The Current - Acadian musician gets appointed to the Order of Canada

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Ronald Bourgeois is known for his champion-ing of Acadian culture for the past five decades. Now, the musician and producer is acknowledged for his contributions and has received Canada’s highest honour, being named to the Order of Canada. He tells guest host Megan Williams what this means for him and the Acadian culture.

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L'espoir pour te faire ravir That is Ronald Bourgeois with Viens Vec Mois from the Grammy nominated album Louisiana Sessions. Ronald has just been named to the Order of Canada for his work promoting and sharing Acadian culture. He's been doing that with his music and artistic direction, TV productions, and work with many cultural organizations for more than 50 years. He's joining me from Sheddy Camp on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Ronald, felicitacion.

Thank you so much. So what does it mean to you to be named to the Order of Canada? It's an honour, it's a privilege. I was blown away. I mean, it's the biggest honour the country gives. I never aimed to win anything, so that phone call pretty well set me down. Actually, when I got the call, my wife and I were running out the door to take a vaccine for COVID. And the gentleman started talking and talking. I said, can you speed up because I'm late for my appointment? And then he gave me the news and I said, okay, I've got all the time in the world. And away we went. So what do you hope this recognition will mean for Acadian culture?

Any chance that Acadians have an opportunity to be talked about, talked of, bring us into some kind of a profile is important to the community. The success of one is the success for all type of thing. That's the approach that I have and many of the people that I've worked with take. So we carry our culture and our people wherever we go. We're proud but we also, you know, want to pass on whatever good happens to one to as broad a community as possible. And what does that culture mean to you? Well, it's who I am. It's my influences. It goes back to 1632 at Port Royal with Daniel

LeBlanc. On my father's side, it's Jacques Bourgeois or his daughter Anne. So I mean, when you go from there, it's the language, it's growing up in a small community, everybody knows you, it's midnight mass in French with a choir and all of those things. The music, it's my very soul. I mean, whatever I am is a product of all of that. Can you take me back a little bit to your childhood growing up in Shetty Camp? I mean, what was that like? It was amazing. I mean, Shetty Camp was at that time was predominantly all French. We were isolated, of course, from other communities. And when I was growing up, I didn't really realize it was anything special about the place. The place was my home. But we lived in French, went to mass in French,

but we were also dominated by English media. So whatever songs I sang in public, when I was playing with my cousins, we had a band. It lasted 55, 60 years. I was in it for four or five. But that's where I learned to play music and all the music we played was English. But whenever we got out of public arenas like that, I'd be listening to choirs, singing traditional folk songs. I was surrounded by that traditional music. So I lived in French everywhere else, but when I was performing and I started doing that when I was 12. Was there any tension between the two cultures or did they just kind of one flow into the other? Not so much.

I mean, on some Saturday nights there'd be fights, but that was just because there was too much alcohol involved. You know, Saturday nights were special. But no, I think it was, everything was self-managed in the community. The Catholic Church had a big say and there was a lot of, you know, really good leadership in our various organizations. It was never a problem. Because we were surrounded by the Scots, the Scottish people, who had brought their culture

from the Scottish fiddle to Gaelic language, we kind of understood that we were a little special and we had to take care of ourselves or else we'd lose what we have. So what kind of music were you playing growing up? My father woke me up in 1964 when the Beatles played Ed Sullivan. I wasn't very old then. And so we'd be doing everything from Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, to ACDC and Black Sabbath. I mean, it went the spectrum. So that was sort of outside the home and then inside?

Inside, I remember years playing with my cousin Sylvia and going to Aunt Phyllis's house, which was Sylvia's mother and my father's sister. And the guitar would come out and myan Phyllis would start singing. It would be some Paul Brunel song, or we'd go into some traditional like Cajun songs like Partant la mer est belle, or stuff like that. At school, I'd be, I was in the choir and was predominantly French, the stuff we did. And we also, I was also in some of the choirs that sang at Midnight Mass. I was an altar boy for years, and I could hear the Mass was in French. All the songs, les cantiques were all in French. I was surrounded by French, and it was kind of like our private little world,

and the public world was more not talking. We all spoke French to each other, but I was educated in English. We only had one French course when I was going through school. Now you obviously went on to become a musician and have had many performances over the years. Is there any particular moment or performance that meant something special to you personally? Well there's two. There's one is I was a producer. I didn't, because I did a lot of productions for television, hundreds and hundreds of shows with artists. So I produced a concert in Shatticamp for the 100th anniversary of the church in the Societe Saint-Pierre.

And we had musicians from the Symphony Novo Scotia. Scott McMillan did the orchestrations. Michel Aucoin did the orchestrations for choir. We had a hundred-voice choir. We had a symphony, Palsonian. We broadcast that on CBC and TV 5 to the world. And that was 1,300 people in the church. That was pretty amazing. In terms of live performances, I did do a show in Quebec. It was the 300th anniversary or something like that. We did the Canada Day July 1st from there. We did on both networks, French and English, it was 45,000 people. And that was a little nerve-wracking. I bet. I bet. Incredible. Now, as you mentioned, you've produced television shows featuring Acadian culture and you yourself have performed some of those songs. I mean, how strong is that

culture today? I mean, Acadian culture is always any minority culture, but our culture, it depends where you are in the country. In New Brunswick, it's pretty strong, you know, vibrant. When you come to Nova Scotia, there's various regions that are under threat. I mean, it's assimilation, it's mass media coming at you. So, I wouldn't say that there's, you always have to be watchful so that you can keep the language alive. Now we have all our schools in Nova Scotia, we have French schools in Halifax, we have seven schools and we have our own school board so that helps. But what's happening now is that with social media, when I first went to Quebec,

my accent was a problem as an artist and I was told by a lot of producers, you got to clean that up. How so? What was wrong with your accent? Well, they couldn't understand. They could understand me, but it was too colloquial and it wasn't Quebec enough. But with social media now, all of that's changed because there are no gatekeepers. So people are discovering our music through the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, whatever that makes Lisa LeBlanc possible, Sal Babb possible, Les Godusno possible, you know, Le Petit Beliveau, Jacques Chourette.

All of these artists are just, you know, hey babies, they're all really, really good. And they're getting, you know, they babies. They're all really, really good and they're getting, you know, they're entrenched in the Quebec market. Salle Bobbe is the biggest group, French group in Canada right now, and Les Gaudinots are coming right behind them. And those are Acadian groups. So, it's remarkable that that's happened, and I think it's just people find what they want to hear, and they discovered us, and now it's one-on-one type of relation. Does it amaze you as a as a kid growing up in Sheddy Camp that that there's this whole new generation that's kind of exploding because because they're just able to have this direct relationship with their audience? Absolutely. I mean I've worked along with hundreds of people at Protecting Our Culture, promoting it, and

to see that it's so alive, it's so different, each artist is different. But we also have writers, film producers, Phil Comeau. Phil Comeau has got, I don't know how many international awards, I think it's over 300 by now with his productions. And we're a well-kept secret in English Canada, but in French Canada, it's happening. It's big. Well, it's definitely bigger than when I started.

Thanks so much, Ron. That's perfect. Merci, Megan. Merci à vous. Ronald de Bourgeois is a member of the Order of Canada in recognition for his dedication to Acadian culture. This has been The Current Podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones.

You can also listen online at cbc.ca slash The Current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening.