WASHINGTON— Growing up in the suburbs of New Orleans, Tonya Nelson never imagined she’d one day be living in the woods of rural Louisiana — putting her kids on a school bus to town each morning and trying her hand at organic farming in the afternoon.
But the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and the philanthropy of Canadian businessman Frank Stronach, changed everything in Ms. Nelson’s life.
For most of the past five years, the 38-year-old single mother has lived in a tiny outpost tucked up against the banks of the Atchafalaya River— a place known fondly to its residents as Canadaville.
Built by the Magna International Inc. founder in Katrina’s wake as a place of refuge for Gulf Coast residents left homeless by the storm, the community at its peak housed more than 200 evacuees in 49 rent-free modular homes.
But as of Friday, Canadaville— for all intents and purposes — will be no more.
After fulfilling a five-year commitment to fund the community, Magna is winding down the residential side of its operations on the 320-hectare property near Simmesport, about 240 kilometres northwest of New Orleans.
Many of Canadaville’s residents spent the Christmas holiday season packing up their belongings ahead of a Jan. 7 deadline to vacate their homes, and only 11 families remained on Thursday.
A handful of families will be allowed to stay through the end of the school year, in May, provided they pay rent for their accommodations.
“It’s definitely quiet — really, really quiet,” Ms. Nelson said on the phone Thursday from the village offices, where she works as an executive assistant.
“I had somebody pass through and tell me it seemed abandoned. There is really nobody here.”
It’s a marked change from the beehive of activity that was there in the months following Katrina, when Mr. Stronach spent $7.5-million constructing Canadaville from scratch.
The experimental community, formally incorporated as Magnaville, sprung from Mr. Stronach’s idea of providing new opportunities for evacuees who had lost everything.
Many of the original residents arrived in Louisiana from Stronach’s horse racing facilities in Florida, where Mr. Stronach had airlifted them immediately after the storm.
In exchange for community service, Mr. Stronach offered Canadaville’s residents free housing and some career training. He hoped Canadaville would become self-sustaining through organic farming and other projects.
“We had a very clean space for people to raise their families, without high crimes and drugs. To that standard, we were very successful,” says Shane Carmichael, the project’s longtime manager.
“People who were put in FEMA parks never got the training and development and support to get out there and restart their lives.”
“I’m not saying it was a perfect environment and that we did everything perfect along the way, but I think we created some spaces that made it a bit easier for some of those parents to raise their kids.”
For Ms. Nelson, Canadaville was a blessing. When Katrina struck, she had been living in Pass Christian, Mississippi— a Gulf Coast city almost destroyed by the storm. She spent an itinerant year moving from Arkansas, to Colorado and Texas before hearing from a friend about the opportunities at Canadaville.
Her children thrived in the community’s stability; Ms. Nelson’s two eldest are currently students at Southern University in New Orleans.
“You know, I love living here. I have adjusted to it. It is really nice, quiet. I feel safe. To move on, you are going to be starting over in a sense,” Ms. Nelson says.
“Out here, I learned how to depend on myself, and how to survive in the country.”
Mr. Stronach’s ambitions for the Canadaville project, in some ways, were never fully achieved.
Plans to expand Canadaville’s 16-hectare experimental farm into a large-scale organic operation were thwarted by the economic recession — which sent a division of Magna into bankruptcy protection — and a well-publicized early feud with James (Boo) Fontenot, the mayor of Simmesport.
Canadaville residents at one point confronted Mr. Fontenot at a Simmesport town meeting after he allegedly blamed them for a spike in local crime. They printed T-shirts saying We Live in Canadaville and We Are Not Criminals.
Relations between Canadaville residents and their Simmesport relatives improved markedly after Mr. Fontenot’s death in 2008. Canadaville even provided food and water to Simmesport residents who lost power during Hurricane Gustav that year.
“At first the town messed things up, gave a negative impression of us,” says Ms. Nelson.
“But people eventually embraced us. The local grocery stores, the church communities. You know, we shop at these stores. We interact with these people. So I think they turned around. I think now they look at us as people who are members of the community.”
Even as Canadaville winds down, Magna is planning a continued presence in the Simmesport area. Mr. Carmichael says the company is working with town officials on economic-development projects to boost activity at the inland port on the Atchafalaya River.
The 49 modular homes on the Canadaville site will remain. Magna is looking into the possibility of making the housing available during future emergencies to help people“during a time of need,” Mr. Carmichael says.
Ms. Nelson’s personal future remains unclear. For now, she is keeping her job in Canadaville’s offices and will remain until her youngest daughter graduates high school in the spring.
Mr. Carmichael says Magna is investigating whether Ms. Nelson might remain with the company in another capacity.
“I am a little bit worried, because I still don’t know where I am actually going to go,” Ms. Nelson says.
“My plan is to move back home (to the New Orleans area) but in relocating again you do have to find another job. It’s something big ahead of me, but I’m sure I will be OK.”
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