Hosted by Leighton Steele and Daniel Robichaud, the “Trois Beaux Canards” show features Francophone music and culture on CKDU 88.1 radio station from Dalhousie University. The program received CKDU's Best Specialty Broadcast Award in 2007 for it's documentary on the life of the late Lulu Larude, a fixture of Halifax nightlife (listen, MP3).

 This year the show has received honorable mention at the National Campus and Community Radio Association's (NCRA) National Community Radio Awards in the category of Programming Excellence - Documentary, for it's broadcast entitled "Tale of Acadie: interviews with Poitvin storytellers"

 Don't Miss it! 

  Scheduled for full-length  rebroadcast in CKDU's Operation Wakeup - Monday November 16th 2009 from the hours of 8am and 9am on 88.1FM 

 Listen to the teaser 

Just press play to listen to the promo currently airing on CKDU.

 Synopsis

 It begins on Lillianne Gaies, a french storyteller on her first voyage to Nova Scotia. Standing on the Halifax waterfront, she stops to read the inscription on Acadian monument to her friends, whe she realizes the role George's Island played on her own ancestors. Despite a sadness everpresent, she rejoices the rich accent that she found in southern Nova Scotia. So reminiscent of that of her grandmother. 

Mathieu Thadoe was a storyteller which first met us in France in 2007, with little to know about the history of the acadians. Three years later, he has made the pligrimage to Nova Scotia and he is awestruck of how little is known about the Acadians. He ends on "Cette terre d'Acadie est porteuse aussi, du plus jamais ca." - roughly translated, he says "this land holds what will never be again". 

Phillippe Moinier is a photographer on a mission to return to France with images of proof that his forefather's culture still exists.  Through his camera, he has been astounded at the strenght that remains in the culture.

Marie Helene Coupail is an author and storyteller from central France who has spent decades preserving her disappearing culture. She is shocked to hear that little is done to promote the use of the regional french, to favour more standard, non-dialectal, versions. She is outraged to find out that Acadian is not respected as a language in itself.  This concerns her because in her community in France, the language is now extinct.

The final peice features Michel Gaies, a storyteller in his 80s, who remembers when this old french was still spoken fluently. He is moved to see the tenacity of the acadian culture and language, and wonders, if it has already gone from France, how can it still exist here?

 Listen to the full-length documentary