BIG EASY MARKS 300 YEARS
A journey through its storied past
On St. John the Baptist’s Day, seven spirit-seekers and three mediums gathered around a table inside a 200-year-old haunted house in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
Candles flickered on a wine-coloured tablecloth. A cat mewed. Marie Laveau, the 19th-century voodoo queen reimagined as a doll, stood quietly in the corner, bearing witness to the séance-in-progress.
One by one, the guests reached out to their deceased loved ones. The mediums received visions of green olives (a message from a mother fond of them), embroidered cloth (from a greatgrandmother of Latin-American descent) and a limping animal (a family’s golden retriever that had been hit by a car). When my turn arrived, I did not shake the family tree or poke empty dog beds. Instead, I attempted to rouse a figure who has been garnering a heap of attention this year in New Orleans.
“I would like to speak to Bienville,” I told the trio of women, uttering the surname of the FrenchCanadian who established the port city in 1718. “I want to know what he thinks of New Orleans now.”
The medium Juliet spoke from her position behind a black lacy curtain that partially obscured her face and body. “I saw him shaking his head,” she said. “He is in shock and disbelief that, after 300 years, we are still here.”
Voodoo Queen Bloody Mary, who ran the séance, said that she had once tried to find JeanBaptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in Paris’s Montmartre Cemetery, but failed to locate his remains. (She was looking in the wrong resting place.) On this occasion, Bienville materialized with little prodding. Lucy the dog took longer to show up.
So, why was Bienville so quick to return? Perhaps he was curious about all the fuss the city is making for the tricentennial, with special art exhibits, celebratory cocktails and festive signage on buses, lamp posts and lawns. Maybe he wants to don ropes of Mardi Gras beads and dance on 300 years of history, some of which he made.
If he does decide to join the party, he will find himself on a crowded stage. New Orleans has accumulated a lot of characters over three centuries, and not all require a medium to contact.
Soft, soggy, swampy. The area’s boggy terrain was better suited for spotting gators than establishing an urban centre. But that didn’t stop the French. The colonizers first started sniffing around the Louisiana coast in 1682, back when its primary inhabitants were Indigenous peoples. Decades later, the French established La Nouvelle- Orléans on the eastern banks of the lower Mississippi River, a move that many consider a folly.
“It’s a very strategic site for a city,” said Richard Campanella, a geographer and professor at the Tulane School of Architecture. “It made sense at the time.”
I met Campanella in his office, where he rattled off a whiplash version of the city’s history. The French ran New Orleans until the 1760s, followed by the Spanish (1762-1800), then back to the French.