‘Canadaville’ featured in Newsweek

With the nation’s collective memory focusing on the tragic events of 10 years ago, most Americans’ immediately think “New Orleans.”
While the Mississippi Gulf Coast bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina’s brutal assault, the resulting flooding in New Orleans due to breaches in the city’s levee system captured the attention of the nation and of the world.
It is then somewhat unusual that one of the nation’s foremost news magazines chose to highlight a Katrina-related story that was not located in New Orleans, the Pontchartrain parishes or the Gulf Coast area. Instead it was right here in Avoyelles.
Newsweek magazine’s “Katrina Remembered” story focused on “Canadaville” -- a social experiment and relief effort by Canadian businessman Frank Stronach. Stronach put 49 mobile homes on a 900-acre tract in Simmesport that became home to over 300 refugees from Katrina.
He called the development “Magnaville,” after his auto parts manufacturing company, Magna International, in Ontario Province. The community became known as “Canadaville” due to a headline in the Avoyelles Journal.
The Newsweek article features interviews with those involved in the project, a few who lived there and some other residents of the town.