Cajuns and Canals

In support of our area’s police officers
May 17, 2017
Beware the Roseau Cane bug
May 17, 2017
In support of our area’s police officers
May 17, 2017
Beware the Roseau Cane bug
May 17, 2017

“Cajuns and Canals.” That has a nice ring, like a song. I am (or was) a song writer, but a song about my Cajun Land would have to include “bays and bayous”, “lakes and levees” “creeks and crevasses,” “battures and beaches,” floods and flow”, and … Water or a.) Lilies, b.)Craft, c.) Cress, d.) Spout, e.) Shed, f.) Way and g.) Watergate (scratch that). (sic).

It’s not a song, just a correction to an error in my April 12 column.

I wrote that the Cajun name for Larose was “Kanale Arvey”. Not! That was our name for Harvey, Louisiana or “Harvey Canal.” Larose was “Kanale a-ron” or Harang Canal, named after the Harang family who owned Banana Grove Plantation nearby, one of whom was Thibodaux Mayor, Warren Harang, Jr., who once, in a ceremony presented my father-in-law the key to his city, but that’s another story.


That canal was evidently a factor in forming the community. Its citizens are Cajun descendants who live peacefully side by side with African-Americans, Asians and Latinos. To the Feds it’s only “Zip code 70373”.

Canals (kanale) are everywhere in Cajun Land, just be careful not to step in one. With cattle and horses at the time, there were worst things to step in.

My friend Vin Bruce helped me identify some he navigated with his father Levy as a boy. Canal or Kanale: Bowie, Dixie-Delta, Scully, Laurel Valley, Britton, Yankee, Cut Off (Ko-toff), , Point au chien, Cloverland, Field, Company, 40 arpent, 20 arpent, Morrow , Kanale a Gom-blay and the East Canal, a short cut to the Gulf. (This was privately owned and until the State took it over, there was a fee to navigate it.) There’s many more, and that’s only in Lafourche, Terrebonne is pock marked with a major share also, namely Robinson, Lapeyrouse, Superior, Voss and Boudreaux. (There was a dance hall on Boudreaux Canal where I first heard Chuck and son Pee Wee Gautreaux’s band play. My band at the time was playing at the Rose Room nearly, but that’s also another column.


Sadly I can’t write about canals without recalling my friend Curtis Leblanc who drowned in the Houma Navigational Canal in 1947.

Terrebonne is French for “good land” but like Lafourche it’s more water than land. Most Cajuns were Catholic and early on the Priest would baptize babies by pouring water on their feet instead of their heads to get them ready to be brought up in a land more wet than dry. (NOT! I just made that up!)

And now about the mother of all Lafourche/Terrebonne canals, the intracoastal, which cuts through both parishes on its way West.


In my early days in the Lafourche Parish Assessor’s office (47 years) before computers and before almost everything else we take for granted today, the Sheriff, Clerk of Court, Assessor, Police Jury (now Council) and Registrar of Voters were all located in the Court House which was more convenient for the public, but now they are scattered in different buildings all over down town Thibodaux. It’s called progress or “The March of Time”, a movie we kids would hate and we’d Boo, preferring “The Three Stooges” but “noblesse oblige” and “Time Marches On”.

Since I was always in the Clerk of Court’s vault picking up property transfers, lawyers and abstractors assumed I was smarter than I actually was and sought my help. One question asked many times was how to find the land sales when the Federal Government enlarged the Intracoastal Canal by digging it to 12’ deep and 1000’ wide in 1942, which affected hundreds of land owners from Larose to Houma and beyond.

“Simple”, I would answer, “Because there are none. Maybe in a deep vault in Washington D.C., but not here. The land was confiscated by “eminent domain” and the “War Powers” acts. They needed a wider canal to move war materials to help win World War II. It helped! We won!”


Years later my band was flown to Washington D.C. to play music at a fund raiser for a newly elected Cajun Congressman. The subject came up and he answered “It was all legal. We stole it fair and square.” We laugh and the band struck up a song called “Land, Sky and Water.” How ironic! BYE NOW!

Leroy MartinLeroy Martin column