Avoyelles could be poster parish for the French connection

As any business knows, you beat the competition by offering the customer something the others don’t have. The questions to ask: “What makes us different? What makes us better? What do we have that the others don’t?”
For Louisiana in general -- and Avoyelles in particular -- one thing becomes abundantly clear just by flipping through a phone book. French.
A recent gathering to promote tourism in the area included a discussion on how to “cash in” on the state’s French connections.
Sheldon Roy, founding president and current president of the Avoyelles CODOFIL chapter, said he came away from that meeting with renewed optimism and determination. CODOFIL stands for the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana.
When first established over 20 years ago, its emphasis was on renewing interest in the French language in the former French colony.
Now the emphasis has shifted to trying to see how the state, communities and tourism agencies “can use the French language, culture, heritage and history to boost tourism,” Roy said. “The thrust now is to tie French to the economy.”
While many in Louisiana may have forgotten the state’s ties to France and French Canada, the Frenchmen’s memories are not so fleeting. “We had more tourists from France and from Canada than any other single countries,” Roy said.
Charles Larroque, CODOFIL’s executive director, recently addressed a gathering concerning the importance and potential of the state’s French traditions in attracting tourists to the state. Roy told The Weekly News that he has corresponded with Larroque concerning that issue and Avoyelles’ possible role in that effort.
He shared a brief email in which Larroque noted the “cultural pride and zeal that was so obvious” at that meeting.
“We would like to make Avoyelles the CODOFIL ‘poster child’ for reinvigorating French in Louisiana,” Larroque wrote. Roy said one suggestion is to get French-speaking elected officials’ support for an effort to introduce French in the public sector -- perhaps with bilingual signage on streets and public buildings. The public would be brought into the effort by noting the impact it would have on tourism in the communities. Roy has fought English-speaking officialdom’s Francophobic ways before -- and prevailed.
“We were once the most active CODOFIL chapter in the state,” Roy said. “We wanted to rename all of the lakes and bayous in Avoyelles Parish in the original French. Most people referred to them by those names, but the official maps all used the English translations of the names. “We contacted the U.S. Department of the Interior and presented them with a list of 130 names that we wanted in French on the official maps,” he said. “They said they couldn’t do it; that it had to be done by law.” Roy said the chapter didn’t take non for an answer. They went to the Police Jury and had the jury pass an ordinance recognizing the French names of the lakes and bayous. The “legal” list of landmark names was then sent to Interior’s cartography division “and every map produced since then has been published with French language names,” he said. Roy is hoping the current plans and efforts to renew interest in the French language and culture will be as successful. He is optimistic that the Old World attraction of the state’s French history, and the unique position among the other 49 states that heritage brings with it, will result in even more tourism for the state and Avoyelles Parish.