Nor is La Sagouine meant to be read as much as seen and heard on the stage. To bring it to life, Maillet needed one great actor who spoke old Acadian French from the cradle and who could act. She found that person in a Moncton drama teacher named Viola Léger.

Viola Léger playing La Sagouine was a hit from the very first production in 1971. An actor born, she came to incarnate the old washerwoman all over the world. In her long career, she played many other roles; started her own theatre company, a charitable foundation to help young actors; animated Acadian country life at Le Pays de la Sagouine; and was appointed a federal senator. But it is her stage role as La Sagouine that dominated everything. She played it thousands of times.

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From 1971 until today, La Sagouine and Viola Léger did the same thing as Longfellow’s poem did beginning in 1847. They defined the Acadian experience and brought it to the world with homespun wisdom, dignity and courage.

Viola Léger died recently, at 92, after a life that enriched everyone it touched. Who could ask for more?

I can think of one thing. If the federal government wishes to follow Australia’s example and replace Elizabeth II’s image on Canadian currency, why not choose another Viola from Atlantic Canada? Viola Leger has been not only an ambassador for Acadie, she’s been an ambassador for all of Canada by celebrating the country’s unique diversity — while remaining proudly and resolutely Canadian.

Clive Doucet is a writer and former Ottawa city councillor. His most recent book is Grandfather’s House, Returning to Cape Breton.