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Elaine Larcade Bourque
Inducted on April 20, 2023
As a young child, she lived in Acadia parish, near Bosco, often referred to as the “Marais Bouleur” area. Her family moved to Lafayette parish when she was a teenager. Since 1959, she has lived in the small community of Milton near the Vermilion River when she married Russell Bourque. When Milton High School became an elementary-middle school in 1966, she was hired as the secretary and worked at Milton school for 31 years, retiring in 1997.
After her three children were grown, she attempted to do some spinning and weaving on her own. In 1989, she was awarded an apprenticeship under Mrs. Gladys LeBlanc Clark by the Louisiana Division of the Arts. For one year she was able to visit with Mrs. Clark and watch and learn from her. Mrs. Clark and Elaine traveled together for approximately ten years demonstrating at Louisiana Folklife Festivals the art of Acadian spinning and weaving.
Although two of her great-grandmothers (all descendants of the Acadians who were thrown out of Nova Scotia) spun and wove both cotton and wool many years ago, the tradition of Acadian weaving had almost disappeared when she was growing up. As a child, she does not remember seeing anyone spin or weave. Her father was a farmer and did grow the white cotton which she helped harvest in late summer, but she did not see any brown cotton growing in our area. The brown cotton is a short staple and very time consuming to gin, card and spin. She enjoys working with brown cotton because it is such a pretty color and gets prettier with age.
She weaves samples that are representative of the materials and patterns that were used by the Acadian spinners and weavers of Southwestern Louisiana. She knows that when the Acadians arrived in Louisiana they brought their weaving skills with them. They had never grown brown cotton in Nova Scotia, but probably found it growing in the area and used it to make their beautiful blankets and clothing.
Today, Acadian textiles are looked up by textile collectors as a “one of a kind” work of art and labor of love. Because we may lose this tradition that was so important and necessary to the Southwest Louisiana area, she hopes to continue and preserve the tradition of Acadian brown and white cotton spinning and weaving as long as she can.
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