Each month, Saugeen Shores Men’s Club hosts a special guest speaker and, at its June meeting, Alan Broussard, regaled and entertained the members with stories of his family.
As a child born on a rice farm and cattle ranch in Louisiana, all Alan Broussard wanted to be was a farmer. Little did he know the turns that his life would take.
Born in 1954, Broussard is a born storyteller and in that southern Louisiana drawl, he wove stories of his family from his early ancestors in Normandy, France to French Canada in the 1600s to ending up in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Broussard said, “I am proud of my rich heritage that goes back to the times when the Normans invaded France and how the Acadians of the Atlantic Maritimes spread their history to become the Cajuns of the deep South in America.”
The Broussards who settled in Acadia were descendants of Francois Broussard and Catherine Richard. Francois was born near Anjou, France and arrived in Port Royal in 1671 where he and Catherine had six sons and five daughters together. Son, Joseph Broussard, was the leader of the Acadian resistance (1755–1762) that carried out raids with the Mi’kmaq against the British, and commanded a privateering vessel.
The folklore continued as Alan wove the stories of his French-speaking Acadian grandfather, Joseph Broussard, his cultural background with a Cajun father and Lebanese-American mother, to his life growing up on a rice farm and cattle ranch raising purebred Charolais cattle.
“Originally, the cattle were brought to Mexico by the-then French ambassador and because they were so prized, the Mexican government eventually passed a law that they could not be exported,” said Broussard. “Now, Grandfather was educated in the Jesuit Jefferson college and the Bishop approved the cattle sale after agreeing that a portion of the sale would go to the church. The 87 head of cattle were however, brought across the Rio Grande river to Texas ‘under cover of night’ and were then transported into Louisiana, causing a diplomatic situation with Mexico. His grandfather was then incarcerated, fined and the herd had to be returned to Mexico. However, in time, thanks to a Texas ranching ‘partner’ some were slowly brought back across the border where they were again transported t to Louisiana to end up on the Flying J ranch and eventually the Crescent J Ranch.”
While the official account of the Charolais cattle in the U.S. is, “… the Charolais herd on the Crescent J Ranch is ‘The Foundation Herd of Charolais in North America’, descended from the first herd of that breed to be brought from France to North America, specifically, to Mexico, right before World War II. There were a few Charolais bulls imported into the US from Mexico, but the first full-blooded females to come were the ancestors of these Charolais on this ranch.” Broussard’s recounting of the story however, interspersed with humour, tales of the Chisholm Trail and a grandfather incarcerated for ‘rustling’ was far more interesting.
There is a framed story on the “Wall of Fame” in a Visitor Centre that tells more about how the Charolais herd was brought from France to Mexico in the 1930’s before WWII by a French ambassador to Mexico, then from Mexico to the Flying J Ranch in Louisiana by Broussard’s father in 1953, and from Louisiana to the Crescent J Ranch in Florida in 1972.
While at the outset, Broussard said, “… all i wanted to be was a farmer”, he went on to the the University of Louisiana earning a Bachelor of Science in Agri-Business. Although spending three years farming, it was a 37-year career in the oil and gas industry that would take him on adventures around the world.
He started as a driller on oil wells and worked on an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico for three years. In 1981, he was made a rig supervisor and from there his career escalated to a successful worldwide career as a drilling superintendent that took him to West Africa, Nigeria, Columbia (South America), Algeria, Bolivia, South Korea and more, until his retirement in 2015.
When it comes to the Broussards and their long family history, ‘The World Acadian Congress’ became the setting for a family reunion of historic proportions, as descendants of Acadian leader Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard gathered in Moncton, N.B. to meet and explore their lineage.
It was the Broussard Acadian descendants who settled in southern Louisiana and who became known as Cajuns.
The reunion takes place every five years and reunion organizer, Alan Broussard, is also president of the Beausoleil Family Association.
“My grandfather, Joseph, was a guy that cared about where he came from, and he actually came up here to Canada when I was seven years old, and brought my older brother who was 12 at the time,” said Broussard. “So, when my brother got back to Louisiana, he had lots of stories about our cousins in the north.”
From his days on the ranch, Broussard became adept at ‘cracking the whip’ as he demonstrated to the Probarians, read a moving poem he had written and then brought out his accordion playing and singing an ancient 500-year-old French song that had been carried to Louisiana by the Acadians. “The accordion was actually made from the beautiful walnut from my grandfather’s bed,” said Broussard, before playing the traditional French song.
For an hour, Broussard took Probus members on a colourful lifetime of adventure, from the rice farm and cattle ranch where as a boy he drove cattle, to places in the world where he encountered jungles, drug cartels and desert nomads. Probus members then had the opportunity to see many items of the memorabilia that he brought to the meeting.
Broussard married a Canadian, Brenda Shantz of Kitchener/Waterloo with ties to Port Elgin, and together they have three daughters, Erin, Amy and Rachel.
