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Le FORUM Journal Franco-American Centre Franco-Américain

Winter 2-2020

Le Forum, Vol. 41 No. 4

Lisa Desjardins Michaud Rédactrice

Richard Michaud

Marie-Anne Gauvin

Gérard Coulombe

Katherine Wing

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Recommended Citation Michaud, Lisa Desjardins; Michaud, Richard; Gauvin, Marie-Anne; Coulombe, Gérard; Wing, Katherine; Moreau, Daniel; Myall, James; L'Heureux, Juliana; Beebe, Suzanne; Lacroix, Patrick; Arsenault, Kerri; Beaupre, Normand; Pelletier, Susann; Duclos, Marcel; Foundation of MN, French American Heritage; Bergeron, Wilfred H. (Chip); Labbé, Wilbur; Langford, Margaret; Levesque, Don; and Chenard, Robert, "Le Forum, Vol. 41 No. 4" (2020). Le FORUM Journal. 93. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/93

This Book is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Le FORUM Journal by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Lisa Desjardins Michaud, Richard Michaud, Marie-Anne Gauvin, Gérard Coulombe, Katherine Wing, Daniel Moreau, James Myall, Juliana L'Heureux, Suzanne Beebe, Patrick Lacroix, Kerri Arsenault, Normand Beaupre, Susann Pelletier, Marcel Duclos, French American Heritage Foundation of MN, Wilfred H. (Chip) Bergeron, Wilbur Labbé, Margaret Langford, Don Levesque, and Robert Chenard

This book is available at DigitalCommons@UMaine: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ francoamericain_forum/93 Le FORUM “AFIN D’ÊTRE EN PLEINE POSSESSION DE SES MOYENS”

VOLUME 41, #4 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20

Painting by Patty A. Labbé

Websites: Le Forum: http://umaine.edu/francoamerican/le-forum/ Oral History: https://video.maine.edu/channel/Oral+Histories/101838251 Library: francolib.francoamerican.org Occasional Papers: http://umaine.edu/francoamerican/occasional-papers/ Résonance, Franco-American Literary Journal: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/resonance/vol1/iss1/ other pertinent websites to check out - Les Français d’Amérique / French In America Calendar Photos and Texts from 1985 to 2002 http://www.johnfishersr.net/french_in_america_calendar.html Franco-American Women’s Institute: http://www.fawi.net $6.00 Le Forum Sommaire/Contents

Lettres/Letters...... 3 Query the Past...... 27-28 by Patrick Lacroix L’État du ME...... 4-24 Vacationland...... 29-36 Le Centre Franco-Américain Maine Trip...... 4-8 by Kerri Arsenault Université du Maine by Richard Michaud Orono, Maine 04469-5719 La Pie Bavarde...... 8-9 BOOKS/LIVRES...... 37-39, 42-45 [email protected] Normand Beaupré...... 37-39 Téléphone: 207-581-FROG (3764) by Marie-Anne Gauvin Things that Happen...... 9-10 Susann Pelletier...... 42 Volume 41 Numéro 4 par Gérard Coulombe Marcel Duclos...... 43 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 An Immersive Experience, Something French American Heritage Foundation of Publishing Board Minnesota...... 44-45 Don Levesque about living on Freeman Street, My Dad Paul Laflamme in the Pepperall Mills ...... 10-11 Lin LaRochelle by Gérard Coulombe BOOK REVIEW Louella Rolfe FAS 329, Independent Study...... 11-13 Wilfred H. (Chip) Bergeron...... 45 Kent Beaulne by Katherine Wing Rédactrice/Editor Tourtiere and Cul-de-Sacs...... 13-14 POETRY/POÉSIE...... 46-47 Lisa Desjardins Michaud by Daniel Moreau Loneliness...... by Wilbur Labbé The “Canadian Washington” Visits For Emmeline...... by Suzanne Beebe Mise en page/Layout Elegance...... by Margaret Langford Lisa Desjardins Michaud Lewiston...... 14-18 by James Myall Grandi a Grand Isle...... by Don Levesque Composition/Typesetting Twenty Years for a Crime he Didn’t Com- L’bon Dieu d’vais nous aimer...... Lisa Desjardins Michaud mit ...... 19-21 by Don Levesque Aide Technique by James Myall Lisa Desjardins Michaud Franco-American TED Talk by Susan GENEALOGY...... 50-51 Daniel Moreau Poulin...... 22 Coulombe...... by Robert Chenard by JulianaL’Heureux Tirage/Circulation/4,500 Franco-American history about business Imprimé chez/Printed by entrepreneurs...... 22-23 Centre Franco-Américain, Orono, Maine by Juliana L’Heureux Publié 4 fois l’an par le Centre Franco‑Américain. La jeune Clara Fabiola Coutu...... 24-25 Le Forum est distribué surtout aux Franco‑Américains des États‑Unis. Les énoncés, opinions et points de vue by Gérard Coulombe formulés dans Le Forum sont ceux des auteurs et ne L’État du MA...... 25-26 représentent pas nécessairement les points de vue de From Italy, with love for Kerouac...... 25 l’éditeur ou de la rédactrice, ou du Collège des arts et The History of Lowell’s Franco-American des sciences libéraux à l’Université du Maine. Le Forum is published 4 times a year by the Male Chorus...... 26 Franco‑American Center. Le Forum is distributed in Submitted by Suzanne Beebe particular to Franco‑Americans in the United States. Statements, opinions and points of view expressed are Abbonement au Le FORUM Subscription not necessarily those of the editor, the publishers or the Si vous ne l’êtes pas abonnez-vous –– s.v.p. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences of the University –– Subscribe if you have not of Maine. Tous les textes soumis doivent parvenir à —For- NOTICE! ward all submitted texts to: Lisa D. Michaud, Rédac- Nom/Name: trice-en-chef/Editor-in-chief, Le Forum, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469-5719, U.S., au plus tard Adresse/Address: quatre semaines précédant le mois de publication—at least four weeks prior to the month of publication. Please Métier/Occupation: Les lettres de nos lecteurs sont les bienvenues— check your Letters to the Editor are welcomed. mailing la- Ce qui vous intéresse le plus dans Le FORUM section which interests you the La reproduction des articles est autorisée sans bels, new most: préavis sauf indication contraire—Our original articles format for may be reproduced without notice unless otherwise Je voudrais contribuer un article au Le FORUM au sujet de: indicated. subscrip- I would like to contribute an article to Le FORUM about: L’équipe de rédaction souhaite que Le Forum soit tion ex- un mode d’expression pour vous tous les Franco‑Amér- piration. icains et ceux qui s’intéressent à nous. The staff hopes Month/ Tarif d’abonnement par la poste pour 4 numéros that Le Forum can be a vehicle of expression for you Year. Subscription rates by mail for 4 issues: Franco‑Americans and those who are interested in us. États-Unis/United States –– Individus: $20 Le Forum et son staff—Universitaires, gens de la Ailleurs/Elsewhere –– Individus: $25 communauté, les étudiants -- FAROG, Organisation/Organizations –– Bibliothèque/Library: $40 Le FORUM Centre Franco-Américain, Orono, ME 04469-5719 2 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 Endowment Lettres/ One way to support Le FORUM while SAVE THE at the same time reserving life income Letters is the establishment of a charitable gift annuity with the Franco-American Cen- DATE ~ tre Le FORUM Fund at the University of Chère Le Forum; Maine Foundation. Call 1-800-982-8503. A subscription for me, (electronically Potluck only), a subscription for my sister-in-law Chère Le Forum; (paper only), and some extra. February 25, 2020 I read the whole Forum, French & Always a pleasure working with English. I love it, every page is beautiful! 6:00 p.m. - you––plenty more article ideas to work on. Keep up your good work. It’s great! You’ll be hearing from me as always. 8:00 p.m. Cecile M. Vigue Merci à tous au Le Forum! Fairfield, ME Join us for fun, food & music! Franco-American Centre Suzanne Beebe Merci Cecile,

Merci Suzanne, The Le Forum would not be possible Contact: [email protected] without our great community support! I Thank you for renewing your sub- thank you for your kind letter! Call: 581-3789 scriptions. Likewise, it has been a pleasure working with you as well! Our readership Merci bien! thanks you for your interesting submissions Le Forum and we look forward to more!

Merci bien! Le Forum

Are you interested in genealogy? Do you need help? Consider joining our genealogy group, “Orono Franco-American Research Op- portunity Group (OFAROG)”. We have a genealogist available to help answer any questions you may have regarding research and sources. We have a library dedicated to Genealogical research, filled with materials and resources, theAdrian Lanthier Ringuette Library.

We are here from 8:00 to 4:30 and by special appointment. Contact Lisa Michaud at [email protected] or 207.581.3789 or our Genealogist: Debbie Roberge at [email protected] 3 Le Forum just in time to struggle to exit the city in the burned down) and wandered in to see what afternoon “escape” race and in the middle of was going on. The hall was about the size Maine Trip a driving rainstorm to boot. After seven plus of two church rec halls, but laid out with hours of driving up the south shore of the the stage at the far end. I quickly ran into By Richard Michaud St. Laurence River I arrived in Kamouraska, Françoise Michaud Dufresne, a petit lady Quebec at 12:30am only to find my reserved in her seventies who is considered the pre- 13 August 1999 motel closed and I had to go back down the mier author and historian of the Michaud Trip to Quebec/Maine road to one I could find open. Kamouraska, family. She is the former president of the family history trip Quebec is the town where the original immi- Michaud Association and the author of the grant from France-Pierre Michael (Michau) most complete work (in French) on the first It didn’t hit me as to where I was and finally settled down, worked a large section four Michaud generations in French Cana- why until the afternoon of the second day of land, died and where most of the first da, which I have. She and I have talked on while standing in the middle of the St. Louis the phone and written several times and we Catholic cemetery in Kamouraska, Quebec gave each other a warm hug, chatted for a bit Canada. I had stood in one place and slow- and then I invited her to continue with her ly turned in a full circle and everywhere I to continue with her reunion duties and we looked the names were almost as familiar as would see each other later. She asked me to my own. Here was Pelletier, Dube, Ouellett have lunch at her house on Monday before and there was Tardiff, Boucher, and Dionne, we parted. I wandered around, noticing the to name just a few. They were all French paintings of notable houses on the walls, Canadian names and I was walking the took pics of a couple of them including the home ground where my Michaud Ancestors Michaud one, noticed a corner table devoted had lived, walked and died. The spirit of the to Michaud’s and one to Asselin’s (first time extended family seemed to wash over me in the two families have ever met together); waves. My throat tightened and tears came went to the Michaud table and met Louis, freely as my spirit seemed to join with those the president, and several other association of the family members of my heritage who officers, all of whom spoke very adequate had come to this land some 350 years ago. English. Unfortunately the only officer who It all began over two years ago when my doesn’t speak a word of English was the ge- Air Force fighter squadron planned to hold nealogist! Stopped at the Asselin’s table and a reunion in Danbury, CN in the summer of picked up their family history (and through 1999. It was long ways to go but the New that was reminded that they had a lot more England fall colors and old friends would children besides Pierre’s Marie). Found be worth it. Then trip expanded to include some English speaking Canadians and some a later discovered Michaud and also an Americans (Maine and Michigan), had Ouelette reunion in Canada and a six week Parish clerk helps me find info on lunch with the group and then all went on RV trip around the ancestral area of northern Jean Romain a two hour bus tour of the old Kamouraska Maine. But finally and more realistically, five or six generations also lived and died. Parsh, which included about five or six other family existences distilled it to just the Pierre had come to Quebec in 1655, served towns , each having their own church. In the family history effort (a tough decision to his three years of indentured work for his early, Kamouraska was the primary center miss the old Air Force gang) consisting of passage on the “La Fortune,” got married for church, social seaport, judicial for many a nine day trip to the Michaud reunion and to Marie Ancelin (Assellin), moved from decades. It “lost” the judicial when the court for the first time in my life to the Michaud the island of Orleans just offshore Quebec house burned down and politics moved the area of northern Maine where my dad was City, downstream to the Isle of Geese, to the seat of justice to Riviere du loup, a larger born. I tried to brush up on my French, get Isle of Cranes, to Islet on the south shore, town to the north; and later the sea trade all the family history data history together in had nine children along the way and finally went to nearby St. Pascal when the railroad a plan, and otherwise prepare for the trip, but to Kamouraska. came through the valley. It is a beautiful other family things seemed to take priority. little town now on the river’s edge. The St. After a fun, four day RV trip with daughter 14 August 1999 Laurence valley is broad and fertile. Lots of Stan and Kath and Merrill to fish in Idaho Saturday I moved into my reserved dairy farms along with grain and corn in the waters, I got back and found I had just two motel in Kamouraska) there are just two in fields. Scattered throughout are “mounds” days to get ready. But then nothing works town plus several B&B’s) and drove up and of rock-granite or shale, upon which many out perfectly. down the main street several times (about towns, including Kamouraska, are built, a mile long running along the St. L-took thus leaving all the valley land for farms. It 13 August 1999 awhile to figure out that all the houses had was interesting to note that if a road came Friday I flew out of SLC on Friday the number “325” on them which turned to one of the mounds; it just went straight th the 13 our wedding anniversary (but Pat out to be the number of years Kamouras- up and over it. Coming down the far side was in Mesa anyway) and mother in law ka had been in existence; found the civic was sometimes quite a thrill. At the end Tory Gossner’s birthday (nothing was timed center in back of the Chapel of St. Louis of the tour we went to the area they had right), and got into Montreal about 4:30pm (built in 1909 after the previous three had (Suite page 5) 4 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Maine Trip continued from page 4) picturesque). They are improved upon as the the river. It was the most lovely, peaceful years go by and I thought this one was quite setting. She had fixed a lunch and then we marked the fields, which were believed to be ornate and very beautiful. Probably would talked for over three hours. I had written to Pierre’s. His was a large farm for the times hold 6-700 people. They had a presentation her after getting a copy of her “First Four -14 argents (acres) frontage on the St. L. At by members of the Michaud/Asselin families Generations” book on the Michaud’s and ex- one time the chapel was only a few blocks before the Mass which was interesting in that pressed my gratitude for her significant work from Pierre’s, but after two chapels burned the people were all dressed in clothing of the (it really is) so we got along like two old down the Catholic Bishop determined that early French style. When they passed the friends. While there, she gave me, with what the next chapel was to be built where the contribution basket to a rather full house, the I perceived as evident pleasure, a complete town now stands (on a three mile by one mile one (of four) that got to me didn’t have much set of the past journals of the Michaud As- mound). Actually the third one also burned in it although there was a good crowd. I gave sociation. She had been president and is the down and the current one (the 4th) is build a good sum extra on behalf of all the past editor. I can’t wait to get into them even tho on its foundation. At the site of the first two Michaud’s. The Association had a business they are generally in French. Her husband, chapels is a memorial to the first pioneers meeting that afternoon but I didn’t go as it a retired doctor, had to go to Quebec City so of Kamouraska, and Pierre’s name leads the was to be all in French. Instead I drove about I missed him. Afterwards, I took quick tour list and the comment that about 1300 plus through the local musee’ (museum) which early residents are buried at the site, but really had the best collection of household there are no gravestones. So I’m assuming and farm tools I have ever seen. Took a that Pierre/Marie Asselin, and the sons in couple of more pics and headed, short on our line residents are buried at the site, but gas, down the river bank (the road on the there are no gravestones. So I’m assuming south side of the St. L is like Route 66 in that Pierre/Marie Asselin, and the sons in that all the vacationers take it for the view our line Jean Baptiste/Marie Vaillancour, and history) and then east to Maine. I figure Jean Baptiste/Cecil Ouellet Jean François/ that I got the following good family history Marie Cote, Pierre/Marie LaMarre are all stuff from the visit to Kamouraska. buried there. The next in line, Jean Romain 1-A feel for the ancestral homeland came to Maine in the mid 1800’s. After of Pierre which you can only get from the tour, we had free time and that’s when actually going there. I wandered into the cemetery to see if I 2-a future identity with the Michaud could find any family graves. It was then Association and officers that I experienced the sensation of being 3-A chance to meet family genealog- surrounded by the spirit of my ancestors, ical expert Françoise Michaud Dufresne as in truth, I recognized almost every name Fort Kent Title Office and to increase our friendship there. However, none there were readable, 4- Got a copy of Françoise’ genealogy or even still standing, from the period earlier 20km upstream to Riviere Ouelle which is on all of the pioneers of Kamouraska about than about 1875. The ones prior that time mentioned often in our history and ran into 150pages had since become unreadable because of the the commemoration to Rene Ouellete, major 5-Got a copy of Asselin (Pierre Marie) wearing away of the particular kind of stone, wife line-Cecille. I would have gone further geneology history book of 360 pages most often a light, tan colored, sandstone. to Islet where Pierre was for a while, but I 6-Pictures of the Michaud Monument, The readable ones after 1870’s are mostly was short on gas and didn’t want to buy any bridge, land etc. and historical Graphic granite. Later I changed to a sport coat and on Sunday. material. tie and went back to dinner and evening 7-Pictures of Rene Hoalett (Ouelette) festivities. Sat with several English-speaking 16 August 1999 monument in River Ouelle folks, including two ladies from Ontario Monday I found a little bakery (a 8-Gift of full set of past (twelve whom I called the dynamic duo. They will German lady who had married a local years) Michaud “Le Brelan” association be a good contact for family history. The new Frenchman) and got a few goodies to take publication “standard operating procedure” at reunions to Françoise, walked through the cemetery I found out that you need to get your (and probably other gatherings) now is that again, took a picture of the Pierre Michaud dollars changed for Canadian money at a you don’t worry about their name and ad- bridge over the Kamouraska creek, and bank because every gas station and motel dress, you just ask for their email address. went to Françoise’s at 11:30 am. She has a gives you way less then the going rate. A It’s the most productive connection. Then we lovely house with the backyard right on the Canadian dollar is about 60% of a US dollar ate and watched some entertainment and I St Laurence River. You could see a ship on at a bank. I got to Clair, NB just across the left early to get out of the cigarette smoke. the opposite side of the river in the deeper border (St John River) late in the afternoon channel as I just noticed by the picture of and decided to stay in a Canadian motel as 15 August 1999 Françoise and me that the tide is out leaving it would be cheaper. Found the very nice Sunday we all went to a High Mass at little water on her side. On the Kamouraska Maple Leaf in Clair overlooking the border St. Louis Church. Amazing that the chapels side you could see the eel nets getting ready checkpoint. The owner Reno, who spoke were built for an area which had only about for the fall catch which will be sent to Asia. excellent English, and I got along just fine. 300 people in it (every town has one gen- She had a sitting room of wicker and pillows The St. John is about 80-100 yds across erally on a hill in the middle of town very with windows on three sides over looking (Continued on page 6) 5 Le Forum (Maine Trip continued from page 5) genealogist in New England. I got a volume (and that’s the ones I could remember). I got on Cote (Marie Ann, wife of Pierre II abt a small book on the Ayottes, Fourniers, and and is a lot of water. I saw photographs of 1786), and Dube (Helene, mother of Marie eight other history books on the Maine/New huge log drifts taken years ago when they Cyr, ggf Calixte wife)- I can still see in my Brunswick area and the Acadians. She’s on used it to float the logs downstream mind’s eye Marie’s name on their tombstone email and said “write me any time!” Lovely (now they use trucks). Incidentally, one as I stood and looked at it Whoaaa, I just lady. On the way home I detoured to the of our families drowned in the St. John got all choked up and teary eyed thinking Diagle cemetery to see if I could find Vital downstream by Fredricton. I drove around about these great ladies and the certainty of Ayotte’s grave (that’s where my records Ft. Kent/Wallagrass for a couple of hours meeting them some day. There is surely truth show he’s supposed to be), but couldn’t find to get a feel for it. Ft. Kent, Frenchville and to the testimonies of a spiritual connection anything on him, but I did get chased by a Madawaska run along the south bank of the between us when we are involved in finding flock of white geese who wouldn’t take “git” St. John. Wallagrass, Soldier pond and Eagle our ancestors. And a volume on Thibideaus for an answer. So went to St.Louis Parish in Lake run south by the Fish River. (Margaret, gggmother of Marie Cyr). Linda Ft. Kent and found death record on him and is awesome. She gets a contract to “do” a Romain, gggf. That’s a neat experience to 17 August 1999 family line and she’ll jump on it about Sept/ have the rectory clerk open the vault (big, First thing, I called Aurora and Ber- Oct when winter approaches in Maine and creaky metal door) and reach up and take nard and made an appointment to go to their by May/June she’ll have three big volumes down a volume which was the actual book place in the early afternoon. So that morning covering the first to the last of the family, of entry for the 1800’s and then they shift I drove over to Frenchville and Madawaska, complete with pics of most of the families from one to the other in nono-second. Aurora both Michaud connected, and is downstream of the 1900’s. What an organizer!! We got had a comment from a local historian that he (east) of Ft. Kent. Didn’t have time to do talking about a couple of my family and she thought that Romain had left Kamouraska much other than walk the St. Louis (Ft. Kent) because the English had “impressed” him and the St. Luce (Frnchville) cemeteries so into the military for the War of 1812 and he I had to go back the next day. I spent the did the only honorable thing a Frenchman whole afternoon with Aurora and Bernard. could do under those circumstances-he They have a lovely, two stories, and porch, disserted and came to America where they white home beside the “Wallagrass Stream” couldn’t find him. The historian also said creek on an old family Michaud farm of that Romain wasn’t supposed to have been 4-500 acres. Bernard was born in the house. the most devoted Catholic, so when he died, Aurora was the original Michaud (she’s a he was buried “over the fence” between the Pelletier) who had sent us some genealogy cemetery and the Fish River. The clerk also 20 or 30 names. She had a 3x5 card on each thought that was where Vital Ayotte proba- person-two recipe boxes full. And some bly was buried because I couldn’t find him other printed material, an old daguerreotype in the old cemetery. And as chance would pic.of ggggrandfather Romain, another of have it, in later years the Fish River really his son Nalbert and wife. I asked her for flooded and Gpa Romain and Vital (and oth- some photo copies of all of it which she did ers) were washed out into the St. John River for me the next day. We talked for three or and thence to the Atlantic Ocean!! You can four hours about the family. Bernard would only come up with those stories when you come in every once in a while and take a go back to the old home site. That afternoon quick look at some of the stuff, offer a short Aurora’s home on Michaud Road in I went back to Aurora’s and she had all the comment (classic New England man of few Wallagrass, Maine photocopies for me. We still have a lot to words) about not understanding all this stuff lead me downstairs to her “office” and pro- talk about next time I go back. and then go back to the TV. When we were ceeded to go to a six foot long cabinet, about through he wanted to “show me the farm”, six drawers high, all full of 3x5 cards-and 19 August 1999 so we hopped in his pickup and took a tour. she had a card on all of the families we were Thursday in the morning at 8 am sharp I think he was truly hoping to show me a talking about. I really think she has a card on I stopped in at the Aroostook city office and moose. I was surprised that they could grow every French-Canadian there ever was. She only was able to barely scratch the surface potatoes and grain on what seemed to be the then told me about Geraldine Chasse, whom of what I’m sure is there. I got a copy of a tops of the hills. It was leased out now, but I I just had to see. She called Geraldine and in couple of deeds which state that GF Denis was a beautiful farm, and house, and a great ten minutes I was on the other side of town sold a couple of strips of land to the Fish place to raise kids. One of their boys went at Geraldine’s big, farm house. Found out River RR Co. I think I can come closer to pin to the Air Academy and one to the Naval that it had a 200 a year old log cabin inside pointing the location of his farm now as at Academy. All were good looking kids in the of it (couldn’t see it, but it was supposed to least I know remembers his dad saying that family picture. be fitted in there) and a mass of rooms on GF Denis was often at their house before he, the second floor. Geraldine is another family Denis, left. Now “left” was kind of uncertain 18 August 1999 history guru of the area and a hoot to visit as to where, however I had Waterville, ME I took the morning and went back to with. I ended up with 125 bucks worth of as a death location, but no date. Aurora/ Madawaska and found Linda Dube, (we books out of her retail library. It would take Bernard thought they had heard that is where had already talked on the phone) a major me a bunch of pages to relate all her tales (Continued on page 7) 6 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Maine Trip continued from page 6) upper half of the state, past Eagle Lake and I drove to it. There was a clerk and her where Aurora said that they had a “camp”. dad in the sexton’s house and they located he had “left” for. I had called cousin and I first thought, a place where they pitched a Denis’ grave right away (3X5 cards). Also professional genealogist, Mary Michuad tent and camped? But found out later that is got some obits on Alvin and Belle. They in Manchester outside of Augusta, ME, the the term for cabin, generally on a lake, of took me to the site and there was Gpa De- night before and had arranged to take her to which Maine has many of. Lots, repeat lots nis and Gma Mary Jane Ayotte, plus son dinner when I got down there. Here’s a list of camps in ME. It is the same thing as I Calix (Denis), son Alvin (the only family of more family history goodies that I got in remember about the Minnesotans who go to member I had ever seen and the one who the Ft Kent area: their cabin on the lake (dad had one on Lake left three silver dollars in my hand when he 9-Dube family book Krononis). When I go back again, I’ve got to shook hands to say goodbye) and his wife, 10-Cote family book go either to Bernard’s camp or a commercial and a Nancy B, sister Belle and I think, his 11- Madawaska History book of 150 sister Philomene squeezed in between them pages and the next family. I still need to do some 12-History geneology of Madawaska document searching on the whole family. Fourniers of 30 pages So then I took off for Manchester, down 13-History geneology of St. John to Augusta to meet Mary. Found her place Valley Ayottes of 32 pages thanks to a map I had made back home on 14-Thibodeau family book of 95 my Street Atlas software. And per chance, pages her ex husband (as of several months back) 15-23-Seven “half-sized” maunuals was there when I pulled up. He left; we fed of about 40-50 pages each on the history/ the 8 cats and took off for an Olive Garden culture of the northern Maine area. restaurant. Mary is an executive secretary 24-Picture of gggfather Romain and for a construction company and in the more short history slack winter season, she does genealogical 25-Document of Romain’s death research for people. She was a Michaud 26-Document of Vital Ayotte’s death before she was married and her ex was a Mi- 27-Complete pedigree of Vital and chaud so she still is a Michaud. And she has, family she said, about 9000 names on her computer 28-Eight pages on Michaud’s from U (Family Tree software) on the family. She of Maine publication said any time I’m ready she’ll GEDCOM me 29-Twenty eight more pages (single my lines. I’m going to load my new Legacy spaced) on Michaud’s by same U of M program, then take a six week class on it in author Oct/Nov, at the Family History Center and 30-Ten more pages on Michuad’s as then maybe I’ll be ready for them. We had commissioned by Annette E. Michaud a gabby good time. She is very sharp and 31-Map of St. Laurence showing said if I had any Maine problems cases just where Pierre lived and when Family genealogist, Françoise Michaud let her know. It was about 8pm so I drove 32-Two pages from “History of Dufresne at home in Kamarouska, Canada back up to Waterville and got a motel room. Maine” on Thomas and T.T Michaud, de- scendants of Romain one and experience how folks from Maine 20 August 1999 33-Letter on “two” Romains from go to camps. The two lane roads were just Friday I worked on getting a news Guy Dubay of the Madawaska Historical like driving up by Yellowstone-lined by pine release or obit of Denis’ accident up at Society trees, but Maine, a few hardwoods mixed Colby College library (got news release 34-Eleven page pedigree on the St. in. Beautifully green and verdant. Had to of accident), went to the State Archives in John Valley Cyrs stop at the Old Town Canoe Co. factory Augusta to see what I could get later on the 35-Two deed extracts on Denis/Mary store. Could have gotten 1500-2000 dollar internet-not much, got to Fairfield too late Jane sale of land to Fish River RR canoes for 5-600 dollars because they were to get a death certificate on Mary Jane and 36-Reunion with Aurora and Bernard scratched. I’ll have to tell Jim and Clay that any others, so will have to write for those, who have given us so much family history I’ll pick up a canoe and haul it back to AZ managed to lock myself out of the car twice, 37-Found and photograph ggf Calix- if they’ll make a good contribution to my but pulled out my trusty, little Swiss army te/Marie’s grave in old St.Joseph’s Parish next trip back. You see lots of canoes on knife, cut me a long, thin branch ands by cemetery in Wallagrass top of cars in Maine. The small lakes and forcing the windows got at the door lock 38-Determined that Vital is not buried ponds and slow, no rapids, rivers are ideal and opened it; checked back at the sexton’s in New Canada cemetery and probably both for canoes. Still had some time when I went house but could find nobody; ran to several he and Romain’s graves no longer exist to Waterville, so I swung off the freeway and close towns trying to locate grandchildren 39-added to family history network stopped at the city clerk’s office. She found of Belle who were still living; finally found/ Linda Dube, Geraldine Chasse, and several Denis’ death certificate and that’s when I first identified a Wayne Pelletier, but couldn’t other agency connections found out that he had been killed by a train! raise him; and generally ran out of time So about 9:30am I took off for Man- Got a couple of other papers from her and with a lot I could have done still undone. chester/Waterville. Two lane road for the the instructions to the Catholic Cemetery (Continued on page 8) 7 Le Forum (Maine Trip continued from page 7) wondered why she made me some loon hour early to a 6 am takeoff that I would just I did phone Wayne when I got home and Maine as a logo where the pocket goes on a sleep in the passenger lounge. Which I did. he seemed to be quite well informed on polo shirt. Neat. Also picked up some 2000 So to make a long story end, I finally made the family (for a man) and very willing to calendars (Maine scenes) for mom and GG it home after a late takeoff, a missed flight help. I have to get a family group sheet and and a cute pair of salt and pepper shakers out of Cincinnati and a sleepy drive home pedigree updated and sent it to him. Friday for the kitchen, island stove. I now had so to Logan. But a grand, grand trip all in all. night I pulled into a mall to get a digger to much stuff crammed in my bags that I had Everyone should go back to their roots and I trim the edges of the flat gravestones of the to buy a security strap for the big one. Then hope I can go back again and do some more. grave site and what do I see but an LL it was time for lunch and I stopped at the And the list of family history goodies from Bean factory sale. I couldn’t pass it up this location. a couple things for me and a few things 40-Found and photographed Gf for others. Denis’ and Gm Mary Jane’s gravesite other family member. 21 August 1999 41-Denis Death Certificate I went back to the cemetery and 42-News release on Denis’ death cleaned up the individual markers on 43-Sister Belle death certificate Gpa Michaud’s site, blew them a kiss 44- Alvin’s death date and site’s and a prayer, and headedfor Montreal. name Somewhere out in the no man’s land of 45-location and photo of Denis’ Maine outback. Eustis I think, I spotted family plot in St. Francis Catholic Cem- a historical society museum so I had to etery in Waterville, ME stop. Interestingly they had the Maine 46-Various data on other members Registers, in the 1917-18 (FHL didn’t Denis’ family have them so I’ll have to look on film). 47-Contact with a cousin of my One under Wallagrass Plantation (old generation who will help me identifies world for like a district) I found that they Sign indicates location of Pierre’s and contacts other cousins and hopeful- used to have a post office called Michaud. farm on South bank of St. Laurent ly, one of them will have the pictures and You never know what you’ll find. Then a history of the family little ways further I saw a sign saying “stone “lumberman’s café” where you walk straight I’d say that it was a very successful mason.” I had really been wondering why up to the counter and order (the cook’s right and profitable trip to acquire at least 47 some rock outcropping were granite and behind the order taker and starts throwing valuable items of family history. I’ll let you some shale. His answer, “well, it depends your order on the stove even as you speak, in on its many contributions to our history on what the glaciers left where!” Seems you are called back to pick up your order, as I get it organized. And thanks for read- reasonable. Then a little ways further I saw and you eat sitting on sawed off stumps and ing the whole thing!! Much love and hugs, a sign “T-shirts, gifts etc” I had been looking on wooden tables, have more than enough Dad/Gpa.Dick P.S Sorry they didn’t have for a shirt with a loon on it (state bird)-(I to eat, and then bus your own dishes. Can’t a special on color this week so you get to was wrong on that) all the time I had been have experiences like that on the freeways. see these lovely, neat color pics in unlively in Maine so I had to pull over and see what I had already decided that since I had to get shades of gray. she had. She didn’t have one, but kind of up early enough to turn in the car and be an (N.D.L.R. Reprinted from Le Club Français Newsletter, Le Fanal. Publié par Marie-Anne Gauvin dans Le Fanal (Le Club Français). Soumis par Jacqueline Blesso) LA PIE BAVARDE À tous et à chacun: doivent se protéger en portant des cache- cri m’a échappé tellement ça m’a fait peur. oreilles. Je ne l’avais pas vu mais un castor, lui, Comme vous le savez tous, nous Si le son est bref mais très fort, il peut m’avait vue. Lui aussi, je crois avait été avons cinq sens, l’ouïe, l’odorat, le gout et nous faire sauter ou nous faire échapper un surpris. C’est leur façon de nous avertir. Il le toucher. En général, nous ne sommes pas cri de surprise. Je me rappelle qu’un beau se claque la grosse queue plate sur l’eau. Je conscients de ces sens qui nous permettent matin j’étais allée essayer de pêcher dans le l’ai vu s’en aller la tête sur l’eau suivant le de fonctionner normalement. Une inter- petit ruisseau qui se vidait dans le lac pas très courant, fier de son coup! La vue m’a aidée ruption de la normale nous fait réagir de loin de mon chalet. Je suis arrivée à comprendre ce qui s’était passé. différentes manières. silencieusement au bord d’un remous. De temps en temps, plusieurs sens Par exemple, l’ouîe permet la percep- J’ai envoyé ma ligne dans ce remous avec ensemble nous font réagir. Longtemps tion des sons. Si c’est trop fort nous avons un ver de terre accroché au hameçon. J’étais passé, 1944, j’étais assise à lire dans un envie de se mettre les mains sur les oreilles, seule. Tout était silencieux sauf quelques fauteuil à bascule dans le petit salon de la l’organe de l’ouïe. C’est une réaction nor- oiseaux et le ruisseau qui chantaient à leur maison familiale et mon père supposément male qui veut protéger les parties délicates façon. Soudain, tout près de moi, un son écoutait la radio dans l’autre coin du salon. internes. De nos jours ceux qui travaillent comme si quelqu’un avait lancer une grosse Je crois qu’il sommeillait plutôt, les jambes près de ou avec des machines bruyantes roche dans le trou d’eau. FLOC! Un grand (suite page 9) 8 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (La Pie Bavarde suite de page 8) Things that Happen* By Gerard Coulombe

I believe in miracles. I don’t know if that she had never told me about. you do. And, before you ask, I believe in I grew up figuring out that my mother all kinds of miracles. If this goes against had four sisters and one brother who was the grain, let me explain. Never mind. I’m not allowed in the home because his wife going to tell you. died, he was dating a hairdresser who was One, I must declare that I was born divorced and so whenever on occasion he Catholic. Catholics like my parents believed visited for whatever reason, he was not ad- in miracles; so did we. Certainly, there were mitted, but required to stand in the doorway allongées devant lui. Ma mère dans la cui- many miracles prayed for, and many of to deliver his greeting or request, whatever sine, la première à réagir au pet qui nous a these miracles were granted. I can attest to had brought him to the doorsill. paru comme un coup de fusil. Sans avoir le that. My mother, for example, prayed that I Over a number of years, or by the temps de réagir au cri de mort de ma mère, be cured of Legg-Calve-Perthes disease. I time I left home, I had learned that Mother la radio s’est mise à péter du feu. Aie! Je suis was thirteen in 1944. Our. home physician had had two brothers and six sisters. Then, restée figée dans ma chaise. Mon père s’est told my mother that it was TB of the bones. surprisingly, another sister appeared out vite replier les jambes. Tous les deux, nous So, Mother prayed to the Reverend Zenon of Canada, someone my mother had never avions la vue fixée sur les étincelles qui pétil- Decary, a saintly, deceased parish priest mentioned [nor had my aunts or uncle]. laient en arrière de la radio et qui roulaient whose canonization was being sought by And, in recent years, I learned again, in- vers nous sur le plancher. Puis une odeur parishioners who knew of his holiness. He advertently, through a little research and de foudre et de fumé nous avertissaient que was buried on the grounds of Saint Francis by happenstance, having hit upon the right quelque chose brûlait. Nous avons compris College, which later became the University branch of the family, that there had been plus tard que le tonnerre était tombé dans of New England in Biddeford, Maine. With eleven children born to my grandparents. l’antenne installée dans un poteau dehors the passage of time, “Le Pere Zenon’s cause By this time, I was nonplused, as I had long rendant meilleure réception de la radio. En in Rome died with the passing of the elderly ago learned that a living uncle and wife of suivant le fil de l’antenne, le tonnerre avait parishioners like my mother and the laici- my wife’s had had twenty-seven some live pénétré dans la maison et brûlé l’intérieur zation of the College.** births, and I had known him, but never de la radio. Il a continué à suivre le fil qui Two of my mother’s sisters were met her. Although I did learn that she had brûlait àu fur et à mesure qu’il avançait nuns. And they too prayed for their nephew. divorced him after the last of the living jusqu’au sous-sol en s’évadant par le fil de They prayed for an intercession from Mere children left home. terre à l’extérieur. dYouville, foundress of the Soeurs Grise of When my brother-in-law, my younger Montreal. I believe, as my mother did, that sister’s husband, my older sister having Ce petit récit prouve que plusieurs through the intercession of these holy peo- been deceased for some years, passed away sens, louïe, l’odorat et la vue ensemble ple, I was helped to overcome this malady, of Alzheimer’s, it had been the second time peuvent s’engager à nous surprendre ou which originally had been diagnosed by our with this diagnosis in the family.. It is not at à nous prévenir du danger. Ma foi, j’étais family practitioner as “TB of the bones.” all difficult to explain. The first time he was tellement traumatisée que j’ai eu peur Saint d’Youville was canonized in 1990. diagnosed, he had been gradually diagnosed jusqu’au lendemain quand j’ai pu enfin Although our mother spent a great through the stage of dementia before he maîtriser mon énervement. Heureusement, deal of her time when we were young taking started exhibiting behavior assigned those jamais plus ai-je eu peur des tempêtes de care of us, she had developed the custom of with Alzheimer’s disease. tonnerre. Apprécions tous nos cinq sens. Ils relying on prayer and self-medication as the His wife, my sister, was with him all sont merveilleusement créés. primary cures, the rosary, cough syrup and the way. He had expressed to me on the something else, like castor oil, that tasted occasion of a family wedding, that he had –– Votre pie bavarde. Marie-Anne just awful. no idea why it was that he had married my When she developed breast cancer lat- sister. This is unrelated to my sister’s or his er in life, she took care not to tell anyone, not state of mind at the time. It was something even my sisters, so that before she died her said reflexively. Yet, I wondered about his cancer had metastasized and was growing state of mind, but never about his mental outside the breast tissue. My wife, a nurse, state. It was something that I could under- saw it. By then, Mother had also showed it stand, and I forgot about it. to my oldest sister with whom my mother His disease grew, and the family was, by then, living. It was all too late. As far watched it, whenever they visited in Maine, as she was concerned, she was to die at the and I heard about it, upon our family’s visits good age of eighty-one. It was time anyway or whenever we happened to get together for because her friends had all passed including some celebratory occasion. My older sister all of her sisters, some I had known and some (Continued from page 10) 9 Le Forum (Things that Happen* continued from who he was and was totally aware of his was being said. It was the same when I called page 9) surroundings. They could once again take his home, later, and he picked up the phone. their morning walks in the mall, have their It was the same when I called again, and he and brother-in law noticed and talked about coffee in their own coffee cups hanging in picked up he phone. Our conversations were it with us. My two sisters certainly discussed their special places on the wall along with short, and he would pass the phone on to his it. On walks around the neighborhood, he other cups belonging to the regulars at their wife, “It’s your brother,” he would say. Soon, might get lost and enter .the wrong house. In favorite rural village coffee shop. It was he was back in hospital. a condo neighborhood where people know down some highway familiar to them all He died during the apple-picking all the neighbors, it would not be unusual to where they had enjoyed years of breakfast season. In the last photo I ever saw of him, leave the doors unlocked if one were home and coffee with Rotary friends. posted on Facebook, he wore a cardboard or visiting another in the same development. I asked my priest if he still believed headband with an apple cutout affixed to its My brother-in-law’s behavior took in miracles because, well, because we center. My brother-in-law’s face, that once, on a gravity that underscored a change in Catholics don’t hear as much about local or bright, energetic. face, with a head full of the disease when his actions caused con- personal miracles as we used to, not even ideas for how young people with disabilities siderable consternation to his wife. He had about someone local holding a winning ought to be able to learn, was puffy. His become a sundowner. When he was found by lottery ticket. That’s my view. Father told eyes were closed. His lips wee puffy. His a local patrolman in the nude and stuck in a me he still believed; he did not confirm my mouth showed that he had just swallowed snowbank in the middle of the night, it was view about their frequency. Since I wrote his lips, and his chin hung on his chest. The time for action. He was taken to a hospital this, the above priest was reassigned, and family surrounded him. His wife had been and then transferred to a home from which the one who took his place was so loaded at his side every day. His granddaughter had he would most likely never return. with tasks and challenges; It is my view, been nursing her grandfather without having Of course, his wife was not about that he disappeared, one day, never to be to know a bit of French. to give up. She prayed, and she asked her heard from again . * From: Leaving Maine a memoir by friends and family to pray for him .They When next I saw my brother-in-law Gerard Coulombe, Fairfield, CT. prayed for a miracle. After some time in in Maine, they were there visiting from * *The priest’s remains were removed the nursing home and after whatever ad- Vermont, and we had come up from Con- from what had been consecrated ground to justments were made in his care my brother- necticut; I thought he was, indeed, cognizant some other resting place. in-law was released to go home. He knew of what was going on and, of course, what did not seem to me to exist. Maybe, I was just that selfish. But, frankly, I never knew An Immersive Experience where they were in my day, except for the times all three of us came down with the Something about living on same sickness that had all three of us quar- antined in one bedroom for what I recall Freeman Street were days on end. We had moved from Bradbury Street My Dad in the Pepperell Mills in Saint Joseph’s parish, to escape the Irish, as far as my dad is concerned, to Freeman Street in Saint Andre’s parish, culturally, By Gérard Coulombe miles apart. At the time, as a near bilingual As youngsters, we Franco-Americans she had paid the rent collector, the Raleigh youngster, I could also listen with my dad had the choice of using our ears with which man who was her cousin, and the ice man to Montreal stations, one of which featured to listen to the radio where adventures and then the milkman, too. a French-Canadian soap opera called, Un of various sorts rang supreme, from The Asking was difficult, it was more like Homme et Son Péché. In many ways, lis- Lone Ranger to The Shadow Knows. As begging even as I knew that she would give tening to the on-going story line was much we grew older, we also had the choice of me the dime. It had been five cents at one like eavesdropping to a penitent on the other using both our ears and eyes to watch and time. Maybe it was for the errands I ran for side of the confessional while one knelt, listen to movies screened in the parish hall, her because she needed something from the waiting with the shutter closed to block out the church basement, Saint Andre’s church, market, usually “cubed steak” which was the priest’s head in profile and being able now closed, and, later, to attend Saturday really a slice of beef shoulder put through a to hear the penitent on the other side who afternoon feature length films, including car- tenderizer. I loved to listen to the noise the couldn’t modulate his voice, as he recited toons, approved for viewing, and screened tenderizer made, it was a just brief, Brrrut, all of his venial sins as he worked up to the for our entertainment at the Mutual Theatre through a spiked electric metal roller. list of mortal ones to be recited, while father in Saco. I think that the marquee is still there. I have to interject here, simply to say, probed with his questions before giving his Going to the movies, I thought, was a that I had two younger sisters, and the dif- absolution and then assigning a penance of lovely bargain because it cost only a dime. ference between us was gigantic. Although endurable difficulty. I would wait for the appropriate moment, to only two years between Therese and I and The radio was a tabletop Cathedral ask “Ma man” for the dime. That was after three between Julienne and I, they really (Continued on page 11) 10 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (An Immersive Experience Something waiting, perhaps to reimagine what it needed Just a routine thing [which it was for me about living on Freeman Street My Dad in done to it. when I visited him at work. That visit took the Pepperell Mills continued from page 10) The free time he had to himself was place when I worked at the Pepperell fold- to use his workshop and the tools that he ing blankets to hold me over financially, in Philco, “cathedral,” because of its shape, owned, the hand tools, simply, to modify between my discharge and starting college pointed like that of a church window or a part or to ad to its functions whenever he, at the University of Maine on the G.I. Bill] façade. My dad loved it, or so it seemed my dad, felt comfortable with a design of But for him, work had become some kind to me, as he was the one who tuned in to his own. I don’t know that the owners ever of drug to which he had become addicted. the station that brought Canada, Montreal, knew how my dad improved the mechanics He never complained. He was on specifically, into our small living room at the of his machine; although, those who worked time, and a steady, reliable employee in a front of the house. the first and third shifts had to know, as they necessary sweaty environment with high Our apartment was on the first floor. It worked that machine as much as he did, but humidity is constant, so as not to break the required about six steps up a stairway to the none knew its operation and the functions characteristics of the field of threads on the first landing in the front to attain the landing. it performed better than he, is what I have warp. Human life was another matter. That’s In the back, because of the four-truck type always believed why I would never have worked were my garage driveway* and its elevation from the father did at the job that he did or at any other street to the garage doors, the back landing None of this would win him a in a mill… and, for a lifetime. was a walk on, no steps necessary. The liv- prize for ingenuity or a copyright, but As I stood by my dad’s side on that last ing room windows faced the street directly visit, with the noise adding a certain kind of in front of us, and the entrance to the living it meant just a better way of doing his crescendo music or beat to it that matched room was immediately to one’s right, and job; if things worked as they were the sounds of the warps and looms, I knew along the railed landing were the stairs up supposedly designed to, that would that he was not crazy doing his job, but the to the second floor where and from which always be a feel-good situation for job that he was doing would have driven me one had a partial view of the kitchen before him. But he never talked to us about crazy sooner than it took the years to wear one attained the landing to the second floor, him down. where one found the back door to the second his work, even less so about what he It was such repetitive work, as this floor apartment, which would later become was doing in the shed. It was I who is much a repetitive story, something that our backdoor after the war, as things settled asked him one day when I was older. I could never do and never did, except for down, and people moved out, and we moved He told me, then, that he was designing his the year he was sick when I worked double into the second floor apartment, instead. own parts for his machine. No one asked shift, one in school and one at the Bates on Meanwhile, if after attaining the him to. I don’t even know that the boss Saco Island. first landing, one walked toward the back knew what he was doing. Certainly, as it to the shed, and, once inside the back door was a three-shift operation, somebody had *[The trucks were rendering trucks entrance located there, one could see where to know as I have said before. To Improve that contained barrels in which rendered we, the children, for the years we were in on a design was a result of my father’s products were dumped, having been col- that apartment, bathed, and where my dad ingenuity. So long as his small inventions lected by the rendering men. As these trucks had his week-end work station. advanced his ability to be increasingly more were parked in the driveway, there was a At the workbench which held a vice productive, he would make this possible. In smell and a health issue. But in those days, that held the piece that he worked on when this corner of the shed. I think he liked his we, neighbors, did not complain and there he was home weekends, on a Saturday af- life and his work. was no official policy as to where, for health ternoon always, he turned to the piece in Otherwise, work might have been sake, the trucks could park.]

(Katherine Wing, FAS 329, Independent Study, Finding it difficult to gain employment, Katherine Wing, November 11, 2019) Canadians found themselves crossing the border to the United States to work in mill- Leaving the farmlands and leaving farm and move into the city. With all these towns such as Lewiston, Waterville and Canada: people moving to the city, there was now an Bidderford, Maine; Dover and Manchester, In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s overpopulation in cities such as Montreal, New Hampshire; Lowell, Worcester, and after many fruitless years of farming hun- Toronto and Quebec. The infrastructure Fall River, Massachusetts; and Woonsocket, dreds of Canadians found they were unable was not there and this created an unsanitary Rhode Island, to name a few. to make a living on the family farm and were living situation for many. Unfortunately, all The Mills: no longer willing to continue farming. Many who went to the city to were not so lucky as Once in the United States, many found chose to move to the cities to provide for to gain employment. With the plethora of po- themselves easily employed in the Bates their families. For some families it would be tential employees to choose from, employers Mill of Lewiston or the Pepperell Mill of the father with his sons who were of working were selective. Many times it would be a Biddeford, or one of the many others in age. He would leave his wife, daughters and friend of a friend, or a relative who would New England. These mills were all built younger children to tend to the farm. In other get the job over others. Children also found along the water for hydro power to power the instances daughters would go into the city it easier to gain employment as employers machines. Along the water you would find to find employment in service industries. would exploit the children, lower wages, shoe shops, textile mills, and paper mills. Still yet, whole families would leave the longer hours, unsafe working conditions. (Continued on page 12) 11 Le Forum (Katherine Wing, FAS 329 continued they were not allowed to work before age in those days. Even today a family could not from page 11) 14 or work the long hours their parents did. begin to survive on this pay and would need Labor laws also changed the work minors multiple family members to work to sustain While they now held jobs and had a steady could do. Over time, minors would not be the family home. income, they worked for meager wages, yet allowed to work the machinery to protect This poster depicts the transition they maintained high work ethics. Often them from life-threatening injuries. from farm life to millworker. It shows that times, one would find many of the same Life for the workers: not only the men had to go to work but family working side by side in the same mill. For many workers the hours were also women and children. For me, seeing a Many mills had shift work, which in smaller long, many worked from 6 am until 5 pm 5 child as young as 10 years old working in families the father may work all day and then days a week and in many cases worked Sat- the mill, is sad. They lost their childhood as the mother on the opposite shifts in order to urday as well. They did have Sunday off to they were needed to help provide for their bring home enough money for the family. observe the Sabbath as well as to spend the family. They barely knew how to write their Much of the work was piecework, the hours day with family. Many families had as many name and many did not know how to read were long and wages were low. An average as 12 children living under one roof. It was as they were pulled out of school before worker put in 60 hours a week, working six important to provide for the basic necessities they had time to learn. If they were lucky days a week for a take home pay of $11.34. of the family. Moving from their own land to work for a compassionate employer, they People were at the mercy of their employ- to apartments was expensive. They now had were treated well. ers, some had good employers who were As a person who willing to improve work has worked in many shoe conditions while others shops over time, I am well had employers who didn’t aware of the many inju- mind their employees get- ries one can sustain in the ting ill on mice-infested or mills. It takes a toll on damp work areas. These one’s body as well as one’s employers felt employees self-esteem. These young were easy to come by as children faced a long future there was always someone of working in the mill with looking for work and will- no hopes of ever working ing to put in their time for a elsewhere. They dealt with wage and they didn’t mind toll it would take on their reminding their employees young bodies over time. of this. Depending on the machine they worked on, they may Schooling and Child Labor: a rent payment to make as well as pay all work unscathed, or in the case of my grand- Many children were schooled until the other expenses. Living in the city was father, he lost the tip of one of his fingers to they were needed in the mill. For many this definitely more expensive than the farm, as a paper machine. could be as young as 12. Most boys upon simple things like milk and eggs now needed One begins to wonder if this is all reaching 12 years of age went into the mill. to be bought instead of harvested from the there is to life, working 6 days a week for For girls, depending on the size of the fam- farm animals. Depending on where they meager wages and little time to do much ily and the number of older brothers, many lived, some were able to keep chickens or else. For many women who worked in the were able to stay in school longer. Again, a pig but many were not able to do so, thus mills, the thought was work until they got depending on the size of the family and the requiring them to purchase all food for their married. Once married, their job was to take number of those who were able to work in family. Families kept their traditions and care of the home and have babies. the mills, determined if the mother was able observed their holidays in the traditional way The mentality was still there when I to stay home and raise her family or if she they would have before coming to the United was working in the mill. I was one of the too needed to work. For many of the boys, States. Many first-generation Canadians still lucky ones who was able to complete high working in the mill or learning a trade was spoke French especially in the home. Their school and move away from the mill even- expected. It was a rare occasion for a boy children over time learned English in school. tually, though I did do my time. It was not to stay in school. Once a boy became older thought of to further your station in life. This and married, his place was taken by one Conclusion: is what your grandfather and grandmother of his younger siblings to help provide for I chose to do a poster as I wanted a did, your parents after them and then you. the family as he now need to provide for visual representation of this period in time. It was what you would pass on to your his new family. Many girls worked as well The paycheck in the background shows the children. though not all went to the mills. Girls often wages ($11.34) a man would have earned While I did not pass on the mill work became nannies, or worked in the hospital, in 1914 for a 60-hour work week and how to my children, I did pass on a strong work or in other service industries. Child labor that compares to today ($291.50) in 2019 ethic, which to me is just as important. I laws changed the scenery at the mills as age wages. The wage comparison puts in per- learned these work ethics from those who restrictions as well as hours they could work spective the necessity for multiple family came before, just as those first Canadians were placed on minors. In many instances, members to work to sustain a large family (Continued on page 13) 12 FALL/AUTOMNE 2019

WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 Tourtiere and Cul-de-Sacs By Daniel Moreau November 17th, 2019

Man has not created a killer like the Car. Purely through its existence, and through its use. It may not be efficient at it (considering the amount of cars on the road), but it surely is deadly. According to the National Safety Council, in 2018 alone, over 40,000 people were killed in car accidents in the United States, and 4.5million were seriously injured. Then there is the way the car killed and displaced many passively through its existence. Especially Franco-America. In order to understand the true roots of mass assimilation of Franco-America during the 60s-70s, we need to first start on Long Island, NY during 1947 in Levittown; the pro- totype of the American suburb. Before Levittown, the suburb mainly consisted of denser single-family homes or townhouses called “Streetcar Suburbs” because of their service by streetcar. Some examples include Somerville, MA, and the Park Extension neighborhood of Montreal. Typically, the mainstream design for these neighborhoods are multi-story residential buildings. A neighborhood on Hale St, Lowell, MA being demolished as a result of Urban Renewal. Photo courtesy of Tyrrell Richard Schein via archive.org.

The biggest problem with destroying existing neighborhoods for car infrastruc- ture, besides displacement of residents, is creation of induced demand. Induced demand as a principle itself means that as supply increases, more of that good is con- sumed. In terms of city planning, induced demand for the car means that adding more infrastructure for it leads to more vehicular traffic. This is the same principle which Levittown, NY, under construction. Photo courtesy of ACME Newspictures. makes widening roads pointless; if you add (Continued on page 14) These types of neighborhoods, and those just denser, are perfect examples of the types (Katherine Wing, FAS 329 continued of neighborhoods the drastic majority of mill-town French-Canadian immigrants lived in from page 12) (so-called Petite Canadas). The reason for Franco-America’s survival, is because this dense who came to work in the mills learned from land use was (and still is) the perfect incubator for continued social life within the cultural their ancestors. Having a language barrier climate. While immigrants were shoved into dense neighborhoods, that density is what kept when they arrived, meanth they needed to each culture alive and strong. So what happens if you disperse the population of a culture? depend more on family than they did others When I talk about the car being a killer through its existence, I reference the mass in order to converse. I am told my great urban renewal efforts of the 50s-70s in the United States. The Housing Act of 1949 essen- grandmother never learned to speak English tially let cities raze masses of houses with the concern of them being slums with the aid and her children would have to translate of the federal government. The biggest problem with this, is how a “slum” was defined. everything for her when she encountered It was very loose, and the standards for a building being blighted could be determined by English-speaking people. This must have the city. This did not work out in favor of American cities, most of the time, these plots been the case for so many others. of land were turned into parking lots, or highways, thus removing the housing stock away My poster is a culmination of research from the central business district of the city, and creating induced demand for the car. And depicting Canadians moving to the United with every building torn down, parking lot paved, and highway built, more and more peo- States, their wages, the people and their ple moved to the suburbs. I encourage the reader to view aerials from 1940 and today of desire for survival. While the focus was on Detroit, Rochester, Boston, and Kansas City just to see the effect of urban renewal. What the mills they worked in, their life, and a neighborhoods city officials chose to demolish for highways or parking lots, were almost specific time in history, this report would always working class and/or neighborhoods with people of color. be true for many ethnic groups who immi- grated and encountered language difficulties, cultural changes and assimilation to their (civilcircumstances.wordpress.com) new country. 13 Le Forum (Tourtiere and Cul-de-Sacs continued from great detail in The Death and Life of Great tions of Franco-Americans, the Catholic page 13) American Cities by 1960s New York City church was able to use this concentration another lane, then induced demand tells car activist, Jane Jacobs. In the suburbs of these as a Franco-American cultural stronghold. traffic to use that road instead. The perfect Franco-American mill towns, life is more However, as Lewiston suburbanized, the ex- textbook example of this is North Ameri- spread out in comparison to the urban core. isting Franco-American population became ca’s widest freeway: the Katy Freeway in The cultural fabric of the neighborhood is less concentrated in these French Catholic Houston which at its widest is 26 lanes wide, more personalized and individual-centric hubs as Franco-Americans dispersed to the the reason for all of these lanes is to reduce compared to the established, community houses of the suburbs, and into the smaller traffic, but because of induced demand, af- base of an urban neighborhood. churches of Holy Family on Sabattus Street ter the highway was widened, travel times In this era came along inventions that and Holy Cross on Lisbon Street. According in the evening went up 55% as a result of drove assimilation forward, both as a result to Franco-American historian Mark Paul more congestion. Induced demand creates of the suburbs, and the era’s technological Richard, Holy Family was the first of these the need for the car as a necessity. Subur- advances. The television was by far, the most to anglicize. In contrast, the much larger banization, and Urban Renewal created the influential force on the boomer generation’s Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Down- perfect conditions for Franco-Americans to assimilation. On this screen were pictures town Lewiston, still offers Mass in French move outside of the dense city center, where of a commercialized pop-culture America. (as well as Bi-lingual, Latin, Spainish, and Franco-America was established, and had a Fantasizing and idolizing these images were of course English) which now benefits the great force. easy (and still are), and pop culture took older Franco-American generations, and The reason for Franco-American as- off in America. As pop-culture became the the younger French-African generations in similation was not language oppression, re- forefront of Americana, and settled down in a wonderful complement of each other and ligious pressure, or even the threat of forced Franco-American suburban living rooms, of a French America. assimilation. These have been going on for social pressures at school and young social When one looks between the urban decades before Franco-Americans started lives in general brought forth the biggest and natural geography of Lewiston, it’s no- to assimilate en mass. But the true reason is push on assimilation yet. And it worked. My ticeable that the suburbs sit on a hill looking that suburbanization spread Franco-Ameri- own father told me that he stopped speaking above the dense urban core. Often said is cans out so much, that the cultural web was French because of the social pressure, and that as the Franco-Americans moved up in weakened, and in turn, those forces that have when you’re a teenager, the only thing you the economy, they moved up the hill to the been ever so present and threatening, were really want is to be socially accepted. suburbs, as well. The hill has become an able to tear the threads of that web. Another force of assimilation during analogy for the economic mobility of the To understand why suburbanization this era was the anglicization of the Catholic generations of Franco-Americans during was responsible for Franco-American Churches in Franco-American mill towns. the era of suburbanization, however, it’s assimilation, we need to understand the In Lewiston, for instance, there were two more fitting to use the hill as an analogy differences between urban life (where French Catholic churches prior to subur- for assimilation of Franco-Americans. The Franco-Americans have been living for banization: Saints Peter and Paul Church suburbs have always been what defines An- generations) and suburban life (the shiny (as it was known then before it was conse- glo-Americana, and sending Franco-Amer- new American Dream). The density of urban crated as a minor basilica in 2004), and St. icans into the suburbs was the first push off life creates a social lifestyle that cannot be Mary’s Church (now the Franco-American the hill of Franco-American culture, toward synthesized anywhere else, as described in Center in Lewiston). With large concentra- Anglo-Americana. The “Canadian Washington” Visits Lewiston September 3, 2019, Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, Politics, Quebec

By James Myall

The band played patriotic tunes as a to a hero’s welcome. His visit was the latest cannon roared a salute. Local dignitaries in a series of stops he had made in French including the mayor and a former governor Canadian communities across New England had turned out to meet the train, at the head that summer. Not to be left behind by their of a large crowd. The scene had many of countrymen elsewhere, Lewiston’s Franco the trappings of a state visit. The guest was community pulled out all the stops for the not a head of state – though he, and many visit of the former Premier of Québec. in the crowd, had ambitions for him to become one. Le Messager ran a detailed account Honoré Mercier, 1890. Image: Bibliotheque On the morning of Monday, August 7, of the visit in its August 9 edition. Stepping et Archives Nationales de Québec. 1893, Honoré Mercier arrived in Lewiston off the train from Old Orchard Beach at (Continued on page 16) 14 FALL/AUTOMNE 2019

WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 not allowing people the skills the need to be successful. There are a thousand reasons ethically and emotionally that can be said for learning a new language, but the cold hard truth of the matter is that employers want it, and our government is not paying for it. Comparatively, our international counterparts are soaring higher and higher every day. A statistic from Eurobarometer Language Reports suggests that approxi- mately 1/3 of France’s eligible population is English speaking across all age groups, and presumed to become higher as language education is expanding. What this all means International Language is that soon, linguistically speaking, French adolescence will be more prepared (on pa-

per) than our own citizens to perform Amer- Acquisition Compared to National ican jobs. For a country that is so concerned about the effects of educational funding on Practices and Averages our economy one would think that building a prepared, American, workforce would be a top priority. Furthermore, in regards to the by Meghan Murphy social and ethical implications of language learning we are even further behind other countries in our recognition of the impor- It is no secret that language learning variety of articles on the subject as we look tance of being a polyglot. When the leaders efforts are varied around the world. In our at the question “How can we catch up to the of the world gathered recently for NATO it generally monolingual society it is hard for rest of the multilingual world?” is clear that while most, if not all, foreign us to conceptualize the multilingual nature So, what are the facts about language leaders greeted ours in comprehensible of some of our international counterparts. learning nationally and beyond? The first English, the ability for reciprocation was Concepts like Belgian toddlers who can source that caught my attention on the nonexistent. While no, there should not be argue in French, Dutch and Flemish, Al- subject starts us off talking about the facts. a precedent that our president speak every gerian teens who can gossip in a French/ In 2018, “20% of American children study language or even a few, it is sad that our Arabic hybrid, and of course the complex a second language compared with the 92% international representatives often care not relationship between Russian and Cultur- of children internationally,” (Livni). This about foreign language. Comments I heard al languages in post-soviet countries, are statistic lends itself to my first point that growing up and continue to hear everyday outside of our comprehension. In addition the reason we are behind linguistically is such as, “Why? Everyone knows English,” to this cultural multilingualism, the rest of because there is simply not enough effort and “We speak American,” have undoubt- the word seems to have figured out how to put in. Recent budget cuts made this year edly lead to our less than satisfactory inter- enhance the experience of learning a foreign have been a large economic representation national approval ratings as a country, and language which is often the ever so familiar, of the general opinion of our politicians and that is frankly disturbing. With 908 million English. But why is this the case? What policymakers (Pincumbe). It feels helpless native speakers of Mandarin, 442 million does this mean for the United States as we and stressful trying to be a voice of reason native speakers of Spanish and 378 million head into a new decade 5 steps behind our down here while our politicians make policy native speakers of English it is unclear to polyglot international friends? In this time of on our behalf with no firsthand knowledge me how we were bestowed the honor of international unrest where we struggle more of the benefits and takeaways of being a lan- being the representation of International and more everyday to relate to the world guage student. According to Pincumbe, 651 language globally. I feel that this standard around us, we are taking so many steps in language programs have been cut in the past has undoubtedly lent itself to the common the wrong direction every time we neglect to five years. The article mentions concerns disposition that is “English and English realize those solutions can start in the foregin that students have in regards to employ- only!” From the same statistical source it language classroom. The humanities in gen- ment after high school and college because is estimated that 1.1 billion people in the eral provide the context for which we live in, of the number of employers, universities, world speak English natively or through and foreign language does so internationally. and postgraduate programs that require a foreign language acquisition methods. That Therefore, if we are going to improve our foreign language. It is unclear at this time means there are 772 million people, (larger international relations, we need to start by why federal funding for foreign language than the entire population of Europe) who educating the next generation of leaders and has gone down but employer demand of said learned English to be more marketable in the workers to have international consciousness skill has remained unchanged. This concept workforce, more educated, more cultured, as a working and important piece of their is setting our future students and workers and/or because they were mandated to do brain. In the next few pages I will discuss up for failure; with an inability to meet this so by a standard set off the grounds of an these topics and theories gathered from a requirement upon time of application we are (Continued on page 16) 15 Le Forum (International Language Acquisition is to get them to fall in love with a new toy Citations: Compared to National Practices and or activity. Another step we can take is by Averages continued from page 15) funding foreign language education with Diggs, Kallen. “5 Studies Prove Bi- English first mentality. the same intentionality that we fund STEM linguals Benefit Employers in More Ways So, what can we do now? Well, for- programs. The most talented engineer from Than One.” tunately all of the statistics presented in this the United States is still LESS marketable Entrepreneur, 19 June 2017, https:// article can begin to change effectively and than an average one in Morocco if that www.entrepreneur.com/article/292401. easily simply by putting an importance on person is the standard trilingual, like most foreign language in this country. We NEED adults who enter the educated workforce. Livni, Ephrat. “Only 20% of US Kids to keep Rosetta stone out of the classroom. Studies show invariably that employers look Study a Language in School-Compared to Two years of foreign language experience for bilingualism and beyond (Diggs). But, 92% in is much cheaper when your teacher is an before we can make any of these physical Europe.” Quartz, Quartz, 7 Aug. 2018, application or a subscription, but if we will and tangible changes to our language learn- https://qz.com/1350601/foreign-lan- never see “CoolMathGames.com” playing ing in this country, we must first change our guages-are-studied-by-just-20-of-kids-in- the role of “Algebra Teacher,” then we need mentality. We are confined by our own be- the-us/. to have thoughtful, productive, and inspired liefs as humans and the general (and scary) language teachers to be in schools as well. opinion that we live in the most important Pincumbe, Michael. “Foreign Lan- Some simple steps can be taken. Firstly, four walls in the world leaves us no room to guage Programs Have Received Funding start foriegn language education earlier, the improve. Verbs, grammar and conjugations Cuts.” BG Falcon average person learned their first language aside, if we want to improve how we relate Media, 6 Mar. 2019, in total immersion in around 3 years. If a to the world around us, we need to start https://www.bgfalconmedia.com/ Kindergartener is verbally proficient upon paying attention to foreign language and campus/foreign-language-programs-have- arrival at 5 years old due to the capacity of how other places are doing it way better. received-funding-cuts/article_a1364f7e- growing brains too quickly and effectively We need to finally realize that even if we 3585-11e9-8a43-07b00ff73d54.html. learn language, then we need to introduce won’t being a German speaking nurse or a language two, or even three, at that time. Spanish speaking electrician, that interna- “The Most Spoken Languages.” ESL Additionally, young children don’t feel tional concepts help us become informed Language Studies Abroad, 5 Feb. 2019, frustrated by incomprehension and confu- members of the international community. https://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/ sion when they think their playing a game, We owe it to ourselves, to our children, and learn-languages/most-spoken-languag- as compared to a high schooler who shuts to our future that we can finally start putting es-world/ down when they feel “too challenged.” importance on foreign language education Pushing a child out of their zone of prox- in this country. imal development is as easy and fun as it (The “Canadian Washington” crowd of onlookers, the former Premier felt the admiration of the crowd never ceased.” Visits Lewiston continued from page 14) compelled to make another short speech After a short period of rest, the honored half past nine in the morning, Mercier was from the hotel’s balcony to satisfy his admir- guest began a schedule of meet-and-greets formally greeted by a delegation on behalf of ers. According to Le Messager, this address – first with at the Mayor’s office then the Lewiston-Auburn’s French Canadian com- was met with “a splendid demonstration. Dominican monastery. After the reception munity, which included the (Yankee) mayor Loud cheers rang out and for five minutes with the church fathers, the guests enjoyed and members of the city council. Other the most American of past times — a prominent non-Franco citizens were also baseball game. present, Alonzo Garcelon, a descendant Finally, at seven-thirty came the big of French Huguenots who had served a event, a public address at Lewiston City tumultuous term as Governor of Maine Hall. The venue was significant. Mercier from 1879 to 1880. Despite an elite En- had been officially invited to speak by the glish-speaking background, Garcelon had mayor and City Council. While French some familiarity with the Franco-Amer- Canadians had not yet come to dominate ican community, including being one of Lewiston politics as they would for much the few Yankee doctors to practice at St of the 20th century, their growing num- Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston. bers made them a potent electoral force. The official welcome on behalf Just before the public event, Mercier of the community was read by Doctor had met with delegations from both the Joseph-Amedée Girouard, a prominent .Interior of the Old Lewiston City Hall, ca Lewiston and Auburn city councils. member of society, who published poems on 1880. This building burned in 1890 and was The theme of the night’s address was progressive and nationalist themes. replaced with the current structure. Image: straightforward – Canadian independence. From the station, Mercier was taken Lewiston Public Library/Maine Memory Simple-sounding though this might be, the to the DeWitt Hotel, the city’s oldest and Network idea was a radical one at the time. In advo- grandest establishment, in a procession of cating for a Canadian Republic, independent carriages. Having been followed by the (Continued on page 17) 16 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (The “Canadian Washington” “the Canadian Washington” and the “Lion The Emerald Isle’s long struggle for Visits Lewiston continued from page 16) du Jour.” freedom from British rule had been roiling from Great Britain, Mercier was potentially These sentiments echoed those of Dr throughout the 19th century, but had become associating himself with individuals like the Girouard in his opening address earlier that especially potent by 1893. In 1886, a first Patriotes of 1836 or Louis Riel, whose armed morning: attempt to grant “Home Rule” (political rebellions against the crown had seen them autonomy) had been made in the British executed for treason. Mercier’s own time as “Your arrival in our midst has no House of Commons. Though that effort Premier had earned him the fierce enmity of longer has the significance of an ordinary had failed to pass, Britain’s Liberal Prime authorities in Ottawa simply for advocating visit. You are coming in the name of the Minister William Gladstone, was currently for greater provincial autonomy within the Fatherland, and it’s why we take it on our- pushing through a new Home Rule Bill in existing federal system. The ex-Premier was selves as a sacred duty to wish you the most 1893. (The Second Home Rule Bill, would careful to couch his push for an independent cordial welcome. pass the Commons in September 1893 but Republic as a political, not a military, effort, “While it’s true that we have reason ultimately fail in the House of Lords, leading and he spoke of independence for Canada as to be content with the generous hospitality to Gladstone’s own retirement soon after). a whole, not separatism for Québec specifi- so liberally granted us by the American Re- In his Lewiston speech, Mercier cited cally (though some suspected him of aiming public, it’s also good to know that a shard of Gladstone’s support for Irish Home Rule, for the latter). Nonetheless, his position was our heart is left behind and remains forever and suggested that if they could build a pop- a bold and even dangerous one. attached to the distant Fatherland… ular movement for Canadian independence, “It is thus easy to understand all the that too could receive London’s blessing. joy which we feel in this moment to see you Mercier even said he hoped that the 83-year return in all your grandeur and strength, old Gladstone would receive a gravestone demanding with the eloquence of your first that read “liberator of Ireland, liberator of youth, the emancipation of our dear home- Canada.” land. We are also putting together our most Gladstone aside, Mercier pulled no ardent wishes for the success of this noble punches against “les Anglais” and their task which you have so freely imposed on governance of Canada. Conflating the yourself. And on the occasion, you may Anglophone governments in Ottawa and be assured that we will offer you all the London he noted: material and moral support of which we are capable” “So where are the treaties signed by England during the capitulation of Canada, The venue was certainly filled with and which guaranties to Canadiens their thousands of supporters. Le Messager rights, their institutions and their laws? noted that the audience consisted not only How have these treaties been observed? In of “Canadiens” but also “Americans” and abolishing the language and persecuting “Irish” (Mercier accordingly spoke in both the religion wherever the Canadiens are in French and English). The support of the a minority, firstly in New Brunswick, and Irish-American community was significant. then in Manitoba. Not only was it a contrast to the long-stand- “If the English were sincere in their ing inter-ethnic rivalry that pervaded city promises of liberty, would they be commit- Image from Le Messager, Aug 9, 1893 life and politics, but Mercier himself drew ting today the historic crime of taking the explicit parallels between his cause and that French language away from the French By Le Messager’s account, the Lew- of Irish independence. and Catholic minority of Manitoba? These iston crowd showed no qualms about the people did not stop, despite our spirit of message. The paper itself headed its account cooperation and justice; a crime against a of the visit with an image of the Statue of people lead to a crime against a religion. Liberty, and the headline “Vive la Lib- Only independence can give true liberty to erté!” Lewiston’s Mayor Chandler called Canada.” the visitors “our countrymen” and former By contrast, the ex-Premier had only mayors Daniel McGillicuddy (a Democrat) praise for the United States. He compared and Frank Lord (a Republican), who also the US with Canada, saying that while Cana- spoke at the event, promised “not only da was older, with richer soil, better sea ports moral support, but even material support” and more natural resources, Canadians were for an independent Canada, pledges which poorer and fewer in number because they brought a tear to Mercier’s eyes. P.X. Anger, lacked the liberty of Americans. a local Franco-American attorney (and first Franco-American elected to the city’s board William Gladstone, Prime Minister of (Continued on page 18) of aldermen in 1887), who presided over the United Kingdom, ca 1893. Image: the event, introduced the former Premier as Wikimedia Commons.

17 Le Forum (The “Canadian Washington” be ashamed of you; you might perhaps be Visits Lewiston continued from page 17) ashamed of us.” In the Franco-Americans, Mercier saw the potential of “the French race” in the Americas when freed from Brit- ish rule. He praised his audience for keeping the Catholic faith and French language alive. In its August 11 edition, Le Messager introduced an interview it had conducted with Mercier by saying:

“Our compatriots in Canada who know nothing about us and take the liberty of insulting us, would do well to read this in- terview and draw a valuable lesson from it.”

However much he might have de- lighted the crowd, Mercier’s description of Franco-American life in 1893 comes across as naïve with the benefit of hindsight. In his interview, Mercier recounted meeting successful businessmen – but ignored the plight of mill workers living in overcrowded tenements that were magnets for disease and dangerous fire traps. He celebrated the num- ber of Francos he had met who were elected officials, but just weeks after his speech, Maine voters would implement a literacy test to bar Francophones from the polls. In his city hall address, Mercier praised the way Americans had welcomed immigrants, overlooking a growing contemporary nativ- ist movement. Regardless of shortcomings, the city hall speech, like the rest of Mercier’s visit, In this political cartoon from 1903, “Jean-Baptiste” the French Canadian chooses between was a wild success. Le Messager printed no the costumes of imperialism, annexation to the United States, or independence. Image: word of criticism against the Premier and Libraries and Archives Canada heaped effusive praise on him and his cause.

If Mercier’s assessment of Canada’s of Lewiston and Auburn, one million living geographic advantages and potential wealth in free America, and every day, they prove was optimistic, his description of French brilliantly what Canadiens can do when Canadians’ experience in the United States nothing stops them taking flight, when their was even more so: have a clear field.”

“What a difference between [the Can- Some of this may have been Mercier adiens in the United States] and the majority playing to his audience. He explicitly talked of Canadiens of their birthplace! Here there of Franco Americans as making a success acquire honorable positions through the of their choices to emigrate, and while he price of their work and their energy; they recognized them as “compatriots” he was are liked and respected in the positions clear that he did not expect them to return which they occupy and share in the peace to Canada. This would have been a welcome Banner of the Institute Jacques-Cartier of of American liberty. In Canada, it’s all the tone to those in the crowd who were used Lewiston, ca 1900. The banner’s mottoes, opposite. They do not reach in higher posi- to politicians north of the border seeing the “Religion et Nationalité” and “Loyaux tions except by the strength of their genius émigrés as disloyal or somehow inferior to mais Canadiens Français” sum up the and through circumstances, and even though the French Canadians who stayed. Mercier complexities of Franco-American identity. there are in number two and a half million flipped that narrative on its head, saying that Image: University of Southern Maine, French Canadians, they are often ridiculed, he was prepared to refute the claims of those Franco-American Collection/Maine despised, vilified, insulted. Eleven thousand in Canada who “insulted” the emigres. “We Memory Network of their compatriots make up the population do not have, we Canadiens of Canada, to (Continued on page 19) 18 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (The “Canadian Washington” Twenty Years for a Crime Visits Lewiston continued from page 18) After the gathering ended in “three he Didn’t Commit rousing cheers,” the guest of honor, his December 1, 2019, Crime, Home, Logging, companions and the welcoming committee Maine, Shirley paid a visit to Lewiston’s Club Musical-Lit- téraire, and finished off the day with a glass By James Myall of champagne at the offices of Le Messager. Henry Lambert was an outsider. In According to his own testimony at The next morning, the ex-Premier left by the spring of 1901 he was working as a trial, Henry (Henri) Lambert was born in train for Montreal, leaving the Lewistonians general laborer, doing jobs on farms in the Québec in January 1875. His family appears to bask in the glow of a successful visit: Greenville area after a winter spent with to have lived the precarious life of many the logging crews in the Maine woods. The marginal farming families of the period. “In sum, our visitors were enchanted short, wiry French Canadian was 26 years Lambert said that he began working at the by their reception and we may say with old and sported a prominent red-blond tender age of 10, helping his father who cut honesty that, as always, Lewiston is still at mustache. He lived alone in a camp on the wood in the winter. When his father died the forefront. Thanks to Canadiens, thanks outskirts of the town of Shirley, coming into that year, young Henry walked to a neigh- to the organizing committee, thanks to town to work, play pool, and hang out at the bor’s farm three miles away to earn $3 a our irish comrades, thanks to those who hotel bar. When the Allens’ Farm burned to month, plus clothing. The money went to wanted to decorate so well, thank finally the ground on the evening of May 13, kill- his mother to support the family, including to all those who participated in this grand ing the family inside, locals suspected foul one older sister and eight younger siblings. demonstration. play, and suspicion soon fell on the French In the spring of 1886, he worked a month Canadian loner. on a maple syrup farm. We are proud of the Canadiens of In an episode that echoes the plot of But the earning potential of a 10 year Lewiston and Auburn.” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Lam- old boy was almost certainly inadequate to bert was accused of the murder of the entire support the large family. And later that year, Whether or not Mercier’s vision for Allen family, as well as the attempted rape the Lamberts came to Waterville, Maine to an independent Canadian Republic would of their fifteen year old daughter. Lambert work in the textile industry. There, Henry, have resonated with others as much as it had been working on the Allens’ farm, but his mother, sister and a younger brother did with Lewiston’s Franco-Americans is the case for his guilt was slim. Nonetheless, could all be employed in the mills. Women an unanswered question. He would not live he was tried and sentenced to life in the and children were paid less than men, but to become the “Canadian Washington.” He Maine State Prison. Twenty years later, he the cotton mill probably offered an oppor- died in October 1894, at the age of just 54. walked free with a full pardon. The story of tunity for multiple members of the family to Canadian independence would not be re- Lambert’s conviction and exoneration says earn regular wages. The younger Lambert alized until nearly a century later, in 1986. a lot about the justice system of the era, and children, too young to work, appear to have Québec’s independence is, of course, an the dangers faced by “outsiders” in close knit remained in Quebec with extended family. ongoing debate. For several decades after his communities. But work in the spinning room didn’t death, Mercier was regarded as a godfather agree with Henry. Two and a half years in of Québec nationalism. Yet in the later part Waterville and Augusta mills took a toll on of the 20th century, he became less well his health. Lung diseases were common regarded, as his brand of nationalism was among the textile workers of this period, replaced by the left-wing secular nationalism who endured claustrophobic conditions with of the Parti Québécois. Mercier’s commit- cotton fibers filling the air. Lambert spent a ment to Catholicism as a cornerstone of summer as a farm hand in Belgrade Mills French Canadian identity puts him sharply at and a short time in the pulp mill in Augusta. odds with the modern separatist movement. For the next decade or so, from 1892 on, Ironically, Mercier’s vision of a na- Lambert settled into a rhythm much like tional identity rooted in faith and traditional that of many rural landless Québécois of the values lasted longer in the Little Canadas of time. In wintertime he worked in the woods places like Lewiston than it did in Canada felling trees, and in the spring and summer itself. The grandchildren and great-grand- he earned money as a farmhand. It must have children of those who welcomed “the Lion been a somewhat isolated existence. of the Day” to Lewiston in 1893 were still At trial, Lambert said he had lost touch living, working, and praying in French into with his family. His mother was already the latter 20th century, and some of their dead. His sister had gotten married in Wa- descendants maintain these traditions to Henry Lambert, illustration from the Bangor terville around 1889, and he had a brother this day. Were Mercier to return today, he Daily News, Nov 20, 1901 living in Waterville or Harpswell – but he might find a warmer welcome in the streets hadn’t spoken to either in six years. He had of the Petit Canadas than some parts of his (Continued on page 20) homeland. 19 Le Forum (Twenty Years for a Crime he Didn’t but it soon became the accepted version of to have been the lack of a strong alibi. None- Commit continued from page 19) events. theless, the State of Maine brought charges made one trip back to Canada to visit family In small towns, the suspicion for of murder against him, with a case built in or around Sherbrooke around 1895. crimes often falls on outsiders, especially almost entirely on circumstantial evidence. when the crime is as serious as murder The key pieces of evidence in the trial, which Which brings us to May 12 1901, and attempted rape. No-one believes their began in November 1901, included a set when Lambert was working on the farm neighbors to be capable of such atrocities, so of boot marks from the farm to Lambert’s of J Wesley Allen, his wife Mary and teen- blame falls on the outsider. The residents of cabin, the fact that Lambert had cut off a age daughter Carrie. Lambert had become Shirley first suspected the group of men who piece of his shirt, and the whereabouts of a friendly with the Allens, who had allowed had recently held up the mail stagecoach. missing umbrella. to build a log cabin, 12 by 14 feet, on their Presumably the thinking went that if these The Lambert trial was a sensation. land. On the night in question, Lambert ruffians had committed one crime, why not The grisly details of the fire and supposed was staying elsewhere, at the nearby home another? The fact that one of the three was “crime” had been covered breathlessly in the of Telos Smith. That night, a fire broke out described as “dark, like an Indian” may have Maine press, as had the hunt for the guilty at the Allen Farm, destroying the buildings added to the assumption that this group was party. Several selected jury men admitted to having read newspaper coverage of the events before the trial, but were selected anyway. When the trial began on November 20, every twist and turn was covered in the newspapers. The latest dispatches from the trial were on the front page of the Bangor Daily News every day of the two weeks it was in session, accompanied by diagrams of the “crime” site and illustrations of the key players. Reporters also filed background stories on the activities of the jurors and conditions in the jailhouse. The trial proved to be one of the longest and most expensive in state history. It lasted 14 full days, and the trial records eventually filled 1200 pages. The length of the trial was partly Ruins of the Allen Barn, illustration in the Bangor Daily News, Nov 21, 1901 because the state had to spend a long time completely and apparently killing the Allens behind the suspected murder. The Lewiston constructing a case from the circumstantial and their daughter. Daily Sun reported on May 16 that at least evidence at its disposal. As the trial con- There were few, if any, signs of foul two groups were apprehended – one group tinued over Thanksgiving, those in atten- play, yet the Allens’ neighbors immediately at Fort Fairfield, which included an Indian, dance found themselves eating turkey in concluded that this was a deliberate killing. and a group at Brunswick which included the town’s hotels. The jury, off-duty for a day, were served a special holiday meal as The human remains found in the ruins were a black man. too charred to give much indication of what well. Despite the length of the trial, and the But when this lead did not go any- relatively isolated, the small courthouse in had happened that night, but a belt buckle where, law enforcement looked closer to belonging to Mr Allen, and Mrs Allen’s false Dover was packed with spectators. It was home for the culprit, and attention turned reported to be only the third murder trial in teeth suggested the family had perished. A to Henry Lambert. There doesn’t appear to small pool of blood was also identified on Piscataquis county in 30 years. The sheriff have been strong evidence tying Lambert to and his deputies had to Limit attendance to the ground outside. In a sign of how much the fire. The primary indicator of guilt seems the incident shook the small community, a seated audience only. the Lewiston Daily Sun of May 14 reported that “hundreds” had visited the fire site that day, and that the local stores had sold out of guns and ammunition as panicked residents sought to protect themselves. Trial room at the Piscatquis Some imaginative locals constructed County Courthouse. Illustration an entire narrative for the happenings that from the Bangor Daily News, night. Someone (or someones) had come to Nov 25, 1901 the Allen place looking to rape Carrie. The girl struggled, her father came to her rescue, and the would-be rapist murdered the father and the whole family, before setting the fire to hide his crime. There doesn’t seem to have been much evidence for this colorful story,

20 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Twenty Years for a Crime he Didn’t was the culprit. Lambert worked at the sleigh shop, one of Commit continued from page 20) Nonetheless, the jury returned a the two main workshops the prison operat- Though Lambert was officially tried unanimous guilty verdict after two hours of ed to teach inmates a trade, and to produce for murder, the attempted rape motive was deliberation and two separate ballots, and items for sale. According to Lambert, he still present. In his opening statement, the the French Canadian received a life sentence also learned to read and write for the first County Attorney charged that Lambert’s at the State Prison in Thomaston. The case time in the prison. motive was “the outraging of this pure young was appealed, but Lambert lost the appeal, By 1923, attitudes to incarceration and girl, Carrie Allen.” The attorney general and would spend twenty years behind bars, the criminal justice system in Maine had would claim Lambert had wanted to do so starting in 1903. changed. One of Augusta’s most prominent for the past two years, which would have put The Maine State Prison had a fear- citizens, Charles Hitchborn, took up Lam- Carrie at the implausibly young age of 13. some reputation. By the early 20th century it bert’s case as a grave miscarriage of justice. There were other attempts by the pros- represented an outmoded theory of criminal Hitchborn was not a lawyer, but likely had ecution to paint a picture of Lambert as a bad justice. Cells were small and overcrowded. influence with the Governor and his coun- character. This included the fact that Lam- Inmates had to contend with freezing cold in cil, who heard clemency cases. Hitchborn bert has purchased a bottle of whiskey on the the winter, and furnace like conditions in the had previously served as mayor of Augusta night of the fire. In a moment that wouldn’t summertime. When Lambert first arrived, and was president of the local bank. A few be out of place in a daytime TV drama inmates did not even eat together, being years earlier he had overseen renovations to today, Attorney General George Seiders confined to their cells even at mealtimes. the state house, including the very council began his cross-examination of Lambert The Somerset Reporter described the system chamber in which the case was heard. by asking him when he changed his name of solitary eating as “a relic of barbarism, Noting the lack of hard evidence at the from “Henri Champine.” Lambert, confused, when the chief idea was punishment and trial, and the role the media played in influ- said he had never used that name. Seiders only punishment.” state prison, was quoted encing its outcome, Hitchborn appealed to may have gotten this idea because histori- in the Brunswick Record of January 31. He Governor Percival Baxter for a commutation cally, Champagne was indeed used as a “dit described the prison as an “archaic, man-de- of Lambert’s sentence to 40 years. Having name” with Lambert in Quebec. Even if his already served 20, he would be eligible family had used Champagne in past for early release on good behavior. generations, Lambert (who after all (The plea for clemency was printed had lost his father as a boy) may not as a pamphlet and a copy is available have even been aware of it. Seiders’ at the Maine State Library). source for Lambert’s “pseudonym” Governor Baxter went further, was Father Joseph Forrest of Jack- issuing a full and complete pardon man. As a priest, Father Forest to Lambert in July 1923, which might have been drawing more on Hitchborn delivered personally to his historical knowledge than his the prisoner. There’s no record of association with Lambert. In any any compensation for the wrongful case, this French-Canadian naming conviction and imprisonment, just a tradition probably sowed suspicion new suit and a $5 bill. Nonetheless, in the minds of the all-Anglo jury. the New York Times described the Another item of sensational newly free man’s face as “wreathed evidence was the testimony given in smiles.” by Detective Timothy Hartnett of Following his release, the the Portland Police Department. Hartnett has Inside the Maine State Prison, ca 1915. Times reported that Lambert planned to been assigned to the Allen case shortly after Image: Maine Historical Society/Maine move to New York State, to work on the the fire, and the policeman had gone to the Memory Network estate of an unnamed benefactor who had scene to investigate the cause and identify stroying machine.” with prisoners confined “befriended him and aided in his release.” suspects. However, Hartnett also went to the to cells 6 by 10 feet and only a bucket to re- What happened to him afterwards isn’t county jail and impersonated a prisoner to lieve themselves in – “a constant denigrating known. I’ve been unable to track him in the try and extract a confession from Lambert. factor tending to brutalize the prisoner and census or other records. He even had Lambert, who admitted to being reduce him to an animal’s scale of living.” Henry Lambert’s case is a particularly barely literate, sign a note asking Hartnett to A new wing was constructed to par- striking example of the ways our criminal fabricate an alibi in exchange for $200. The tially address these problems, with wash justice system has failed to deliver true jus- judge presiding over the trial noted that “it basins and flush toilets installed for the first tice, especially for individuals outside the would be hard to find any code of ethics in time. Yet the State Board of Corrections dominant culture. Lambert may have been law that would uphold the methods followed noted that the new cells were still damp in one of the lucky ones, since he was eventu- by Hartnett in the Dover jail.” the summer time, and fitted with iron slat ally pardoned and released. We don’t know Defense counsel Henry Hudson point- beds that were too small for many prisoners. how many others suffered miscarriages of ed out that there wasn’t even irrefutable What’s the more, the new wing only housed justice that went undetected. proof that the bodies found at the farm were about a third of the inmates, with others left https://myall.bangor- those of the Allens were dead, let alone that in the old conditions. dailynews.com/author/ had been murdered, let alone that Lambert During his time at the state prison, myall/ 21 Le Forum Franco-American TED Talk by Susan Poulin November 27, 2019 Franco-American News and CulturePoolye Productions, Susan Poulin

By Juliana L'Heureux

Franco-American culture with humor! proud of her heritage, she “Can You Find Your Identity Through A didn’t know a lot about what it Heritage-Language?” is an entertaining meant to be Franco-American. Ted Talk, by Susan Poulin, now available So, she and her husband Gor- on-line. don Carlisle began a search Susan Poulin with Alphonse Poulin to help her re-connect with Alphonse Poulin and Susan Poulin at the 2017, Franco-American Hall of Fame her Franco-American identity. Susan Poulin is a gifted performer. induction in the Augusta Capitol. Distant She explains that, since her 40s, she has been She travels the country as an actor and facil- cousins!In the presentation, Poulin narrates trying to find her identity through relearning itator for PowerPlay, a professional applied a joy filled educational lecture about her her lost language. theater company based at University of New personal journey as a Franco-American who Watching this Ted Talk can support Hampshire. In May of 2019, during a joint is trying to connect with her primary culture conversations about the Franco-American session of the Maine State Legislature, Su- and language. She has lived the American immigration experience and teach how as- san was inducted into the Franco-American dream as a Franco and as an American. similation has impacted cultural awareness, Hall of Fame in honor of her body of work During Les Fêtes, the season when even among those who grew up in other and promotion of Franco-American cultur- families naturally gather to share memories cultures. al identity. She continues to be a leader in and to tell stories, might be the perfect Poulin speaks about her experiences bringing a female voice to New England opportunity to watch this enjoyable 20 with wit and wisdom. storytelling, and humor, and sharing the minute video. Poulin’s experiences tran- I was delighted to receive this video healing power of laughter with audiences scend generations. She speaks about her link from the Poolyle Productions.com statewide and beyond. French-Canadian family and her coming of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s- In 2017, it was my honor to be with age as a Franco-American. In fact, she has 5fJ3z0WQ_8&feature=youtu.be worked long and hard to “find the French in Susan when she and I were inducted into the Franco-American Hall of Fame, at cer- her head” and to reconnect with her primary This video is an entertaining way emonies hosted by the Maine Legislature. language, spoken at home and learned before to learn about what it means to be Fran- Poulin’s narrative is a story for all she spoke English. co-American. Americans. Her experiences are especially French is Poulin’s first language, but Poulin recorded the video in Ports- relevant for Franco-Americans who have she only spoke it until she was 4. Although mouth, New Hampshire. lived as proud “hyphenated Americans”. Franco-American history about business entrepreneurs November 15, 2019Franco-American News and Cul- tureAndroscoggin County, Bonneau, LeBlanc, Lepage, Marcotte By Juliana L'Heureux

LEWISTON, Me – “Celebrate Maine Several well known business families 2020”, bicentennial will include an exhibit will be included in the exhibit, scheduled to about Franco-Americans who participated open at the LAC in March, 2020, during “le in building the state’s economy. In fact, the mois de la Francophone” (the month of the Board of Directors, with the Franco-Ameri- Francophone). A primary focus will be to This on-line book was published in 1892, can Collection at the University of Southern exhibit histories about the families Leblanc, and made available by Harvard. Maine Lewiston Auburn College (USM Lepage, Bonneau and Marcotte. basic, everyday human needs. LAC FAC), are preparing to participate in This exhibit will eventually include the state’s bicentennial history by organiz- A theme for the exhibit is “Le Pain other entrepreneurs and their families, in a ing an exhibit to tribute Franco-American Quotidien”, a concept meant to reflect the sequel, proposed for 2021. entrepreneurs. ways in which the entrepreneurs saw to (Continued on page 23) 22 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Franco-American history about business Franco-American families who de- is that thorough steam cleansing of feather entrepreneurs continued from page 22) scended from the French Canadian im- beds, pillows, Bolsters, Curled Hair, etc.. • Leblanc- established the Lewiston migrants that arrived in Lewiston, during House Furnishings goods are dyed in the steam dye house or “bleachery” the second half of the 19th century, were most fashionable colors and finished in the • Lepage – established a bakery essential to the economic prosperity of the most skillful manner and Ostrich plumes are • Bonneau – the Bonneau Brothers Lewiston and Auburn cities. Some saw how given the utmost attention and are Curled, market meeting the daily living needs required by Cleansed and Dyed any desired shade.” • F.X. Marcotte- created the furniture the immigrants was also an opportunity to (Mon Dieu! Personally speaking, this ser- sales company helping immigrants to furnish build economic security for themselves, vice sounds like something I could pay for their residences. while also helping their French speaking today, because my pillows could surely use neighbors. They provided needed services a “thorough steam cleansing”!) to the thousands of laborers who worked in the mills, built along the Androscoggin River Sponsors who can help to support during the late 19th and into the middle 20th this exhibit are encouraged to contact Do- centuries. Their business investments were ris Bonneau at this email: dbbonneau1@ successful because they met the expectations gmail.com of the Franco-Americans and the citizens who lived in the Androscoggin County’s twin cities. Rice-Defosse said, “Entrepre- neurship offered the immigrant families an escape from the alienation of industrial labor and a means to control one’s own destiny.” French-Canadian immigrants who arrived in Maine by foot, in horse drawn History of the Bonneau Market circa 1946 carts and on the Grand Trunk Railroad, caused the City of Lewiston to grow into a Oral histories have been recorded with commercial hub. surviving family members who also volun- This growth was documented in a teered to loan, or donate photographs and fascinating on-line history book, made visual artifacts to display in the planned ex- available by Harvard, titled, “Leading hibits. Doris Belisle Bonneau, of Auburn, is Business Men of Lewiston Augusta and About Juliana the chair of the exhibition committee. Mary Vicinity”, published in 1892, (at this link) Rice-Defosse, a French professor who teach- by Mercentile Press. es at Bates College in Lewiston, is assisting On page 58 of the on-line edition, Mr. Juliana L’Heureux is a free lance writ- with the exhibit and Celia McGuckian, a Leblanc, who established the “bleachery”, er who publishes news, blogs and articles FAC board member, is among others who was described as one among those “leading about Franco-Americans and the French are volunteering on the committee. business men”. Written in language peculiar culture. She has written about the culture in Anna Faherty, a professional archivist to the late 19th century with excessive use weekly and bi-weekly articles, for the past who works with the FAC, is providing tech- of capital letters, this description presented 27 years. nical expertise. a compelling advertisement for the cleans- ing services provided. The narrative, as I https://francoamerican.ban- transcribed it, from the book reads: “Mr. gordailynews.com/author/jlheu- Leblanc is a native of Canada and inaugu- reux/ rated his present enterprise in this city (Lew- iston) in 1886. He began operations with no flourish or trumpets whatever, confident that the merits of his work had only to become known to assure him of a large patronage and the progress of time has proved his confidence to be well founded. Premises are occupied at No.141 Maine Street… employment is given to five assistants and a specialty is made of the handling of clothing of all descriptions, the same being Cleansed, Dyed and Neatly Repaired at the shortest possible notice. Ladies Dresses’ are Cleansed, Dyed and Finished without Rip- Am on-line book about Lewiston and other ping, and a feature of the business which will Maine cities, published in 1892. be of particular interest to all housekeepers

23 Le Forum water fowl. La jeune Clara Fabiola Coutu The other siblings, are Deborah who now lives with her husband on the Florida by Gérard Coulombe panhandle and has her children living in Maine; Denise used to live on an Island with I called my sister in Vermont, yester- raised five children, a girl and four boys. Of some of her children and grandchildren but day afternoon [10-26-2019] because I had the four boys, the oldest is married, works moved to the mainland to simplify shopping; been looking closely at a photograph of our for the government, has been a professor of Susan lives with her partner nearer to cam- mother and some of her friends, seven of ancient Chinese poetry. A younger brother pus of the University of New England, and them. Now, my mother appears to be all lives atop one of those Vermont mountains her adult children are in the area, along the of seventeen in this, the earliest of her in a with a wife and three boys, one of whom, I Pool Road; Peter manages an aluminum fab- photograph that I have seen, maybe not, but just discovered, either lives or worked, once, ricating company and lives with his wife in she does look younger than all of the others in our hometown, here. And the other two are Arundel, Maine, and Peter owns a concrete in the staid photograph of the time. Only my either working or still in college. A younger slab and foundation business and lives in mom appears to be wearing an elegant dress brother works for the State, is married too, Saco. My brother-in law enjoys condo-type as five of the eight girls, women, pictured and has a boy and girl in college. Another living, his in-line unit is cared for by him as appear to be wearing the works in senior housing as a chef and lives at is, voluntarily, the rest of the condo property formal dress of the times. in which he lives. I say this only because Our own chil- their dresses are dark dren, my wife and I and highlighted by frilly had four: The old- white collars of the kind est, Kevin is married that I have seen before and a retired con- on ladies photographed tainer-ship master, in their fineries. living in the State My sister, Julienne of Washington. He Coulombe married Ge- writes about and rard Asselin who graduat- teaches mariner ed from a Maine college skills and life; he is and administered and active in the Coast superintended schools Guard Auxilia; Thad in Northfield, Vermont works for a Hartford where he was highly re- insurance compa- spected before he moved ny, has one son who on to work with the State works as an inde- Department of Education La jeune Clara Fabiola Coutu et des amis. Pris a Sanford, Me.., Date ? pendent contractor, where I believe he super- Mother could have been sixteen and looks over us; vised special education L. to R. Julia Horton; Marie Louise Coutu; Albina Valliere; Eugenie Martin; Theo is a photog- programs of which he Imelda Valliere rapher/owner of an was a proponent for the L. to R. Marie Horton; Clara Coutu; Blanche Bouchard art studio in upstate good education of all Ct., and Renee lives students. home and is also caring for his mother. The with us, works from her home-office, and My brother-in-law died a few years hoys have a sister who has two daughters, keeps track of her four adult children, one ago, but my sister, who survives him at one married and living in North Carolina, I in the publishing workplace, the other three, age 85, lives in Northfield Falls, Vt., along think, and the other, independently capital- triplets, are seniors at different colleges, a stream flowing in-between mountains, on izes on opportunities in her native Vermont. East-West. its way to Montpelier. Another sister, older than Julienne by I await my Julienne’s remembrances I know that there was always some- a year, I think, Therese, died a few years ago of Clara. A young woman in the photo. Mom thing of a mountain rising to the side of and she left six children. The one I know had a younger sister whom I did not like, their home, up and up into the hills, moun- best is the one whom I traveled all over growing up; I shouldn’t have disliked Eva, tains, for all I know, as I am a flatland boy the country and Canada with following my but I actually had visions of her when I was living, with my own family, near a Sound retirement. All of the time, we camped out. older but only in my late teens. If some here in-between us and Long Island New York, He in his tent and I in mine. The two of us suspect that my choice of “vision” might be on which we first lived upon leaving the loved the open road and the wonder of the inappropriate given my age, I assure readers, University of Maine in 1958 following, upon vistas we saw and the surprises that nature that as a Catholic boy, in those days, I was graduation from high school, my stint in the continuously provided on our trips. Once perfectly and totally familiar with the notion military and the Korean War G.I. Bill that we camped North of the highest peak in of a vision. permitted my own university attendance. Maine, on a lake with the view of loneliness Finally, one last comment, if I may, Meanwhile, my sister and her husband personified, but for the hoot of some lake (Continued on page 25)

24 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (N.D.L.R. The Lowell Sun daily newspaper of Lowell, MA published the accompanying short article on December 24 using text and photos submitted to them by Suzanne Beebe, a frequent contributor to this publication in recent years. The article highlights the global reach of New England’s best-known writer, Jack Kerouac, and is reprinted with permission from The Lowell Sun.) From Italy, with love for Ker­ouac

Elia Inderle­ an artist from Italy displays a portion of the Dr. Sax-Inspired scroll he created and presented as a gift to the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Committee.

Italian artist Elia Inderle­ displays a portion of his Dr. Sax inspired scroll. An unex­ ­pected visitor­ from Italy at­ Low­ell novels,­ espe­ ­cially “Dr. Sax,” which tended a re­cent Low­ell Cel­e­brates Ker­ouac! is based on his pre-ado­les­cent boy­hood in presen­ ta­ tion­ at Umass Lowell’s­ O’leary Paw­tuck­etville. Li­brary. “Dr. Sax” is In­derle’s fa­vorite Ker­ouac Artist Elia In­derle, a de­voted reader book, and he cre­ated a scroll and spi­ral- of Jack Kerouac,­ popped in to present­ the bound book­let inspired­ by the words and LCK! Commit­ tee­ with two gifts that enrich­ im­agery of that intensely­ visual­ book. Both the collec­ ­tion of artwork­ inspired­ by Low­ the scroll and spiral­ ­bound booklet­ are now ell’s na­tive-born and world-renowned writer. in the posses­ ­sion of the LCK! Commit­ tee,­ In­derle had come to Lowell­ to visit which is pon­der­ing how the scroll, in par­tic­ Ker­ouac’s grave in Ed­son Ceme­tery and u­lar, might be displayed­ for other Ker­ouac see the sites as­so­ci­ated with the au­thor’s devo­tees to see and appre­ ­ci­ate in the future.­ In­derle holds the spiral-bound booklet life in Lowell­ and made fa­mous in his Suzanne Beebe also inspired by Dr. Sax.

(La jeune Clara Fabiola Coutu wife, heavier some, much older, with much a young forty. But, as father had always continued from page 24) of her youth having been used up in daily been the actor that he had been as a young about my sister Julienne’s husband, now de- household chores, raising the children with man, there is no telling. Marie Louise Coutu, ceased. When I knew him he was a genteel, little to meet the weekly bills in those days. is one of mom’s sisters who became “une well-educated, gentleman; the picture that I No wonder that I do not recall a word that soeur grise,” a grey nun of Montreal. I knew saw of him in his wheelchair, in hospital or she might have said to me when I left with Blanche Bouchard as one of mom’s close nursing home, before he died, was that of my dad in a rented car and driver for the friends and one of several we, as children, himself sitting, looking blankly, with a. cap novitiate at the end of sixth grade and later visited, as one of mom’s favorite and fre- on his forehead signifying some holiday or when I said to her one late midweek after- quent outings when we were kids were visits birthday. He looked so nonplus in that photo noon, days after high school graduation that to her friends, of which Blanche was one. that I felt like crying for him, and asking I was leaving because I had enlisted. She those in his surround, “What is happening just signed the papers for me, as my dad, as **In this photo, our mom appears to to me?” always, was at work for the second shift. I be young to me, as thin as my sister Julienne Of course, no one knew, as the focus had neither seen nor spoken to my sisters that was when she married. My sister, Therese, was not upon him. It’s only what the photo day, as they were away at play, I imagine. could tell me more about this photograph reveals. There could not have been a sadder were she still living. I think mother was moment in his life or for me in considering ©Coulombe.10-26-19 eighty-three when she died and had not his achievements. visited the doctors or had her breast cancer Still, I look at my mom in the photo * Mom always said, “I took the late treated, as some were inclined to do in those above, and I say to myself, what a beautiful train when I married.” And, that, in French. days. Whereas, today, we see the doctor at woman, even as I recall her as a tired house- She was younger than Felix who was already the drop of a pin; it wasn’t always so. 25 Le Forum Cultural Week, in addition to being a charter member choir of the Lowell Choral Festival. The History of Lowell’s It also participated in the 150th anniversary celebration of Lowell’s historic St. Patrick Church in the Acre; the 150th anniversary Franco-American celebration of Lowell’s St. Joseph Hospital; and a Christmas program on Channel 9, Manchester, NH. Male Chorus Other performance venues and events included Old North Common in Boston; the [Editor’s Note: The following account is adapted from a 50th anniversary program historical naval vessel, USS Constitution; booklet of Lowell’s Franco-American Male Chorus as submitted to the Lowell Franco- Harvard University; the famed Methuen American Committee website (http://www.francolowellma.com) by then- director Robert Organ Hall (as part of a SIDS Foundation Gaudette in December of 2004.] event); a concert for Merrimack Valley United Way; a Dracut High School fund In 2004, the now-discontinued Lowell Program on TV-9 in Manchester, NH. In raiser telethon; Lowell and Lawrence Elks Franco-American Male Chorus consisted of 1968, the group was invited to sing a spe- Memorial Services; and St. Marie Parish’s thirty members from the Lowell, MA and cial Mass in New York City’s Sts. Peter and 50th Anniversary Mass. And, much to the Salem, NH areas. The group included family Paul Cathedral and shortly thereafter sang benefit of many young couples, the chorus groupings of two and three generations, as on Boston’s TV-5 for a television Mass for sang at over 750 weddings. well as members who had originally sung shut-ins. A tradition of providing musical In 1987, the chorus was chosen to as boys in the Ste. Jeanne d’Arc Boys and performances for the elderly and needy be part of the Lowell Folklife Project, a Men’s Choir in the late 1920s, as well as continued with variety shows and musicals yearlong effort to document the life and members of the St. Louis de France Choir in scheduled annually in the Salem and Lowell traditions of a proud, intensely ethnic city. Lowell. The chorus was formally registered areas. The materials and tapes produced by that as The Franco-American Male effort are now housed in Low- Chorus in 1948 by its founder, ell’s Patrick Mogan Cultural Mr. George A. Ayotte, Lowell’s Center as well as in the Library mayor at the time. of Congress in Washington, At the passing of Delia D.C. for use by students and Ayotte, accompanist and wife scholars. of Mr. Ayotte, their daughter, Far more than just an- Fleurette Ayotte Sheehy, took other community chorus, the over as the group’s accom- Franco-American Male Cho- panist, serving to 2004 and rus embodied the best musical beyond. In 1977, her father aspirations and accomplish- retired as the group’s director ments of an ethnic community and turned the reins over to drawing inspiration from its Mr. Robert Gaudette, a loyal vibrant cultural background. member since 1948, with The members of the Franco-American Male Chorus seen in this 1950 photo are: years of valuable experience (1st row, left to right) Joe Harvey, Marcel Therriault, Leo Cloutier, Director as director of Mary Queen of George A. Ayotte, Raymond Jussaume, Henri Lagasse, Armand “Sparky” Desmarais and Normand L. Ayotte. (2nd row, left to right) Albert Gaudette, Bob Peace’s Parish Choir in Salem, Gaudette, René Ayotte, Henry Pellerin, Richard Lagasse, Leon Bedard, Henry NH, as well as director of the Morrissette and Napoleon Milot. (3rd row, left to right) Robert Daigle, Donald Salem Choral Society, which Richards, André St. Gelais, Adolphe Brassard, Normand Richards, Raymond he founded in 1972. His exper- Brassard, René Vigneault, Leon Payette and Arthur Germain. [Photo from the tise was an essential element in Hank Frechette Collection, courtesy of Gert Frechette.] maintaining the professional- ism exhibited by the group throughout its Additional honors bestowed on the existence. (Three of Bob’s sons were mem- chorus included an invitation to sing in bers of the chorus as late as 2004.) 1979 for the newly-elected NH Governor The group had a storied history and Hugh Gallen. In 1980, the group sang on widespread exposure including three tours of The Mount Washington cruise flagship of Canada in 1948, 1952 and 1970. Their 1952 Lake Winnepesaukee. In 1983, the group tour included the honor of being the first U.S. sang for then-presidential candidate astro- Delia & male chorus to sing at St. Joseph’s Oratory naut John Glenn. And through the years, George in Montreal. From 1960-1961 the chorus it participated frequently in Lowell’s Ayotte performed weekly in the Franco-American Franco-American Cultural Week and Irish http://www.francoamericanmalechorus.org/f.a.m.c.1.htm 26 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 Finding Francos in Le Forum (1975) 2019-11-07 PL Contemporary Francos, Franco-American Women, Franco-Americans, French Language, Le Forum, Survivance http://querythepast.com/ From Survivance FACTS, a televised early childhood educa- co-American everything,” Muro explained to Fulfillment tion program, which enabled participants to (presciently) to FAROG members. “Curric- evaluate self-esteem in Franco-Americans. ulum development, etc. I would like to see a This begins a journey into the pages In “Un coup d’oeil sur FAROG,” Labbé series of offices, like a center, an institute.” of Le Forum, a product of the FAROG and attested to the hard work being done at the In fact, in FAROG’s early years, much of later the Franco-American Centre in Orono, University of Maine for the revitalization the support would come from education Maine. Again, a word of caution is in order: of French-Canadian culture. There ought to faculty, with two courses focusing on the this is only one of many sources for the pe- be no question, he stated in the fall of 1975, Franco-American experience. riod at hand. We cannot take the Le Forum that one could be a good American citizen Still much more a newspaper than as a perfect or comprehensive representation and a francophone. a magazine, the Forum included papers of the Franco community’s concerns and That only meant so much after de- written for one of these courses on the edu- sentiments. Nevertheless, it hints at the cades of marginalization and discrimination. cation of Franco-Americans. Nicole Cécile important—and vigorous—debates of the Franco-Americans youths were contending Collin’s work traced the history of resistance day and ways in which we might approach with that heavy legacy and what they per- to Anglo-Protestant influence, a history that recent Franco-American history. ceived to be the failures of traditional elites. she had internalized and that blocked the The FAROG Forum of the 1970s reflected full expression of her identity. Resistance During the past nine months, we growing ethnic awareness, a democratiza- was, for Collin, a quintessential part of the have evolved into a real newspaper, with tion of the Franco cultural project, and a Franco-American identity. The decline of pictures no less. In the process we have tried search for allies and resources. traditional institutions like the Church and to provide a source of information about parish schools meant that the struggle had Franco-Americans in the 1970’s. We have become individualized. “In order to arrive hoped to create the beginnings of a com- at a dynamic, creative living awareness and munication network within our disparate definition of Franco-American culture and Franco-American community. And, we have self-identity,” she wrote, “I must get beyond tried to exchange ideas for the benefit of all this resistance. To redefine it so I can live and those involved, by blood, marriage, or love, have enjoyment and space to grow.” with Franco-American life. In a later issue, Irene Simano shared Our achievements have perhaps fallen a powerful, heartfelt reflection under the short of our objectives, but the intention per- telling title, “La Survivance Is Not Enough.” sists and the struggle goes on. Oddly enough “Even now,” she explained, we have a poster in the office which reads: ‘F.A.R.O.G. is an underdeveloped program it seems ironic to speak about change as defined by the gap between its aspirations when referring to the people of a culture and its resources.’ whose main concern has been continuity, traditions, la survivance. Furthermore, it – Editor Celeste Roberge, May 1975 seems strange to speak about change in a positive manner and devoid of the defensive- Three years after the creation of the ness which characterizes the speech of many Franco-American Resource Opportunity Franco-Americans when they bemoan the Group, its outlet was a little engine with rapid rate of assimilation among the young. a small budget and high hopes. Roberge, For so long, the criteria for the retention Yvon Labbé, and their acolytes had already of true Franco American credentials have achieved a great deal to ensure the visibility remained elusive for the young, because of the fait français in Maine. The road to these credentials have been strictly tied to recognition and legitimacy was a long one, conformity, traditions (which are sometimes however. oppressive, not liberating) and la surviv- A new political age was at hand in ance. The answer to the question of what is a Maine, with recent legislation restoring The issue of mental health front and center Franco American has traditionally followed bilingual education and the appointment in Le Forum in 1975 a set pattern of ‘speaks French, is a Cath- under Governor Ken Curtis of Armand olic, follows certain rituals and traditions, Dufresne as the state’s chief justice. At a One of those allies proved to be the most of which are Church oriented, has a local level, Omer Picard wrote of efforts University of Maine’s James Muro, then non-anglicized surname.[’] to promote French education in northern dean of the College of Education. “I’d love Maine. Irene Simano discussed Project this place to be a center in the U.S. for Fran- (Continued on page 28) 27 Le Forum (From Survivance to Fulfillment last be heard in their own words. The writing b. procédé par lequel on fabrique de continued from page 27) of Collin and Simano and the leadership of la bière chez soi Roberge reflected the essential role played c. action de couvrir la réalité d’un That, Simano explained, may have by women in both the FAROG and its pub- vernis loquace been fine in 1875—but no longer. Surely lication. There was also a desire to reach out (Since an English translation would be there was another way. “Somewhere be- to Francos in other states. Appropriately, one at best imperfect, we might understand this tween the land of the petrified forest and series titled “Du nord au sud” provided the as asking the meaning of “blowing hot air.”) the acres of assimilation lies the kingdom lay of Franco-American communities in the of the possible,” she stated. She hinted at New England states, including statistics and The language issue was also a matter the torrent of change known as the Quiet history. The Francos were significant—they of serious debate in the pages of Le Forum. Revolution in Quebec and activism in the simply had to recognize their significance. One clergyman from the Madawaska region African-American community; even the On a lighter note reflecting its conver- denounced the paper’s style; in his view, the Catholic Church was changing! The time sational tone, the paper regularly featured writing “sent le chantier,” i.e. it had a whiff had come to move from survivance—“de- quizzes that were really inside jokes. It is of the logging camp on account of the col- fensive, archaic and destructive of vital likely that these short tests, appearing under loquial French and critiques of the Catholic energy”—to fulfillment. “Votre quotient intellectuel francophone,” Church. (Another correspondent issued a Many contributions attested to the per- would only make sense to speakers of a blunt “Stop printing.”) On the other hand, sonal quest for self-confidence and a healthy, certain colloquial French. The answers Don Dugas of the University of Massachu- “normal” Franco-American identity. The became increasingly obscure over time. In setts defended the French-Canadian dialect Forum was at the vanguard of mental health September 1975, one question was: in the face of the Parisian. This was em- awareness with a new column dedicated to blematic of the times. Scholars increasingly issues pertaining to the mental well-being of Péter de la broue = brought legitimacy to the ancestral tongue, francophones, no small step forward in 1975. such that younger generations might no As for democratization, Roberge and a. déformation physiologique qui longer feel ashamed to speak their parents’ Forum correspondents together expressed a entraîne beaucoup d’ennui[s] French on account of its quality. That issue desire to hear more voices. Youths could at would linger for some time.

Cut-out from a four-decades-old copy of Le Forum – a relic of a far more turbulent era among Franco-Americans

27 28 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (N.D.L.R. The original printing of this aritcle first appeared in the bi-annual Freeman’s: stop to peek in the windows of an aban- Home. Spring 2017. And is reprinted with permission.) doned house, one I always liked, with its wraparound porch, turreted roof, and but- tercup-yellow paint. The owner is sick but refuses to sell the house, my mother says as we walk across the battered porch. So it sits there, this once elegant home, shedding its brightness, yellow flecking the half-frozen ground. Spray-painted in the road near the driveway: “F___ you, b____.” The fug of the mill swallows us. Ahead, we reach the top of the hill, and there, my old high school. To the east, Vacationland snowmobile trails and abutting them, the mill’s decommissioned landfill. To the west, the football field slices the horizon and be- Kerri Arsenault Living in the Shadow of a yond that, lazy fingers of smoke lick the sky. We walk inside the school, and my Smoke-Spouting Paper Mill mother stops in the office to chat with the principal. The lobby smells of Band-Aids, By Kerri Arsenault warm mashed potatoes, and damp socks. Being there reminds me of Greg, my high Mexico, Maine sits in a valley or “Riv- town you can orient yourself to this stack or school on-again, off-again lumberjackish er Valley” as we call the area, because I sup- the ever-present ca-chink ca-chink ca-chink boyfriend who lived near the town inciner- pose you can’t have one without the other. of the mill’s conveyor belts and find your ator. I loved him like I would a sorry stuffed The hills are low and worn and carved by the way home, even from a pitch-black walk in animal, one who had lost an eye or whose fur waters surrounding them, and trees line the the woods. When mill shutdowns occur for was rubbed raw. Kelly, a girl who wore her rivers, which confine the town. It’s a paper holidays or layoffs, the smokeless stacks black, perfectly feathered hair like a weapon, mill town where smokestacks poke holes in resemble the diseased birch trees dying was in love with him too. When he and I the smog they create. That’s money coming throughout New England. fought—usually because of her—I’d listen out of those smokestacks, my father used to Where stack meets sky, the river piv- to sad songs on my cassette player over and say about the rotten-smelling upriver drafts ots and heads southeast, under bridges and over until he’d call and I’d forgive him in that surfaced when the weather shifted. That over rapids, pushing through falls and dams, a pattern of everlasting redemption. I only smell loitered amid the high school softball around islands and along inlets, through Jay, saw Greg once since I graduated. He came games I played beneath those stacks and Lewiston, Topsham, Brunswick, and other to my parents’ one Christmas break when I lingered on my father’s shirtsleeves when small towns, until it meets and mingles was home from college. He and my mother he came home from work, allowing me to with five other rivers at Merrymeeting Bay, caught up while I leaned against the kitchen forgive the rank odor for what it provided. whereupon it finally and quietly slips into countertop across the room. P____head, From the porch steps of the house the Atlantic Ocean. my father said when he entered the room. where I grew up, to the right, you’ll see a April 2009 and I am home He called all boys I dated “P____head” but street of clapboarded homes, the quiet in- for my grandfather’s funeral. only if he liked them. If he didn’t, my father terrupted every now and then by a braking would sit at our kitchen table like a boulder logging truck. A mile or two out of town, the My parents’ house sighs with win- while the boy fidgeted by the kitchen door road narrows and small creeks knit through ter’s leftover lethargy. Spring has arrived in blank-faced silence. Greg eventually mar- pastures shadowed by hills, a working farm in Maine with driveways full of mud and ried Kelly and got a job at the mill, alongside or two, a long straight road, and smells of sculled up snow-plow debris; salt stains, his sister Janet, who pitched for my high cut hay, muddy cow paths, rotting leaves, or shredded earth, and derelict mittens lie in school state championship softball team. black ice, depending on the time of year. The the wake of its embracing path. A few dirty After my mother and I leave, we fol- seasons, they calendared our lives. buttresses of snow linger like pocked mono- low the dirt path behind the football field, To the left of the porch, you’ll see the liths, meting out the new season’s arrival. past Meroby Elementary where I got into a end of the road. There, the pavement dips The swollen Androscoggin pushes flotsam fistfight with Lisa Blodgett. Lisa and I took down to reveal the town’s only traffic light, downriver in the commotion of spring’s turns swinging horizontally at each other’s a gas station, and the roof of the Family thaw, and insect hatches will soon begin head until a teacher intruded on the brawl. Dollar Store. Behind the store lies the wide, bursting along its surface until summer Lisa’s strength was tremendous for a sixth slow-moving Androscoggin River. Just be- opens like an oven. My mother comes out grader, her grit shaped by being one of the yond the Androscoggin, on an island in the on the porch where I’m standing. Want to go youngest girls in a family of 14 kids, most neighboring town of Rumford, the paper for a walk? she asks, her face pinched with of them boys. When I looked in the mirror mill’s largest smokestack emerges like a the sharpness of her father’s death. that night at home, I was sure I looked giant concrete finger. From anywhere in We head up Highland Terrace and (Continued on page 30) 29 Le Forum (Vacationland continued from page 29) ber so-and-so? I will stand there frozen, in paper—our mill’s primary product—has the frozen foods, staring at my mother and become as precarious as the livelihoods of different, the way you think you do when the person she has grabbed, their eyes like the men and women who make it. We want you lose your virginity. It was my first and dinner plates, waiting for my answer. Sure, to sell the house, but nobody wants to live last bare-knuckled fight, except for a few yes, I remember you! I had said earlier that here anymore, my mother says, panning her unconvincing swipes at good old Kelly one same day to Mr. Martineau, the man who hand from one side of the street to the other. night at a dance. My best friend, Maureen, lives across the street from my grandfather. Homes sag with ruined lawns—and the fam- who towered over both of us, protected me After Mr. Martineau left the store my moth- ilies who live in them haven’t fared much from Kelly’s sharp, red fingernails. er told me he has Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t better. Around the block, we pass Kimball Down Granite Street, an untied dog remember you, she said. School where I attended K–4. begins following us, growling. Just ignore Kerri, come see who’s here! she shouts Weeds root in the tar playground and him, my mother says. But I hear his snarls again. I walk around the aisle like Gulliver, a plastic bag twirls in the damp breeze. A over the thrum of the mill. As I turn to look jiggling the doll-sized plastic floral arrange- rusty chain-link fence girdles the property. at him the dog sniffs my heels, his tail down. ments, pitching the teeny flowers to and fro. Dr. Edward Martin gutted the school years I walk faster. My mother continues talking. My mother raises her arms upward like a ago and transformed it into a medical of- The dog gives a final bark and sits down magician. DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS? fice, but after he died, the building closed in the middle of the road. I look over my up permanently. Broken glass breaches the shoulder until we are out of his sight and he milkweed that surrounds the maple tree we is out of ours. Down the hill, past the Green “Our mill’s primary had sought shade under during recess. Down Church, the town hall, the library, the fire the street, my grandfather’s house, buttoned station, the post office, we walk through the product has become as pre- up, the furnace long expired. Remnants of oversized parking lot at the Family Dollar carious as the livelihoods crabgrass and soggy leaves flatten his once Store. Someone sits inside the only vehicle thriving garden. Mr. Martineau, who my parked there eating a sandwich with the win- of the men and women who mother and I saw at the grocery store earlier, dows rolled up and the engine running. Near- make it.” emerges from the house across the street. He by, the vacant lot where the Bowl-O-Drome waves. We wave back. used to be and behind it, St. Theresa’s, our Hi. Long time no see, the woman says. My mother and I walk home in si- shuttered Catholic church where Father Cyr Yeah, what is it, about twenty years? I say. lence. Halfway there, I run my hand along gave me my first communion, confirmed me, Her dry yellow bangs slump over oversized the cool green iron railing that parallels the and listened to my first confession.I’m sorry round glasses that hide pink powdered sidewalk and snag my sweater on it. The I lied to my parents, I said to him, though cheeks. On her bulky sweatshirt, something rusted, dismembered rail is scattered in bits that itself was a lie. plaid. Where do you live now? she asks, at the bottom of the banking. On my way leaning on the counter, arms crossed like a from school, I’d roll on my side down that “Our mill’s primary product has fortress. California, I say, feeling bad, not banking, again and again. With grass stains become as precarious as the livelihoods of knowing why. San Francisco! I clarify. Oh, on my clothes, I’d run home, as if my head the men and women who make it.” I went there once. Didn’t like it. The people was made of that same iron rail and my

are not very nice. And I never found anything house was magnetic north. On the corner at the traffic light, a good to eat, she says. I see the porch of our house from sev- gardening store, a newish shop, to me any- I look around the store for my moth- eral blocks away, and it looks as it’s always way. Lawn decorations, perennials, stuffed er, for the exit. It seems quiet around here looked, only smaller as things often appear animals, and miniature tchotchkes for ter- nowadays. Much less going on than when when you are older. My mother and I stomp rariums strain the overstocked metal shelves we were kids, I say. No, not really, she says. our feet on the front porch to dislodge road of the store. Most mom-and-pop shops have Really? I say, wondering if she means there grime from our boots. I can’t imagine what closed in town, but for a few. In their place, is something going on or there isn’t. I went will happen if the mill closes, my mother discount stores like Marden’s Surplus & by the Recreation Park yesterday. It’s just says, as she opens the door. So many people Salvage, Wardwell’s Used Furniture, the so . . . so different, I say, hopeful. I glance are out of work already, she clarifies.It will What Not Shop Thrift Store, and other at her around the periphery of her glasses, be a ghost town. I take off my coat while such second-hand outlets and pawn shops our conversation. She stares at me over the my mother digs out the local newspaper, her appeared over the years, as if the people who top of her rims, as patient as a road, looks forefinger thumping a news article about the live here only deserve leftovers. Walmart at me without blinking: my leather jacket, mill. We have to sell the house, she says. But with its blinking fluorescent lights and the my Prada eyeglasses, my fitted jeans.Nope, she has been saying this for years. faint smell of formaldehyde, hijacked the you’re the one that’s different, she says. The next day, I go for a run through rest of the commerce. We leave the store and my mother Strathglass Park, a collection of two-fam- I am inspecting a snow globe when I tells me the mill plans to shut down Num- ily homes by the mill’s founder, Hugh J. hear my mother shout, Kerri, guess who’s ber 10 paper machine, and others are on Chisholm. here? Do you know who this is? Inevitably, a transitional schedule, meaning they too Brick-by-brick—five million to be she plays this remembering game, usually in may lumber to a slow hissing halt. In the exact—Chisholm assembled the houses with the grocery store, where she will stand next past few decades, with technology displac- long-lasting materials for what he hoped to someone, grab his or her arm as if she ing people and digital media overtaking were a koala, and ask me, do you remem- print, the production of coated magazine (Continued on page 31) 29 30 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Vacationland continued from page 30) football games we watched our high school teenagers, pivoting our used Monte Carlo would be a long-lasting industry: slate roofs, fire-twirling majorettes toss their batons in the Tourist Information Booth parking granite foundations, handmade headers and skyward in a spinning, blazing fan. They lot before another revolution through town. balustrades, concrete steps, plaster walls. caught them dead center every time. Those My parents thought the Information Booth He even wallpapered the living rooms. kerosene-soaked batons in the dusk of au- was where all the “druggies” hung out, and Now, broken snowmobiles and other life- tumn, they smelled of permanence. sometimes the pot smokers did, but really, less remnants litter front lawns, and listing, One year blended into the next with it was a harmless venue in a small town half-baked additions or porches scab the only slight differences in star athletes or with nothing else to do but drive around in once pristine houses. Sheets shroud leaded town leaders and sometimes one turned aimless circles. glass windows, their bottoms knotted to let into the other. Family businesses occupied My parents shaped their own well- in light or keep rooms dark. Garbage lies Main Street, anchored by the Chicken worn paths. While my father walked back in heaps alongside scattered woodpiles and Coop. “Good Eatin’ That’s Our Greetin’!” and forth across the bridge to work, my abandoned bright plastic toys are half-cov- their tagline declared in flat, red paint. On mother lugged laundry up and down the ered in snow and dog shit. Wind chimes Wednesdays the Bowl-O-Drome hosted my cellar stairs, day after day, one skinny arm tinkle above the din of a yowling mutt. The gum-chewing junior high league, and on cradling the laundry basket, her free hand road is a glacier. I mince my way along the Fridays it murmured with the sporty jesting gripping a Viceroy. With a screech and a icy path ahead. whack, the screen door would slam shut Wandering around in this forlorn land- after she elbowed it open. She would dump scape, I think later that night, it is a ghost Don’t eat the fish, we clean laundry on the kitchen table, snap town, a place all but vanished but for its dull were always told, but we each article of clothing three times, fold eggy odor. It complied with my memory of couldn’t have anyway be- them sharply into tight wedges of fabric, and it, yet it also did not, a blend of nostalgia stack them like the reams of white paper my and something else as unrecognizable as cause we never saw any to father brought home from the mill. When the the back of my own head. It’s not where catch. screen door wore out, my mother replaced we grew up, a childhood friend said to me it with a new one that came with a squeaky years ago. What, then, was it? It was home, spring. She left it defective, announcing that much I knew, and home is the heart of of my father’s league. I bought penny candy herself into infinity with only my father to human identity, a blurry backdrop like that from the variety store next to the bowling hear. His hearing, long dulled by the hum fake plastic tree I leaned on during my high alley, as did my mother, as did hers. Up of paper machines, was the perfect match to school senior photograph. and down the street, businesses opened her perpetual clamor. She’d let her Viceroy and closed their doors with the seasons, expire before finishing it and send me to When I was a kid, my mother stayed the economy, and the sun: Lazarou’s car fetch her a new pack from the corner store. home while my father worked: her making dealership, the Dairy Queen, RadioShack, I’ll time you, she’d say. Now GO! And off I pot roast, him making smokestack money. Dick’s Restaurant, and our radio station, went. Go? She didn’t need to tell me twice. We explored the world through textbooks, WRUM. The footbridge to the mill spans In Mexico and Rumford, what we Matchbox cars, and made classroom diora- the Androscoggin where Main Street tapers needed, we had. Everyone knew everyone mas of what we thought a Mayan village off. Three generations of my family and ex- and we liked it that way—for what other way or a Midwestern dairy farm looked like. ponential relatives worked there, as did most was there? It was quite the place, my mother The rest of the world seemed to be New people who spread cretons on their toast says. There was never any reason to leave. Hampshire or Canada. Families didn’t go before clocking in. We were stamped out like Things stayed in this balance, with minor on overseas vacations,or hardly even in- Christmas cookies, as good French Catholics adjustments every now and then until small terstate. Our lives were focused inward . . . were. We got up, ate, worked, and went to working-class towns started to ebb alongside Red Sox scores, union strikes, and long gas bed, deriving small pleasures between the the industries that nourished them. station lines in the 70s, though nobody ever routine and sometimes because of it. connected the high price of fuel to what was In the drowsy summertime, when the I still gag every time I drink a glass happening in other countries. For us, it was sun dipped low over the foothills and the of water, a reflex that emerged in my youth just inconvenient. humidity of the day invaded kitchens and when I lived within a football field’s reach of Monumental changes were happening bedrooms, people in our town flocked to the mill and the Androscoggin. At the time, in America. However, there were no move- their porches. There, they chatted while dusk I sweetened the mephitic water with Tang ments in Mexico and Rumford but for the knit itself into a tight blanket. The sounds or Zarex or drank no water at all. But as an men walking across the footbridge to work. of clinking dishes, faint music, vehicles adult, the memory of our drinking water’s Blue-collar families like mine were more purring, and light-as-vapor laughter scented brackish and sweetish chemical smell/taste, likely to dry bras on a clothesline than burn the air. Night fell like a bruise. During those combined with the sour air above it, precip- them. We lived in a Shrinky-Dink world school-less days, I often sat on the dusty itates what feels like smothering when I put where everything was there, just smaller. curb in front of our house and counted the glass to lips. We were lucky in this, felt safe with our out-of-state license plates as they sped by By 1970, when I was three, the river’s doors unlocked at night and ameliorated on their way to somewhere else. When I dissolved oxygen level was exactly zero. most of our sins within the latched doors could finally drive myself I’d cruise around Newsweek named the Androscoggin one of of St. Theresa’s confessional. At nighttime Rumford and Mexico with all the other (Continued on page 32) 31

(Continued on page 34) Le Forum (Vacationland continued from page 31) diagnosis didn’t fit into the strict scientific 2003. Maine’s age-adjusted cancer the ten filthiest rivers in the United States. criteria; some are eliminated because certain incidence rate is the second highest in the Everything in the river died. Don’t eat the cancer treatments themselves cause aplastic nation and Maine’s death rate from cancer fish, we were always told, but we couldn’t anemia. In the final report, nobody can de- surpasses the national average. have anyway because we never saw any termine the exact cause. It is as if nobody 2004. Cancer remains the leading to catch. There also were no swimmers, ever had the disease at all. cause of death in Maine. 2010. Toxic fishermen, or boaters in the river William environmental exposures associated with B. Lapham, in his 1890 book, History of “Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, lung can- childhood illnesses cost Maine about $380 Rumford, called it “beautiful,” noting “the cer, prostate cancer, aplastic anemia, esoph- million every year, according to the 2010 scenery bordering upon it is picturesque ageal cancer, asbestosis, Ewing’s sarcoma, Economic Assessment of Children’s Health and often grand.” If you squint, the Andro- emphysema, cancer of the brain, cancer of and the Environment in Maine. scoggin still fits Lapham’s description. But the heart: these are some of the illnesses 2012. A headline from Maine’s Ken- if you open your eyes, you’ll see what was appearing in Rumford and Mexico.” nebec Journal: “Some Label Toxin Spike invisible to me my whole life: the mill’s as Positive; pulp and paper industry says pollutants hovering low over the naturally increase is a good sign, state officials not formed glacial bowl of our valley and in It was often difficult to alarmed.” What doesn’t alarm state officials the toxic sludge congregating in landfills and the Maine Pulp and Paper Association and the riverbed. What I did see when I was tell where the mill ended are the “9.6 million pounds of chemicals young, however, was the rainbow-colored and where Rumford and [that] were released by 84 Maine mills be- foam eddying on the river’s edge, which was tween 2009 and 2010, an increase of 1.14 as enchanting as the gray “mill snow” that Mexico began. million pounds over the previous year” floated softly up from the smokestacks and because the increase in pollution shows an down upon any surface in town. increase in papermaking. Our mill is fin- 1984-1986. Hospital discharges in- gered as the number one pollution producer, What did we all do? We plugged our dicate nine leukemia cases in the Rumford releasing over three million pounds of toxic noses and placed our drinking glasses upside and Mexico area. chemicals into the environment for those down in the cupboard so ash wouldn’t get 1989. The Rumford mill discharges same years. in our milk. The pollution was as trapped 1.2 million pounds of toxic chemicals into 2012. Cancer is the leading cause of as we were. Dioxin, cadmium, benzene, the environment. death in Maine. Dr. Molly Schwenn, director lead, naphthalene, nitrous oxide, sulfur 1991. In rapid succession, five people of the Maine Cancer Registry, tenders an ex- dioxide, arsenic, furans, trichlorobenzene, in Rumford and Mexico are diagnosed with planation. She says contributing to Maine’s chloroform, mercury, phthalates: these are non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a rare form of high cancer rates are “lower levels of educa- some of the byproducts of modern-day blood cancer associated with exposure to tion, high rates of poverty, unemployment, papermaking. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, dioxin, a toxic chemical formed in the pa- and lack of health insurance.” lung cancer, prostate cancer, aplastic ane- per-bleaching process. WCVB, a Boston TV 2013. The Cancer Surveillance Report mia, esophageal cancer, asbestosis, Ewing’s station investigates the flurry of diagnoses by the Maine Center for Disease Control sarcoma, emphysema, cancer of the brain, in their news series Chronicle and calls the confirms cancer is still the leading cause of cancer of the heart: these are some of the episode, “Cancer Valley.” During this time, death in Maine. illnesses appearing in Rumford and Mexico. the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston There’s a lag between exposure and Occasionally in suspicious-looking clusters, asks our town physician, “What the hell’s diagnosis, experts declared. People could sometimes in generations of families, often going on in Rumford? We’re getting all these be exposed from other sources, scientists in high percentages. When anyone tried to kids with cancer coming in from your area.” explained. There are uncertainties, decried connect the dots between the mill’s pollution The Los Angeles Times talks to our the Environmental Protection Agency. Con- with these illnesses, logic was met with jus- state representative, Ida Luther: “We have tinued follow-up is needed, said the mill. tification, personal experience with excuse, a very, very high cancer rate, but we always While organizations debated who to blame, stories with statistics, disease with blame. have lived with that. Nobody can prove people in Rumford and Mexico quit jobs or anything, but I just can’t see how tons and school to care for sick family members; lose Between 1980 and 1988, 74 cases of tons of air pollutants going into the air can do health insurance because they lose their jobs; aplastic anemia, a rare and serious blood you any good. At the same time, I don’t want and put canisters on pizza shop countertops disorder, are recorded in the River Valley. It to make [the paper mill] out to be a villain. to pay for medical bills. is the highest rate in the state. A study is or- They’re here to make paper and—there’s It was often difficult to tell where the dered to find the cause. Researchers examine no question about it—this valley depends mill ended and where Rumford and Mexico potential environmental and occupational upon that paper mill.” The mill responds by began. The mill’s employees, in the 1920s, sources, such as benzene, a chemical used claiming there’s “no clear link between mill published The League, a compendium of in papermaking and a known cause of cancer wastes and cancer or other diseases.” work and community related activities. in humans. Each aplastic anemia case gets 2001.WCVB films “Return to Cancer In it, you’d learn “Charlie Gordon was parsed: some are eliminated from the study Valley” in Rumford and Mexico. seriously ill Thursday A.M” or in the “Re- because they are referrals from other hospi- 2002. Cancer is the leading cause of winder Gossip” column, you’d find out “Joe tals; some are eliminated because the stated death in Maine. (Continued on page 33) 32 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Vacationland continued from page 32) stream in the Androscoggin. By then, almost past the cemetery where his father was bur- Provencher is in his second boyhood for he 50 years of flotsam and effluent had choked ied, where I lugged my steely equipment is wearing short pants again.” The news- the fish. Aeration of the river dimmed. Wa- uphill through the icy parking lot, collapsed letter also reported first-aid room statistics, ter temperature rose. Manufacturing and on the snow, and thwacked down the metal townwide events, movie times, attendance its concomitant pollution reached a stinky buckles on my leather boots pinching my at mill fire drills, or changes in the sulphate zenith. The smell emanating from the river fingers. mill, the bleach plant, and the finishing was so appalling people fled town or shut- I was small, the runt in a pack of room. It changed to the Oxford Log in 1952 tered themselves in. Coins in men’s pockets kids who were already small, and tried to where someone wrote a story on Labor tarnished. Stores closed. House and car paint keep up with them and my father, who was Day beauty parade “Cutter” girls “dressed peeled like burnt skin. Residents vomited. probably one of the best skiers on the hill. in daring ankle-length dresses” and whose Laundry hung on clotheslines, blackened As I followed them, my leather boots and “blue bonnets and sashes were made of fine with ash. leather gloves became soaked with sweat Oxford paper.” In that same newsletter, you I was 16, my mother says, when and subsequently frozen, in an endless cir- could also read about Johnny Norris, who the National Geographic Society entered cle of discomfort. We skied until the T-bar worked on the supercalendar machine, who, into a 15-year contract with our mill. The stopped clinking and growling, lolling to while on vacation in New York City, found windfall, while providing steady work, also rest like an iron dinosaur and the last light it “hot and confusing.” Or Hollis Swett of brought with it a windfall of pollution that of dusk would slam shut over the smudged the “Island Division” who got caught in a hills. We’d return the following week just as lightening storm while fishing at Weld Pond. the T-bar purred awake. The Oxford Log published profiles of high A video: I am four. My father crouches school basketball stars who were sons of over me on skis and I stand in front of him millworkers. Or of Nick DiConzo, a paper on skis too, between his legs, facing forward, tester, who prepared the ski jump for the gaining speed as we race down the mountain. Black Mountain’s Winter Carnival. You’d He warns me to watch what’s in front of me, see vintage photos of the workers adding but to also look far enough downhill to see bleach to vats of pulp, or working in the what lay ahead. I think I’m skiing on my own Kraft mill—gloveless, barefoot, smiling as volition. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I if there was no end to the prosperity. And it couldn’t have stood for two seconds without looked to be true; by 1930, our mill was the his arms there to carry me. largest paper mill under one roof and Hugh J. Chisholm, eventually combined 20 paper I ask my mother, What about the pol- companies to establish International Paper, lution when you were a kid? then and today, the biggest paper company What do you mean? she says. in the world. Didn’t it bother you? The pollution? exacerbated the toxic load the Androscoggin I say. I am home visiting. My parents and River-master was already trying to manage. It was the smell of money, she says. I sort through papers, organizing things National Geographic demanded white, coat- Plus, we just had a lot of pride. after their move to a new, one-story house ed, glossy paper and our mill made it. Mak- Pride. in Rumford. ing it, however, required using even more They still haven’t sold their old house. chemicals. The town’s economy flourished. I heard this word a lot as a child. You It’s been on the market for a few years. If the As the mill modernized and expanded, each were “proud” to be from Rumford and Mex- bank takes our old house, who cares? my year that newsletter, like the town’s future, ico. You took “pride” in the mill. “Pride” mother says. She flips through a newsletter got whiter and brighter. And each year the in the paper we made. “Pinto pride” we from 1970. It’s thick, printed in color, and Androscoggin River and the skies above, scrawled on pep rally posters in honor of our features my mother because she helped plan seemed dimmer and dimmer. My parents mascot. Mill managers instilled a “pride” in that year’s Winter Carnival Ball at Black were caught between a stinky past and a their workers. What did it mean, this pride? Mountain on account of her “first-hand hopeful future. I learned from an early age, to be knowledge” of the queen’s duties; she won My father, in between the overtime conspicuous was to be coarse. You didn’t the title and a tiara in 1962 when she worked hours or double shifts, along with other speak too loudly or too much, blend in. in the mill’s personnel department. She was a millworkers, built Black Mountain on land This sameness, it turns out, was partially young mother at the time, wearing a pixie cut leased to them by the paper company. The the source of our pride—we were all in it and polyester miniskirts that showed off her men felled trees, carved up the rocky slopes, together, no matter what “it” was. We were good legs. In her victory photo, my sisters and jammed iron ski lift poles in unsympa- a community and like most communities, Kelly and Amy sit in front of her wearing thetic soil so they could have a place to ski. were proud of what we did, even if it was matching blue velvet dresses with white Pe- Every winter of my childhood, on weekends, something we didn’t necessarily like. It was ter Pan collars, stiff as Communion wafers. my father piloted our station wagon along part of the same invisible social rules that In 1942 when my mother was born, the frost-heaved roads winding through the also felt claustrophobic, so it was difficult to legendary 20-foot walls of urine-colored outskirts of town, past the smokestacks, past differentiate the two. It was a subtle force, foam emerged from canals 40 miles down- the Swift River where he learned to swim, (Continued on page 34) 33 Le Forum (Vacationland continued from page 33) and asbestosis of the lungs. The toolbox Way Life Should Be.” Was there ever such a like airplane cabin pressure—massive but decamped to our dusty barn and I found the Maine as this? I wondered as I sped up the invisible. In this togetherness our loyalties watch years later, in perfect shape, in the Maine Turnpike. The promise of that phrase to each other and our town were fierce, even garage on a shelf by the cat litter. Since retir- just never added up. The silvery creeks, iron if the intimation to conform was benevolent. ing, asbestos manufacturers, whose products gray lakes, red lobsters, rocky beaches, the This absolute loyalty didn’t stop at the he came into contact with as a pipe fitter, deluge of trees—they summoned a rep- edge of town; it extended to hopeless causes compensated him for his scarred lung tissue; resentation disconnected from my Maine like the Boston Red Sox and the New En- sometimes he received three dollars, some- experience. It seemed we had lived on the gland Patriots who for decades disappointed times a few hundred. Eventually, the monies edge of poverty, anxiety, and illness rather us with their fruitless company. But we petered out as did his lungs. He was tough, than on the edge of a primeval forest. Prac- stuck with them because that’s what we did sometimes to a fault, and I never heard him tically everyone in our town called the area despite their unwillingness to love us back. complain even on the night he died. He told “Cancer Valley” in a jokey way, yet nobody This mix of sameness and loyalty and pride me a story once about how when he was a ever took the nickname seriously, even to and stubbornness made us tight. We created kid he walked around all day with a sharp this day. It smells like farts! kids from other this shelter for ourselves but it also meant pebble in his shoe, so that when he took it high schools would say about our town outsiders remained outside. People “from out, the relief was even greater than if it because of the foul odor discharged by the away” weren’t allowed into the sanctity of were never there at all. In the summer of mill. And so it did. our tribe. And we certainly didn’t want to 2013, he collapsed on the ninth hole of the be part of theirs. Solidarity was a matter of golf course, face up, in the middle of his “It seemed we had lived on the edge safety and comfort, but it was also a matter of poverty, anxiety, and illness rather than of hardheadedness that didn’t always serve on the edge of a primeval forest.” us well. The mill, the main source of this pride Maine’s story somehow became so ap- and connectedness, provided us with what pended over the years, that the story became seemed like limitless opportunity, the tenta- the story itself. It was like that game you cles of its fortune reaching into the county, played as a kid where you sat in a circle and the region, the state of Maine, America. Our one person would whisper a phrase in their reliance on the mill was like our Catholi- neighbor’s ear, and that child would whisper cism. We were given something to believe it to the next one, and so on. At the end of the in while ignoring our own suffering, all the circle, the last child would repeat the phrase while waiting for the big afterlife party in the aloud. Inevitably the murmured telling and sky. We depended on the mill, as did loggers, retelling distorted the words so the original whose lopping of the trees was seemingly phrase was no longer recognizable. anathema to the very thing relied upon to I was riding the Metro-North train earn an income. from New York City to Connecticut one Brenda Nickerson walks into the night that same winter, exhausted from my kitchen where my parents and I are still daily game. After months of tests, he was visits home. When I told my seatmate I was looking through old mill newsletters. My diagnosed with esophageal cancer and then from Maine, he said, I love all that fresh mother and Brenda have been friends since a few months later, lung cancer, which can air and woods! Maine is God’s country! I childhood and I went to school with her develop from asbestosis; with that trifecta, wanted to tell him that behind the photos of daughters who were named after Louisa May the man simply couldn’t breathe. birch-lined streams and the lobster logo-ed Alcott’s Little Women. My mother says to My father asked us not to speak to him gifts on the Maine Tourism Bureau website, me, to Brenda, It was like ‘Happy Days.’ about his prognosis and our family complied there is a state perishing under the weight of You know the show? That’s what we lived. in mute alliance. Weeks of chemotherapy its own advertisement and where “God” is We lived like ‘Happy Days.’ Brenda agrees. and radiation, a blood clot in his lung, a noticeably absent. Instead I said, It’s a terrif- I ask my mother if this was true for when I catheter, a feeding tube, an oxygen tank, the ic place to grow up, which was largely true. was a kid. Yes, pretty much . . . but I don’t gloom of hospice, my father shrank to half But the real contradictions were these: know what happened after that. It’s when his size. No taste, he said as he tussled with we clear-cut our forests while tourists exalt- our kids had kids that everything changed. a piece of pasta as if it were barbed wire. He ed them; pollution bankrupted the fresh air You mean like me? I ask. It changed lost more weight and lost interest, too. My we advertised; we poured dioxins into our in my generation? mother tried to get him to do his physical environment, which ended up in lobsters Yes, she says. We had our parents’ and therapy, eat a popsicle. He just stared out that tourists ate; Henry David Thoreau grandparents’ values. the living room window while we whispered lauded the “Pine Tree State” but his voice Your generation has different values. behind his back. was drowned out by the growl of chainsaws; Brenda says, Your generation had too I went home almost every week that and what gave our town life could also be many choices. winter. When I did, I drove into Maine from what’s killing it. As the folksy Maine saying When my father retired from the mill New Hampshire across the Piscataqua River goes, you can’t get they-ahh from heeyahh. after 43 years, he received a toolbox (that he Bridge. One of the first things I’d see was In other words, the way life should be, the used), a Bulova watch (that he never wore), the state-funded welcome sign: “Maine. The (Continued on page 35) 34 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (Vacationland continued from page 34) suffer from lung cancer? Give us a call at . . proved I had been somewhere. idealized state of Thoreau and tourists, may . ” The lawyer on the TV beckons. We also made yearly visits to my have never actually existed except in the father’s mother “Nana” and my step-grand- landscape of our minds. Maybe I’ll call, my mother suggests. father “Pop” in Kennebunk, Maine. Despite Slowly, my father began to eat. All What the hell are you talking about? its sacrosanct location, they lived closer he wanted was pistachios, so I bought bags my father says. to the town dump than to the beach. For of them. Those are too expensive for me, Your lung cancer. Maybe I’ll call them hours, we’d sift through other people’s trash he’d say, as he gobbled them up. We talked about your lung cancer, she says. with Pop, or play on the broad front lawn about baseball and books so I bought him I don’t have lung cancer, he says. My with their dog Bijoux, a crabby spoiled The Art of Fielding, which I read from at mother never brings it up again. Chihuahua. When Pop entered a room, his his funeral. We watched movies. He made egg-shaped bald head flirted with the ceiling. puzzles. By spring, he was able to roll his My mother tracks his oxygen levels, His voice was booming and fearsome, yet wheelchair outside to sit in his driveway in like volunteers do on the Androscoggin he was affectionate in his toothless smile, the yawning sun. River, judging impairment by percentages, the way an octopus was, embracing his Always a great athlete, he loathed keeping the lower numbers at bay by turning grandchildren with a manic repulsive grip. just sitting around. You’re throwing like a up the O2. The river’s oxygen percentages My grandmother kept her emotions as tight- goddamn GIRL! he’d yell at my throws from lie somewhere between impaired and threat- ly bound as her arms, which were always third to first if they weren’t fast enough, even ened, as do my father’s. In 1966 the Andro- crossed over her chest, and she only allowed if I was only ten. He played third base too, scroggin Rivermaster tried to recreate the small giggles through her thin hand, which the “hot corner” he called it. He was an in- river’s natural aeration by installing “bub- rose to cover her mouth when she laughed. stitution in that position, never relinquishing blers” in the Androscoggin, which injected it to younger guys as he aged. I watched him air into the water to increase oxygen levels. The rooms in their house smelled summer after summer fielding stinging line My father’s body, like the Androscoggin, of cigarette smoke and age, a sour, untidy drives down third base line as he crept in to seems to be recycling the toxins discharged odor I evaded by sleeping in their camping take away the bunt. He was quick, efficient. by the mill. But he, unlike the river, would trailer parked in the driveway. Pop, we I never saw him make an error. Now, he never breathe again without a machine to learned after he died, molested a few of struggled to lift a knee. help him. my female cousins. As for the beach, we When I get better . . . he says as he would sometimes go, but I would rather Late summer, 2014. I kiss my father hunches over, his oxygen tank hissing away have been pawing though the trash or the hello and after a few minutes, he turns to the in the other room, its plastic line leashing animal-shaped candles in the tourist shops TV. My mother shouts something from the him to his chair . . . I’ll visit your new house. than face a marauding jellyfish sloshing in kitchen over the clamorous rattle of Pawn As he keeps trying to live he keeps dying. He the lazy waves or meeting up with Pop in Stars. I slump in the overstuffed chair. is dying at the same exponential rate as the an unkempt, upstairs hallway. Over the next couple of days, I learn town . . . an unbuilding of a body that had the new routine of their lives: my mother previously built a mountain. His chest work- E. B. White wrote dispatches for empties his catheter bag, changes his can- ing overtime like he often did in the mill. the New Yorker from his saltwater farm in nula, washes dishes, makes coffee, turns Brooklin, Maine. When he drove there from the heat up, turns the heat down, helps him New York, he too crossed the Piscataqua to bed, tucks him in. One day the “oxygen River. In his essay “Home-Coming” he man,” a nurse, Andy (their handyman), on wrote that every time he drove over the river, the next a parade of strangers and friends he “had the sensation of having received a amass then disperse, like a dandelion gone gift from a true love.” While he and I may to seed in a quick wind. In the morning, my disagree on how we feel traversing the state mother walks my father to the kitchen, her line or our reasons for doing so, we agree on arms wrapped around his waist. I hear them the reason we are pulled there. “Familiarity in the hallway. is the thing—the sense of belonging,” he I slept liked shit, he says. I just wrote. “It grants exemption from all evil, couldn’t sleep. I don’t know. all shabbiness.” I’m tethered to Maine What’s the matter!? my mother says. “Vacationland,” our state motto, ap- by this sense of belonging but also by a It ain’t much of a life, he says. pears on key chains, tee shirts, coffee mugs, sometimes paralyzing ambiguity I wrestle My mother procures a voice-activated and our license plates but the holidaysof my to understand—an inexplicable love for phone, a walker, the best hearing aids, a youth were never a seaside fete. As a teenag- Maine and what it represents, even if some hospital bed, bathtub rails, hospice aides, ice er, my sister and I would sometimes drive to of those things are false. I don’t think it was cream, Netflix. The days drift. Dinner comes Old Orchard Beach, two hours south, where ever really a paradise, except maybe for early. The late afternoon winter light hesi- we’d buy fries on the pier and watch French the Abenaki Native Americans who fished tates, then crashes, darkening the curtained Canadian men in skimpy bathing trunks the Androscoggin until their lives and the room. We fold ourselves into the furniture cavort in the water. Rather than swim, I’d salmon they ate were choked out by disease and flip channels. smother myself with iodine and baby oil and settlers. “Do you or does anyone you know and lie on the hot sand, getting the tan that (Continued on page 36) 35 Le Forum (Vacationland continued from page 35) remnant of a human being.” hurtling river beyond. Senator Edmund When we leave home, we leave Sixtus Muskie’s smaller, more serious me- behind our past and encounter a version In the aftermath of his death, two years morial of squat dark gray granite lies just of home when we return, built of legends on, I still can’t look at photographs of him, down the riverbank from Bunyan. Muskie true and false. For me, those legends are so because in them I remember his emaciated was a giant in real life at 6’4” and the man big—Hugh J. Chisholm, Edmund Muskie, body, sacrificed so I could have a new pair who penned the Clean Air and Clean Water Cancer Valley, Henry David Thoreau, Paul of shoes to start school every fall or a new Acts, though no match for the long shadow Bunyan, Black Mountain, my parents, and softball glove when I turned sixteen. And in cast by Bunyan. Both memorialized in trees, endless trees—that it is hard to see his eyes I see me. Rumford, their acts equally significant; one beyond their shadows. So when I drive deforested the woodlands, the other tried to back over the Piscataqua River Bridge with Paul Bunyan looms over the Tourist reclaim them, the rocky pools on the edge of Mexico in my rearview mirror, I may not Information Booth in front of the Andro- the Androscoggin spanning the gap between see “true love,” but I know leaving home scoggin where Bunyan-sized logs once the two of them. can be as complicated as living there and as floated downstream toward the mill. In blue inescapable as your own DNA. pants, a matching blue watch cap, and a short My father used to make fun of the sleeve red polo shirt exposing his brawny Bunyan statue and the ludicrous blue hoof- The night I watched my father die he arms, he proffers an equally enormous axe prints painted on the sidewalks in downtown kept trying to speak, but only a thin awful that could clear-cut the Amazon. That stat- Rumford, made by Babe, Bunyan’s blue ox. wail emerged as he thrashed his body against ue has been around as long as I remember, The town selectmen voted, in 2009, to use the steel bedrails and wrestled with his although it used to tower above Puiia’s $6,500 from their economic development sheets. It was the only time I ever saw him Hardware across the street, a catchall shop fund to create Babe, figuring that he and make a fuss about anything. What he was where I bought charcoals and sketch pads his hoofprints would encourage tourists to trying to say, I’ll never know, but I do know for juvenile renderings of horses. He was follow his path. What they forgot to consider I no longer have to keep secrets from him donated to the town when Puiia’s closed. As was that there’s not much left in town to see or for him. What you don’t know won’t hurt a kid, I didn’t pay much attention to Bunyan but Paul Bunyan himself and those garish you, my mother always said offhandedly. despite his size, and he blended into the blue steps that end abruptly at Rite Aid. She was dead wrong. background, as improbable as that seems. I saw in that outline of his body, a lifetime of 7–3 shifts at the mill, where the I read that Rumford’s Paul Bunyan hot racket of the paper machines would got a facelift between 2000–2002, a body have made me turn into a lifeless cotton overhaul including a paint job, a new axe, ball, a weeping remnant of a human being. and steel supports secured to a huge block I saw in him, too, a lifetime of working for of concrete, which to replace, they had to an industry that in the end, led to his end. remove Bunyan’s head. After they fastened You look like your father! People the supports and before reinstating Bunyan’s always said to me and still do. Our eyes, in head, the workmen wriggled out of Bunyan’s particular, are/were the same blue-gray and neck. After Paul’s resurrection, Rumford About the Author: one of mine sags a little, as if I am falling held a festival in his honor featuring a lum- asleep, the same as his. In that sameness, berjack breakfast, zip line rides over the Kerri Arsenault serves on the Board I saw what he saw, or at least I imagined waterfalls, a facial hair contest, a flannel of the National Book Critics Circle and is I did, or tried to, especially on our walks shirt dinner dance, and an axe-throwing the Book Review Editor for Orion magazine. around town where his telling and retelling competition. She teaches nonfiction in The Master of Arts of the same stories became more distilled program in Writing and Oral Traditions at each time he told them. He’d narrate as we Bunyan’s origin remains a mystery. the Graduate Institute in Bethany, CT. went: This is an historic spot, he said one Small towns, from Maine to Minnesota, Her book, MILL TOWN, is about how time, pointing to the road, as we passed a claim him as their own, yet they agree the our landscapes define us and how we define vacant lot that used to be his high school. boy giant was the hero of all woodsmen. our landscapes, due out from St. Martin’s This is where Roger Gallant dropped a jar Legend maintains when Bunyan’s cradle Press, 9/1/2020. of mercury. I imagined the balls of silver rocked, the motion caused huge waves that MILL TOWN (St. Martin’s Press, pinging along the road in tantric lines. We sunk ships. He also allegedly whittled a pipe 9/1/20) is available for preorder from Pow- walked across the frozen soil and scuffed from a hickory tree and could outrun buck- ell’s, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, our boots across the thin snow to uncover shot. Our Bunyan, I found out, was crafted & Books-a-Million a plaque of people who donated money for from the mold of the Muffler Man, a giant https://us.macmillan.com/ the plaque. He pointed to a Gallant, class of fiberglass statue who proffered mufflers as books/9781250155931 1951. That’s him, my father said. That’s the advertisement on US byways in the 1970s. guy that dropped the mercury. Whatever the myth, there our Bunyan stands https://lithub.com/ as a guardian or curiosity for those ambling growing-up-in- “I saw in that outline of his body, a through the waning mill town of my youth, maines-cancer-valley/ lifetime of 7–3 shifts at the mill, a weeping his shadow sometimes as brooding as the

36 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 BOOKS/ voit femme entière et mûre dans une com- munauté en gestation façonnée d'émigrés de LIVRES... la descendance des colons pur-laine telle les Lanouette de Batiscan au Québec. Plus qu'un roman, c'est une page de la réalité historique qui nous révèle les défis et les luttes, ainsi que les accomplissements et les succès d'un peuple d'émigrés qui devient à la longue les Franco-Américains.

Normand Beaupré est né dans l'État du Maine en Nouvelle-Angleterre où il grandit Robert comme Francophone, et plus tard, devient écrivain bilingue. Il a passé plus de trente Choquette “Lucienne, ans dans l'enseignement universitaire. Il est présentement Professeur Émérite à l'Univer- Soumis par Jacques sité de la Nouvelle-Angleterre au Maine. Il Paquin La Simple a beaucoup voyagé en Europe, au Mexique, et en Amérique du Sud. Il est l'auteur de French Canadian vingt-deux oeuvres publiées en français et Descendants d'Esprit” en anglais. Sa dernière oeuvre est un roman basé sur la vie artistique de Rosa Bonheur. Le 22 janvier 1991 est décédée Robert Il fut décoré par le gouvernement de France Choquette, auteur de << La Pension Velder >> Voilà l'histoire de trois générations alors qu'on lui décerna une médaille avec Robert Choquette était un poète, romancier, québécoises qui aboutit à l'émigration aux le rang d'Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et scénariste et diplomate québécois, né le 22 États-Unis en Nouvelle-Angleterre. Elle Lettres en 2008. avril 1905 à Manchester, dans le New Hamp- est tissée d'aventures et d'événements assez (Suite page 38) shire, et mort le 22 janvier 1991 à Montreal. frappants pour susciter l'intérêt de ceux et celles qui jouissent des effets de la passion https://www.facebook.com/ d'amour, de l'attachement à un héritage groups/123913478208149/ vibrant, du défi de l'émigration, du chagrin de la mort, en plus du bouleversement d'une jeune femme hantée par ses incapacités intellectuelles et qui est connue sous la l'appellation de Lucienne, la simple d'es- prit. Son histoire nous emmène au centre des filatures en Nouvelle-Angleterre où oeuvrent ces émigrés, souvent appelés les travailleurs de moulins. Cousue dans cette aventure est l'histoire de Célie et son amant algonquin, Timiskamengo, ainsi que l'his- toire de Héloïse Lanouette Charbonneau, la femme qui a du “casque” et de l'entrain. Sa fille, Lucienne, découvre, malgré ses limites intellectuelles dites d'arriérage, qu'elle a des dons de la guérisseuse. Lucienne devient la femme qui, en dépit de ses challenges, se

https://www.amazon.com/Norman-Beaupre/e/B002CB2S32%- 3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share (More books on page 38) 37 Le Forum BOOKS/ pur-sang. L'héritage de ces gens-là n'aurait Énervine Bellavance Lanouette tâchait jamais toléré cet accroc culturel. Jamais de tout son coeur et de sa fierté d'âme de LIVRES... de la vie. Mon Dieu, partir pour se défaire conserver son appartenance à ses braves de son village, de son pays et de sa culture colons, les Lanouette de Batiscan. Après aurait été un sacrilège pour eux, ces mardits tout, le mariage avec un Lanouette l'avait colons, parce qu'ils perdraient certainement comme scellée, elle et son alliance avec le leur religion, leur langue, et leurs valeurs cachet de colon imanquablement pur-sang. culturelles, une fois déplacés au-diable- Elle en était convaincue. C'est pour cela au-vert. “Ça c'ne fait pas,” avaient-ils beau qu'elle se disait qu'elle ne manquerait point dire. Les Lanouette chantaient cela à coeur de partager cet héritage avec ses enfants et de jour. “Ça c'ne fait pas.” même ses petits-enfants à venir. Marjolain Lanouette était de la Énervine s'accordait un peu de loisir le cinquième génération des Lanouette de Ba- soir après la vaiselle assise dans son fauteuil tiscan. Il était reconnu pour son intelligence de Chantung grossier juste après le coucher vive et pénétrante. Il avait épousé Énervine des enfants . C'est là qu'elle pouvait enfin Bellavance et les deux avaient élevé une s'allonger les jambes et lâcher un long soupir famille de plusieurs enfants, tous en bonne de soulagement. La bru, Célie, avait accueilli santé excepté la dernière, Héloïse, car elle la dernière chez elle parce qu'elle ne pouvait avait eu la malchance d'avoir genre de paral- plus supporter les pénibles supplications de ysie infantile lorsqu'elle avait atteint l'âge sa belle-mère. Énervine qui se lamentait de de dix ans. Héloïse n'avait connu son père jour en jour d'avoir à soigner et encourger A la demande de Lisa Desjardins Mi- que pour neuf ans, La mort avait emporté une petite fille qu'elle trouvait si malchan- chaud, la rédactrice du journal Le Forum, je le père trop tót, disaient les gens. C'est la ceuse d'avoir subi une telle maladie qu'elle lui soumets un article en français, un extrait bru, Célie, qui avait pris soin d'Héloïse, car ttrouvait pernicieuse et troublante, à sa façon de mon dernier roman en français intitulé, la mère n'en pouvait plus puisqu'elle était de penser. Pourquoi le Bon Dieu avait-il Lucienne la simple d'esprit. rendue à un âge avancé de soixante-quatre permis une telle naissance tardive dans sa ans, La mère était rendu au bout de ses forces vie à elle., Énervine. Pourquoi une naissance après avoir donné jour à dix-sept enfants. que elle-même n'ait pas espérée rendue au Première partie: L'Histoire de Célie Les élever voulait donc dire les soigner, point de sa vie où tout semblait s'écouler vers Lafortune Lanouette. les nourrir, les habiller, et leur apprendre les la mort et le repos éternel qu'elle souhaitait prières prescrites par le curé de la paroisse avec tolérance et espoir malgré son aversion Les Lanouette venaient d'un tout de Sainte-Geneviève à ses ouailles. Ces orai- pour la mort. Elle souffrait et acceptait les petit village à l'est de Trois-Rivières appelé sons furent confiées à elle, la femme-pour- épreuves tenaces d'une vie vouée aux sac- Sainte-Geneviève-de-Bastican. Les Lanou- voyeuse et fidèle à son devoir de mère de rifices et à la misère quoique jamais elle ne ette furent des colons du premier jour de la famille. Par dessus le marché, Énervine avai tolérerait en elle-même l'aveu de la misère. région Batiscan. Batiscan était redevable perdu son mari à l'âge de cinquante-et-un ans Elle faisait son devoir et c'était tout. Malgré de son nom au chef d'une des Premières . Il était mort de cancer. Tout le monde du le décès de son mari, il y avait plusieurs Nations, les Algonquins. Les Lanouette ne village de Batiscan avait pleuré Marjolain années, Énervine s'était abstenue de blâmer laissaient personne oublier le rôle import- Lanouette. Il était si bien connu et respecté Dieu et une fatalité qui venait lui arracher ant des Lanouette, dit précieux, dans les par les gens du village et des alentours que son gagne-pain et le père de ses enfants. alentours où l'on prêchait chaque jour le personne n'aurait osé dire un seul mot en Quant à Célie Lafortine, elle avait charme sinon le devoir d'appatenir et d'être mal de lui. Il était un modèle d'homme, un marié Maurice Lanouette, fils de Marjolain du sang de colon. Personne n'aspirait à la mari exemplaire, et un père de famille hors et d'Énervine. Elle était veuve depuis une loyauté du Québec et de son propre village pair. Personne, pas même ceux qui auraient dizaine d'années. Célie avai perdu son mari comme les Lanouette. Ils en étaient des plus voulu trouver un seul geste malencontrant au chantier alors qu'il travaillait avec la fiers sinon des plus orgueilleux. Lorsqu'on de Marjolain Lanouette aurait pu dénigrer hache et le godendard. Il était mort d'un ac- appartient, on ne s'écarte jamais de sa terre cet homme. Il était bon travailleur, bon ra- cident dans la forêt vierge , seul et sans appui et de sa famille, disaient les Lanouette. Ja- conteur d'histoires, bon chanteur, au choeur des autres bûcherons qui l'avaient trouvé mais ils auraient cru de se voir transplantés de chant à l'église paroissiale, bon “veil- baignant dans son propre sang, mort, et la ailleurs que Sainte-Geneviè-de-Batiscan. leux”, et surtout bon touche à tout. Disparu tête fendue en deux. On n'avait jamais su la Jamais ils n'auraient voulu se séparer des comme ça sans fanfare et sans trompette, raison de sa mort. D'ailleurs on savait bien leurs tout comme les Lavertu, les Lantagne, disait Madame Levasseur, une de ses vois- que Maurice Lanouette était un écervelé. et les Tousignant qui étaient partis pour les ines de vingt-et-un ans. Madame Levasseur Pourquoi l'avait-on permis de travailler com- États-Unis afin de rejoindre tant d'autres aimait Marjolain comme un proche parent. me bûcheron, on ne savait même pas. Mieux Québécois qui travaillaient maintenant dans La parenté au Québec était une des valeurs dans la forêt qu'à la maison et sur la rue à les usines là-bas qu'on appelait les moulins. que l'on reconnaissait comme intrinsèques se faire rire de lui, avait-on dit. Sa pauvre Jamais les Lanouette auraient voulu même et intarissables. Oui, Marjolain Lanouette en femme s'arrachait la vie à faire le ménage songer à cet exploit qui changerait sinon était un dans lequel coulait fort et bien le des autres et à repasser un tas de chemises abolirait à jamais leur identité de colon sang des colons québécois archétypes. Puis, (suite page 39)

38 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 BOOKS/ la famille. C'est elle qui les avait honorés doit porter afin d'obtenir le mérite de son par sa présence comme épouse en se liant salut au dire de Monsieur le curé Lapointe. LIVRES... intimement au nom Lanouette. Elle portait Ceci faisait aussi partie de son héritage ce nom avec fierté et fidélité depuis son québécois. Célie ne déviait point en aucun (“Lucienne, La Simple d'Esprit” suite de mariage avec l'un de leurs fils. temps de son hértage qu'elle avait reçu de page 38) On avait fait baptisé le mari de Célie, ses parents et de ses ancêtres. Même ses et de tabliers des autres ménages plus for- Joseph Maurice Henri Arthur Lanouette. On beaux-parents lui portaient secours dans cet tunés. Célie était une femme forte de corps l'appelait souvent Henri-le-bavardeur parce héritage dont les valeurs culturelles étaient et d'esprit. C'est elle qui avait épargné assez qu'il aimait tant parler et dire des bêtises. inévitablement attachées. Morfondue, d'argent pour se procurer une petite terre. Les parents ne voulaient point admettre tempérée par la petite misère et portant les Elle l'avait fait au bout de ses forces de ses que leur fils, Maurice Henri, était un peu cicatrices de ses longues luttes intérieures, jointures rougies par le dur travail de frotter écervelé. Célie, sa femme, voulait à tout Célie s'était réfugiée dans la résignation et avec du savon jaune et de l'eau de javel. prix, s'écarter de cette condition qu'avait son l'espoir qu'un jour tout irait mieux. Après Tout en épargnant ses propres sous ajoutés mari puisqu'elle ne pouvait jamais accepter tout, c'était sa manière d'envisager son futur, aux quelques sous gagnés par Maurice au que son Maurice ne soit pas comme les car elle croyait bien qu'une vie bien vécue chantier, elle avait réussi de convaincre son autres hommes, sain et intelligent de corps obtiendrait ses mérites un jour. De jour en mari d'acheter une terre à eux-mêmes. C'est et d'esprit. Elle l'avait plutôt emmitouflé jour, de mois en mois, et d'année en année, pour cela qu'elle n'aurait pas pour tout l'or du de soins et d'affecion, et puis elle s'était Célie attendait les beaux jours qui lui rend- monde vendu sa terre quoiqu'elle se trouvá dite qu'un jour son Maurice sortirait de son raient le bonheur d'avoir exercé d'une vie seule et parfois un peu désespérée puisque impuissance cérébrale. Il ne l'avait jamais où tout est sassé par le devoir. Célie attend l'argent ne rentrait pas trop. Célie se trouvait fait jusqu'alors. Il était mort dans ses bévues encore. Jusqu'à sa mort. souvent rendue à corde. C'est-à-dire qu'elle d'écervelé. Sa femme l'avait enterré avec Le seul bienfait dans la vie de Célie ne pouvait que rarement se payer un bon tous les humbles honneurs qu'une femme Lafortune Lanouette fut le lien étroit établi repas hors des quelques légumes et un peu puisse donner à son époux défunt. Il y avait entre elle, la belle-mère et la petite Héloïse, de pain qu'elle pouvait boulanger avec des eu une grand'messe chantée à l'église Sainte la cadette si souvent appelée par ses frères restes de farine qu'elle avait su ménager. Geneviève. L'èglise avait porté les bande- et soeurs, “la petite fourrée partout”. Elle Cependant, elle ne se plaignait jamais, trop rolles noires accordées aux funérailles de ses en avait de l'entrain et du casque comme le fière et trop enhardie par la misère qu'elle paroissiens, et les grands cierges dressés à disait Hector. L'un de ses frères. Oui, Héloïse rencontrait assez souvent. Elle et son mari côté du catafalque sur lequel on avait mis le avai la tête pleine de trafic, disaient ses n'avaient pas eu la grâce d'avoir des enfants. drap mortuaire noir avec la croix brodée en frères, assez pour remplir les rues et les ru- Oui, la grâce parce tous deux croyaient dans fil d'or. Célie avait porté le deuil du costume elles du voisinage. Et puis, elle avait du cran. le Bon Dieu qui octroyait ses bontés par la noir pendant toute une année, et elle l'avait Elle avait toutes sortes de plans et d'imagina- grâce divine. Que faire lorsque la grâce n'est remplacé par une couleur plus mesurée pour tions dans la tête, et quand ça lui disait, elle pas accordée. Et bien, il faut souffrir avec le deuil, le violet ou le gris. Elle avait fait en fabriquait d'autres plus avertis et plus osés les yeux fermés et le coeur tordu, avaient chanter trente messes pour le repos de son que les gens auraient pensé d'elle. On disait beau dire les Lanouette, fils, femmes et âme et puis elle ne manquait pas de réciter à tort et à travers, qu'elle ne pourrait jamais beaux-parents. une courte prière pour son âme à chaque soir. grandir avec une maturité bien ordonnée. Les enfants des grand-parents La- Personne ne pouvait dire qu'elle n'avait pas Qu'elle ne pourrait jamais porter “une tête nouette, Edouard et Livine, avaient tous pleuré son Maurice comme il le fallait et bien vissée sur ses épaules,” disait le voisin, survécus malgré les douloureuses peines des selon les traditions du village. Cependant, Monsieur Dumouchel. C'était un garnement maladies qui ravageaient les nouveau-nés du elle avait descendu le portrait de son mari leste et agile aux petits tours, disait-on d'elle. voisinage. Ces Lanouette avaient élevé tous accroché au mur du salon parce qu'elle ne Excepté Célie qui la trouvait aimable, un les dix-huit enfants sans s'apercevoir qu'il y voulait plus faire face à ce mari chaque fois peu agitée, oui, mais remplie d'énergie qui avait eu un seul accroc dans leur petite vie qu'elle pénétrait dans le salon pour y faire la rendait exceptionnelle et intéressante à ses québécoise au bord de la rivière Bastican. le ménage. Ce n'était pas qu'elle voulait yeux. Héloïse c'était la joie de sa vie mûre, Le Bon Dieu leur avait été généreux envers ignorer ou même se défaire de la mémoire se disait Célie. ces Lanouette dont les arrière-grandparents de son mari. Non, elle en avait eu assez de Malgré grandette, les yeux clairs et furent les descendants des premiers colons lui et de son impuissance intellectuelle, un saillants, la bouche grande et les lèvres distingués à la vue de toute la petite pop- sentiment navrant qu'elle avait nourri dans grasses et rougeâtres, les joues un peu fades, ulation de Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan, le fin fond de son coeur, sinon de son âme les oreilles qui lui sortaient des deux côtés Oui, les grand-parents Lanouette avaient été meurtrie, pendant des années. Elle n'aurait de la tête comme deux champignons, et le bénis de Dieu, disait-on chaque fois qu'on jamais appelé son mari d'une façon ou d'une nez un peu trop long, Héloïse ne prétendait parlait d'eux. On ne manquait pas de répéter autre, un écervelé, mais elle ne pouvait aucunement qu'elle était belle. C'était le reste au temps et au lieu propices que leur fils pas s'empêcher d'y penser. Célie était une d'une corvée d'enfants que sa mère avait Marjolain était des plus galants et les plus femme écrasée par le grand malheur d'une produit et elle, Héloïse, n'avait rien eu des talentueux de la région. Puis, on ne cessait mésalliance renfrognée. Elle n'aurait même bienfaits qu'accorde la nature en tant que point de passer la remarque que Marjolain et pas révélé d'une façon ou d'une autre, ce mal grâce et beauté. Elle s'en foutait bien. Elle Énevrine Lanouette avaient la bonne chance de coeur et de conscience qu'elle appelait sa se disait que les autres enfants jouissaient d'avoir Céline Lafortune comme membre de croix. La belle croix qu'une bonne chrétienne (suite page 40)

39 Le Forum

The actual Grande Maison may have French Azilum:American Refuge evolved into the legendary Queen’s House as the story of French Azilum became in- for a Queen? creasingly romanticized over the years. Even had Marie Antoinette been rescued by one of by Lorett Treese, Paoli, PA many royalist plots, would she have chosen to emigrate to rapidly developing but still Around the turn of the twentieth cen- chimneys, and staircases. Some even boast- relatively unsophisticated America? tury Louise Welles Murray began collecting ed outdoor “piazzas” and summer houses. Besides courtiers and noblemen, Azi- documents and recollections about the in- Louise Welles Murray drew upon lum’s settlers included royal office holders, triguing history of her family and her Penn- the recollections of her mother Elizabeth clergymen, and military officers. Refugees sylvania hometown for a book published in LaPorte to describe one very unique building from Saint-Domingue had been plantation 1903 which she titled Some French Refugees in the settlement. It was a large two-story owners. Some had supported the creation and their Azilum 1793-1800. Her daughter log building eighty-four by sixty feet with of a constitutional monarchy, then balked Elsie Murray continued the research for her eight fireplaces on each floor. Elizabeth said at the imprisonment of the royal family and own book, its 1940 edition titled Azilum: that her grandfather had always called it the the execution of the king. French Refugee Colony of 1793. “Queen’s House.” Murray wrote that it had The Duc de la Rochefoucault-Lian- In their day, their ancestors’ colony court mentioned that what the settlement had vanished and Azilum had become a needed was a few more “industrious fami- place name attached to a farm community lies,” commenting, “The gentlemen cannot nestled in a bend of the Susquehanna River. so easily dispense with the assistance of Louise Welles Murray recorded that one got the artisan and the husbandman, as these there by taking the Lehigh Valley Railroad to can with that of the gentleman.” He also a station called Homet’s Ferry, then crossing ominously noted that French Azilum was the river, and prevailing upon some passing already having some cash flow problems. farmer for a ride. By the time her daughter’s In the late 1790s, the colony’s orig- book was published, the place had become inal financial backers, Robert Morris and more easily reached thanks to the completion John Nicholson, went bankrupt and their of the Roosevelt Highway (now Route 6). land company was reorganized in 1801. Back in 1793, anyone who wanted to travel After Napoleon Bonaparte gained control to Azilum would have gone from Philadel- of France, he offered amnesty to all French phia to Harrisburg on horseback, then up the refugees, prompting many Azilum settlers Susquehanna to Catawissa or Wilkes-Barre, to return. By 1809 the town of Azilum was finally reaching Azilum’s landing by flatboat nearly deserted. or dugout canoe. Two of Azilum’s original settlers, Among the reasons that French Azi- Charles Homet and Bartholomew LaPorte lum’s original settlers might have chosen to bought the land of the departed settlers. establish themselves in a place so remote Homet went into business operating a river ferry, and LaPorte continued to farm the land was their refugee status, most of them having This marker placed in 1930 identifies the and occupy the Grande Maison. In 1836 fled the Great Terror of the French Revolu- founders and later distinguished visitors to LaPorte’s son John, who had served as a tion or the slave uprising in the French Ca- French Azilum. Courtesy ExplorePAhistory. congressman and judge, returned to Azilum ribbean colony of Saint-Domingue. Louise com Welles Murray emphasized the romantic where he constructed a French colonial style elements of French Azilum’s history describ- been torn down in 1846 “for fear of fire,” mansion. According to Louise Welles Mur- ing the royalists and aristocrats who had lost but its foundations had still been visible in ray, the LaPortes used a part still standing friends and been stripped of their property her own day. of the Grande Maison as a kitchen. That finding refuge in log cabins seventy-five Elsie Murray added that the Queen’s same year the old town site was completely miles away from the nearest sizeable town. House had been intended as a refuge for plowed up leaving scant evidence of its She commented, “But here at least they were Marie Antoinette and her daughter. Its orig- original structures. safe from Robespierre and the guillotine. So inal great hall had later become a gathering It was likely the books written by the the real life began at Azilum.” place for concerts and card parties. Today it Murrays that led to plans to turn Azilum into In 1795 the French nobleman Francois is considered more likely that this structure a tourist attraction in the twentieth century. Alexandre Frederic, Duc de la Rochefou- had always been intended as a showplace In February 1954 a local newspaper reported cault-Liancourt described French Azilum in and community center as well as a fine that S.K. Stevens, the state historian, would a journal he kept of his travels in America. residence for one of Azilum’s founders and be working on the new “Azilum Project.” He described a warm welcome to a village of property manager: the nobleman Antoine A commission was formed to rebuild the houses somewhat more stylish than frontier Omer Talon. Contemporary receipts for its settlement, complete with log cabins and cabins. By then some had been shingled construction mention a building the work- Queen’s House, but this was not going to be over and embellished with glass windows, men called the “Grande Maison.” (Continued on page 41) 40 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (French Azilum:American Refuge for a it had been part of a residence occupied existing LaPorte house she got something Queen? continued from page 40) from the 1790s through the first half of the approaching the traditional dimensions of cheap. The non-profit French Azilum, Inc. nineteenth century.It was later identified the Grande Maison. Perhaps the mystery of was formed that fall, and the following year not as the Grande Maison but the home of the Queen’s House had been solved. there were plans for a fundraising pageant a Frenchwoman from Saint-Domingue who Costura wrote in her dissertation, “A depicting eighteenth-century life in Azilum had arrived with an entourage of servants massive amount of work remains to be done called “Buckskin and Velvet” to be held in and slaves. at Azilum.” At today’s historic site you will an outdoor ampitheater. The most recent Azilum excavations find a cabin transported there in the twen- Over the years folks had found various were conducted by Maureen Costura of Cor- tieth century, the remains of what is still artifacts in the fields, but the first archaeolog- nell University who was working on her PhD often called a wine cellar, and you can take ical excavations were conducted by French dissertation. In 2007 she focused on an area a tour of the LaPorte house, built long after Azilum, Inc. board members in 1956 digging adjacent to the LaPorte house and located a Azilum’s heyday. However oral tradition and in an area identified by Elsie Murray where foundation of local stone with evidence of archaeological evidence are nowmerging she thought she could see evidence of the burning that might have once functioned into a clearer image of what those settlers vanished Grande Maison. They located a as a kitchen wing. The following year she had intended to create. No doubt inspired by partially dug cellar and stone foundation that explored the area between the LaPorte house Enlightenment Philosophy, they may have was for years identified to tourists as French and what had long been known as the wine been trying to build an idealized French Azilum’s “wine cellar.” cellar. During her third season Costura county town complete with a rustic chateau. The Pennsylvania Historical and Mu- concluded that this wine cellar had actually Marie Antoinette never arrived, and likely seum Commission followed up in 1976 after been a slave cabin. never even heard of the place, but if she John LaPorte’s French colonial mansion Warfel had been first to suggest that had come, it might have reminded her the had been ceded to the state. Archologist John LaPorte might have built his mansion idyllic rustic retreat she created in the park Stephen G. Warfel exposed a stone build- on the already excavated foundation of an at Versailles, with its cottages and working ing foundation with an H-shaped chimney earlier building. When Costura added the dairy, still known as Hameau de la Reine. footer whose artifacts led him to conclude dimensions of the burned kitchen to the

The LaPorte house built in 1836 as it appears at French Azilum today. It may have been built on part of the foundations of the Grande Maison , or Queen’s House. Courtesy Bradford County Tourism.

This image of the Grande Maison also appeared in Elsie Murray’s book. It was drawn based on a description by Elizabeth LaPorte who was born there. It was later used on postcards.

(Continued on page 49) 41 Le Forum BOOKS/ on Aging and Heliotrope––French Heritage Immigrant Dream LIVRES... Women Create. She has read at conferences, political Back then, the city where I was born rallies, colleges, galleries and at internation- gave little comfort. al poetry festivals in Canada and the U.S., It shook me with the clatter of looms representing not only Franco-America, but a and nigh machines, vision of social and environmental justice for blinded me with that immigrant dream all. In 2019, Susann co-hosted with Maine burning–– Poetry Out Loud state champion João Victor Angry flames in men’s eyes, a Maine Poetry Express community perfor- soot and smoke in the bars mance focusing on the theme of migrations and on the altars and displacement. the stuff baked into daily bread. Susann has worked as a college instructor, journalist, editorial consultant, When I read that the quality of mercy writing specialist/tutor, and co-editor of a is not strained progressive monthly. A pacifist, Susann is or how music is the food of love, committed to non-violent social change and fair Portia, beneath the wide, white porticos economic justice. A long time volunteer did not appear, with Maine People’s Alliance, she served on nor Orsino on that Illyrian bank. its board for a decade. Currently, she is a LA The dews of heaven did not rise Arts board member and coordinates its Arts sweet strains did not fall in Education and Maine Writes programs. This Unheeded and I saw only the tired stream of men and women Eden treading through snowy streets by Susann Pelletier to the factories. (Author) French people who built cathedrals–– Lewiston native Susann Pelletier LaMontagne, DeBlois, Thibault–– gives voice to family and place in Fran- their backs stooped now co-America and beyond, a narrative of with the weight of the dream, immigration, labor and struggle to thrive. each carrying a black lunchbox. Her work also honors and attends closely Not trowels, mortar and stone to a landscape, both imperiled and resilient, or loads of shimmering glass. that continues to sustain us. Not skeins of silk, wool, linen Susann’s poems have been published for the woof and weft of a thousand here and abroad in anthologies, literary jour- flowers, virgins and horned horses nals, the chapbook Immigrant Dream and in Not even my father, once political and environmental magazines. Her a boy with no boots in the Maine winter, Susann Pelletier poems are a part of Francophone Studies understood why the people were tramping (Author) college curricula and have been translated over the old bridges into French and Spanish. In 2018, the first and gathering at mill doors. edition of This Unheeded Eden, a chapbook https://www.amazon. of new and selected work was published. com/This-Unheed- But, then, my father is a maker of whole Recently, her poems also appeared in the ed-Eden-Susann-Pel- things (houses, fences and gates, anthologies Fierce with Reality, Literature letier/dp/1704526205 tables and chairs cupboards and counters) (“Lucienne, La Simple d'Esprit” suite de jambes. Le médecin l'avait diagnostiquée And when his saw sang through the board page 39) comme soit comme la paralysie infantile and his hammer drove the nail, des bontés de la nature, mais elle avait reçu soit une autre débilité sur laquelle il ne the din of those mill machines was stilled, en revanche l'intelligence et la verve d'une pouvait mettre le doigt. Aucune précision I saw how a world is crafted fée. Héloïse était devenue la joie et la con- voulue ne lui permettait de satisfaire ses by two steadfast hands. solation de Célie, surtout pendant la grande diagnostics tâtonnants. C'est alors qu'on et terrible maladie qu'avait souffert Héloïse. l'avait mise au lit pour un an sans sans se Tiré du roman Lucienne la simple Célie avait convaincu sa belle-mère, la mère lever, sans satisfaire à ses besoins de courir d'esprit de Normand Beaupré. LitFire Pub- d'Héloïse, qu'elle prendrait soin, nuit et jour, et de jouersoit dans les champs fleuris d'été lishing. 2017. Ce qui s'sensuit c'est l'épisode de sa petite belle-soeur. Héloïse n'avait , dans les prairies enneigées d l'hiver qu'elle avec les Algonquins et plus tard la naissance que dix ans lorsqu'elle fut abatue par une aimait tant. Tout ce qu'elle pouvait faire de Lucienne Charbonneau Rafferty, la fille maladie sérieuse et débélitante. Elle avait c'était de se fier sur la bonté et l'imagination d'Héloïse Lanouette Charbonneau qui sera perdu l'agilité et le mouvement de ses deux de sa chère belle-soeur. reconnue comme guérisseuse. 42 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 A book of poetry inviting the reader Immigrant Dream BOOKS/ into the intimate world of a thoughtful Fran- A CHILD’S VISION LIVRES... co-American New Englander. The poet's Back then, the city where I was born life spans the second half of the twentieth My grandfather, gave little comfort. century. The poems reveal a childhood in It shook me with the clatter of looms Northern Maine through to the precursors child of the village of Lille, and nigh machines, of a limited adult life. blinded me with that immigrant dream The author speaks urgently of his was afraid of werewolves. burning–– beloved Franco-American heritage. He Angry flames in men’s eyes, reveres the valley that formed his soul. He He told me tales by the hundred, soot and smoke in the bars protrays precocious youth and innocent and on the altars children. He reveals the ugrings of young stories and superstitions the stuff baked into daily bread. lovers He paints lasting images of wise el- ders, family feasts and village celebrations. about these sinister howling beasts When I read that the quality of mercy He cries out against injustice. And he extols is not strained ordinary living in a language revealing the that haunted the woods. or how music is the food of love, naked clairty of the heart. fair Portia, beneath the wide, white porticos My father, did not appear, according to the tales he told, nor Orsino on that Illyrian bank. The dews of heaven did not rise feared “Old Man Seven O’clock”. sweet strains did not fall and I saw only the tired stream A Word From Every night, as a child, of men and women treading through snowy streets Back Home: he lived under the illusion that he would see, to the factories. Book of Poetry through his bedroom window, French people who built cathedrals–– 1st Edition LaMontagne, DeBlois, Thibault–– fantasies and the black-magic their backs stooped now by Normand Ca- with the weight of the dream, mille Dube (Author), of the phantom who prowled each carrying a black lunchbox. Marcel Aime Duclos Normand Camille Not trowels, mortar and stone (Translator) Dube (Author) around the house. or loads of shimmering glass. About the Author: Born in 1932 in Not skeins of silk, wool, linen A book of poetry inviting the reader Van Buren, Maine, the author obtained But, I you see, for the woof and weft of a thousand into the intimate world of a thoughtful his doctorate in foreign language teaching flowers, virgins and horned horses Franco-American New Englander. The in 1971. He devoted his life to bilingual I am afraid of nothing. Not even my father, once poet's life spans the second half of the education. He was involved in children’s a boy with no boots in the Maine winter, twentieth century. The poems reveal a television, French cultural organizations, For I have, at the foot of my bed, understood why the people were tramping childhood in Northern Maine through to human rights. A prolofic writer and artist, over the old bridges the precursors of a limited adult life. his works are archived in the Fogler Library newspapers, and gathering at mill doors. at the University of Maine, Orono. a television, But, then, my father is a maker of whole MAPLE TREES I like maples things (houses, fences and gates, and magazines tables and chairs I like maples and the taffy cupboards and counters) that immunize me against the visions And when his saw sang through the board and the sap in my mouth and his hammer drove the nail, troubling children the din of those mill machines was stilled, I saw how a world is crafted in the buckets I like maples less well-behaved than I. by two steadfast hands.

I like maples and its sweetness But, pray tell me: and the taste on my pancakes who will tell such tales to my children? of dipped bread I like maple syrup and Henriette! https://www.amazon.com/Word-Back-Home- Book-Poetry/dp/1492788376 43 Le Forum BOOKS/ LIVRES...

OUR PUBLICATIONS... In the Beginning, On the Feast of All Saints’ Day, There was a Chapel November 1, 1841, a small log chapel was dedicated on the bluff overlooking the Mis- sissippi River some four miles downriver from Fort Snelling. At the time the chapel was built, there was only a small number of French Canadian families living in the area. Little did these parishioners know that this little chapel would evolve into a cathedral, a school, and a hospital, and would become the inspiration and the nucleus of a city that would adopt its name and become the capital of Minnesota. This book can be purchased at amazon.com, or at our heritage events. All sales proceeds from this book go to support the mission of the Foundation. Where the Waters Meet-A Story About Where Minnesota Was Born

Where the Waters Meet–A Story About Where Minnesota Was Born. This book is the story about the place “where the waters meet” or where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers intersect. Discusses progression of events involving French ex- plorers, to Selkirk colonists, at this location that led to formation of the modern state of Minnesota.

These books can be purchased at ama- Chez Nous Books zon.com, or at our heritage events. All sales One to Three proceeds from these books go to support the mission of the Foundation. Chez Nous This is a series of three books published by the French-American French-American Heritage Foundation that contains 928 pages of the Novelles Villes Jumelles and Heritage Foundation Chez Nous newsletters published by La of Minnesota Société Canadienne Française du Minnesota P.O. Box 25384 (LSCF), from years 1980 to 2001. Woodbury, MN 55125 Email: [email protected] 44 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 community where its last comprehensive BOOKS/ history left off, Franklin McDuffee’s History LIVRES... of the Town of Rochester, New Hampshire, from 1722 to 1890. When McDuffee’s history was pub- lished in 1892, the town was on the verge of becoming a city. Its robust transportation network, woolen goods and shoe industries, and thriving commercial center all warranted city status. Still, making the transition from town to city was fraught with challenges. A newfound emphasis on the application of scientific understanding to municipal infra- structure, a growing interest in professional- ism in urban management, the emergence of new technologies in transportation, industry, and entertainment presented both problems and opportunities to the new city. Interspersed with articles that describe particular events in the city’s history, this book describes Rochester at the point of its early 1890s transition and then explores in detail its industrial, commercial, trans- They Spoke French ROCHESTER, portation, agricultural, political, and social NEW HAMPSHIRE, worlds from the late nineteenth to the early They Spoke French, French Heri- twenty-first century. tage in Minnesota. Book published by the 1890-2010: French-American Heritage Foundation that About the Author: Kathryn Grover discusses the French heritage in Minnesota. “A COMPACT is an independent researcher, writer, and This book can be purchased at amazon.com, editor in American social, ethnic, and local or at our heritage events. LITTLE history. She is the author of The Brickyard: All sales proceeds from this book go The Life, Death, and Legend of an Urban to support the mission of the Foundation. INDUSTRIAL CITY” Neighborhood (2004), Lynn Album II: A Pictorial History (1996), The Fugitive’s by Kathryn Grover Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (2001), and Rochester, New Hampshire, 1890– Make A Way Somehow: African-American 2010: “A Compact Little Industrial City,” Life in a Northern Community (1994). She picks up the history of this Strafford County lives in Windsor, Vermont. BOOK REVIEW: Area. It talks about how people lived in ROCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1890-2010: general, the growth of public works, down- “A COMPACT LITTLE INDUSTRIAL CITY” town, and civic and educational institutions. Of special interest to Franco readers by Wilfred H. (Chip) Bergeron would be a section devoted to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how Rochester be- All over New England, wherever the city from it’s earliest settlers to it’s came a major area for Klan activity in New there was a source of water to power mills, publication in the 1890’s. Much happened Hampshire. towns and cities sprung up where wool, from 1890-2010, and this book purports to The book, like all such accounts, has cotton, shoes and many other things were tell that story. It is a combination of written gaps. One could have wished for a wider manufactured. Most of these towns and history, oral accounts and newspaper arti- cross-section of first person accounts, there cities attracted emigrés from the Franco cles, lavishly illustrated with photographs were stories left untold, and the Rochester Diaspora, and neighborhoods called “Petit and drawings. story post about 2000 is a little thin. All in Canadas” grew up near the mills, ethnic While not specifically Franco-Amer- all though, it is a worthwhile account and enclaves where the language, religion and ican in outlook, it talks about some areas of the author is to be commended. customs of “home” were preserved. One special interest: the rise and fall of the mill There were only a small quantity such city is/was Rochester, N.H. culture in Rochester, East Rochester and printed. It might no longer be available This book is a sequel to “McDuffee’s Gonic, it’s suburbs. It describes the growth new, but used copies should be available History of Rochester, N.H., that covered of the main Franco area in the Lafayette St. through Amazon. 45 Le Forum POETRY/POÉSIE...

Loneliness For Emmeline My cousin has died. Just two months older Loneliness, can make a poor heart cry Than I, she’s with her parents now, one Emptiness, sometimes I wish I could die Brother, four grandparents, assorted aunts And uncles, a friend or two or so — all citizens Endless tears, so many sleepless nights Of a world that’s passing, not to return. Just because you’re not here to hold me tight Emerging from Warld War II, our parents — Then I close my eyes and suddenly you’re near Lowell-rooted, French-Canadian, Catholic, And for a moment heartaches disappear Blue-collar, high-school educated (or not), And fearful of the next great depression — Sonia Labbé Then I awake and then I find you gone Held onto jobs, lived carefully, worked hard. And loneliness keeps coming on and on August 6, 1938-June 14, 2019 But ours was a time of growth, expansion, Love is a game, a game I just can’t play Technological advancement, research, Your tenderness stole my heart away Product enhancement, and so many things To buy — TVs, toothpaste, appliances — You were all I dreamed that love could be With cash, credit, or rent-and-try. Now all I have is a memory New music, clothes, ideas abounded, as did Then I close my eyes and suddenly you’re near New wars — distant, endless, confounding — And for a moment heartaches disappear Along with home-grown riots and strife. But Emmeline, Kind child of French-Canadian faith and culture, Then I awake and then I find you gone Flowered in the garden those provided: And loneliness keeps coming on and on French schools, French church, French hospital –– Wilbur Labbé Where she, a nurse, attended to ailing lives Caribou, Maine When not at home attending to the lives Of nine children, each welcomed by A mother who had dreamed of having twelve.

Perpetually laughing, generous, unflustered, She rarely thought of self, even when Disease set in to rob her health. She lived To give her life away prodigally, Seemingly never calculating cost.

She loved her God and Christ’s dear mother to The end, and at her funeral Mass “J’Irai La Voir,” the unofficial funeral anthem Of French Canadians hereabout was sung: “In heaven, in heaven, in heaven I will see her one day.”

––– © Suzanne Beebe, 2019

46 35 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 POETRY/POÉSIE... For Emmeline

My cousin has died. Just two months older Emmeline I. Than I, she’s with her parents now, one (Bordeleau) Cronin Brother, four grandparents, assorted aunts January 8, 1947 ~ October 10, 2019 And uncles, a friend or two or so — all citizens Of a world that’s passing, not to return.

Emerging from Warld War II, our parents — Lowell-rooted, French-Canadian, Catholic, Blue-collar, high-school educated (or not), And fearful of the next great depression — Held onto jobs, lived carefully, worked hard.

But ours was a time of growth, expansion, J’Irai La Voir Technological advancement, research, Product enhancement, and so many things (English translation of selected To buy — TVs, toothpaste, appliances — Père Janin lyrics) With cash, credit, or rent-and-try. I’m going to see her one day — in heaven, in the homeland. New music, clothes, ideas abounded, as did Yes, I’m going to see Mary, my joy and my love. New wars — distant, endless, confounding — In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. Along with home-grown riots and strife. But Emmeline, In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. Kind child of French-Canadian faith and culture, Flowered in the garden those provided: I’m going to see her one day! I’m going to join with the angels To sing her praises and form her court. French schools, French church, French hospital In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. Where she, a nurse, attended to ailing lives In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. When not at home attending to the lives Of nine children, each welcomed by I’m going to see her one day, this Virgin so beautiful! A mother who had dreamed of having twelve. Soon I’ll be near her to tell her my love. In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. Perpetually laughing, generous, unflustered, In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. She rarely thought of self, even when Disease set in to rob her health. She lived I’m going to see her one day! I’m going to be near her throne To give her life away prodigally, To receive my crown in the eternal place of sojourn. Seemingly never calculating cost. In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. She loved her God and Christ’s dear mother to The end, and at her funeral Mass “J’Irai I’m going to see her one day! I’m going far from the earth La Voir,” the unofficial funeral anthem To rest on the heart of my mother without return. Of French Canadians hereabout was sung: In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day. “In heaven, in heaven, in heaven I will see her one day.” In heaven, in heaven, in heaven, I’m going to see her one day.

––– © Suzanne Beebe, 2019 ––– © Suzanne Beebe, 2015 Elegance

The merry party’s ending. The last guests have drifted away. I end the festive evening with champagne and marrons glacés.

––– Margaret S. Langford Keene, New Hampshire 35 47 Le Forum POETRY/POÉSIE... Grandi a Grand Isle (au nord du Maine en 1960) par Don Levesque

J’ai pêché au bôrd su’ Primme En arriére d’su’ Leaudivine. J’ai marché su’ l’île de Lille Ecouté d’la musique avec ti-Gill, Joué d’la guitar avec Jim pi Jim, Allé a Van Buren pour voir les filles, Manger des bines l’samedi soir Des hot dogs rouge routis b’en noir.

Assis su’l’bôrd d’la riviére Saint-Jean Pêcher pour d’la truite, poigner des p’tit blancs, Manger des ployes pi des cortons, Jouer au file avec un vieux bouton. Ont allais patiner su’ Guy Beaupré Pi ont allais au movies l’samedi après midi. Soigner 'es poules su' pepére Ouellette, Jouer d’la basketball au côté d’su’ Neil, Couper du bois su' un vieux joualette. Rider jusqu’a Lille avec nos vieux bicycles R'garder l' tv su' Guy Beaupré Pendant qu' mon pére prenais une p'tite biére. Jouer d'la pool s'Octave Caron, Rider en chars dans l’chemin des concessions, Jouer au cartes assis su' l'perron. Ecouter ma mére jouer son accordéon. Aller s'beigner a l'éclûge a Pierre Cyr. Sonner ‘a cloche d’école avec un gros clou. Manger des crêpes avec d’la tire. Ramasser des noissettes pi des fraises itou Rider en skateboard dans route a 'Lexis. Voir mon oncle Denis bouére son Pepsi. J’ai grandi a Grand Isle au nord du Maine Manger des groisselles pi d'la rhubarbe sûre, J’ai grandi a Grand Isle au nord du Maine Des p'tites pommettes pi des confitures

Don Levesque was born in Grand Isle, went to high school in Van Buren, university in Fort Kent, and worked in Madawaska for 25 years at the St. John Valley Times, the last 15 years as editor and publisher. He is in the Maine Journalism Hall of Fame and the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame, neither of which has an actual physical presence anywhere. L’bon Dieu d’vais nous aimer

Le Bon Dieu d’vais nous aimer Une frontière involuntaire Pour nous avoir donné Séparant des soeurs et frères Sans qu’on l’aie demandé La Saint-Jean, plus qu’une rivière Une si belle et si grande Vallée La Saint-Jean c’est une prière

Assis sur un nuage Le Bon Dieu d’vais nous aimé Dieu veut qu’on le partage Pour nous avoir donné De la rivière jusqu’au large Sans qu’on l’aie demandé Une Vallée qui vie sans âge Une si belle grande Vallée.

L’été une rivière très luisante La rivière Saint-Jean L’automne une rivière assez calme Coule dans nos veins L’hiver c’t’un ruban souvent glissant La Rivière Saint-Jean L’printemps rivière toute tourbillante Coule dans nos veins ––par Don Levesque 48 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 a great deal yet to be accomplished. students. Yvon A. Labbé, coordinator of Fran- Such programs require space, time and co-American student affairs, feels that despite money in order to meet the needs of Fran- hostility and fear, lack of financial support and co-Americans. As a start, FAROG suggest the widespread ignorance of the Franco-American funding of an interdepartmental Franco-Ameri- situation, FAROG has had an impact on the can chair at the Orono campus, and has offered community. its services in recruiting candidates for the post. Labbé describes FAROG’s ultimate ob- Thus far FAROG regards as its most sig- jective as the “validation of Franco-American nificant achievement a five-week modular course, FAROG cultural and linguistic experience as a living and “The Franco-American in Maine Schools,” creative force.” presented twice last year and again this year Manifesting Franco-Americans account for at least under the auspices of the College of Education one-third of Maine’s total population and number at Orono. The course is taught informally by A People’s at least one million in New England. FAROG members. What Labbé and other FAROG members Labbé describes the module as “process Identity are asking is simply that the University of Maine, oriented” rather than “product oriented.” “What as the state’s primary educational institution, rec- were looking for,” he said, “isn’t a regurgitation (circa. 1972-73) ognize the existence of a large Franco-American of knowledge from the student, but the establish- minority in the state and deal with it accordingly. ment of the kind of classroom freedom in which ORONO––At a time in history when the Recommendations include a review of ad- the Franco student can react freely to what we old “melting pot” philosophy has gradually given missions policies and the hiring of Franco-Amer- are trying to say.” way to increased affirmation of ethnic identity, ican personnel on all levels, the encouragement The theater is another area in which probably no minority has been so thoroughly and support of Franco-American groups, forma- FAROG hopes to involve itself in the near future, ignored as the Franco-American. Now a small tion of adult education programs for bilinguals, provided sufficient funding can be found. Since group of dedicated individuals at the University collection of material relating to the French no Franco-American plays are known to exist, the of Maine’s Orono campus is working hard to experience in North America and the institution group intends to write its own material. FAROG change all that. of exchange programs with French-speaking member Claire Bolduc described a proposed The Franco-American Resources and Op- universities. theater workshop as an attempt “to explore the portunity Group (FAROG), founded last year on FAROG further recommends that de- creative potential, the dramatic content and the very little money and a lot of enthusiasm, has so partments in the humanities and social sciences joy contained in the Franco-American situation.” far managed to implement two modular courses acquaint themselves with the “Franco-fact” and “plus ça in the College of Education, an orientation pro- devote a part of their efforts to courses dealing change plus gram for incoming Franco-American students with Franco-American life, such as the training and various lines of communication with the of bilingual Franco teachers and guidance coun- c'est la même Franco-American community. There is, however, selors rather than simply ‘retreading” Anglo chose” (French Azilum:American Refuge for a Queen? continued from page 41)

This map was published as an illustration for Elsie Murray’s book. The original was held by the Tioga Point Museum. It shows the town’s layout with lots for dwellings small and large. Mansions like the Grande Maison would have occupied the large lots at the river’s edge.

49 Le Forum Franco-American Families COULOMBE of Maine (Colombe, Conlogue# Columbus* Coolong∆) par Bob Chenard, Waterville, Maine Louis Coulombe, born 1641 in France, died 1720 in PQ, son of Jacques Colombe Les Familles Coulombe and Rolline Drieu from the village of le Neubourg, department of Eure, ancient province of Normandie, France, married on 30 September 1670 at Ste.Famille, Ile d’Orléans, PQ to “Fille-du-Roi” Jeanne Foucault (or Boucault), born 1651 in France, died in PQ, daughter Welcome to my column. Over the of Nicolas Boucault and Marguerite Tibault from the suburb of St.Germain in Paris, France. years Le Forum has published numerous Le Neubourg is located 14 miles northwest of the city of Evreux. families. Copies of these may still be avail- 17 Éloi 07 Nov 1809 Marie Boucher St.Joachim 33 able by writing to the Franco-American Élie 16 Feb 1819 Archange Patenaude Longueuil Center. Listings such as this one are never Léon 29 May 1826 Suzanne Boivin Eboulements* 34 complete. However, it does provide you with *aka “les Eboulements” my most recent and complete file of mar- (d. 16-8-1891 St.Isidore, age 67) Zéphirin 15 Jan 1856 Marie Turgeon St.Gilles, Lotb. 49B riages tied to the original French ancestor. 50 Louis 14 Apr 1856 Philomène Fortin Lambton 99 How to use the family listings: The left-hand Frédéric 27 Feb 1865 Caroline Roy Lambton 100 column lists the first name (and middle name Honoré 19 Jun 1865 Tharsille Ruel Lambton 50A or initial, if any) of the direct descendants of 51 Joseph 11 Nov 1851 Delphine Turgeon Ste.Flavie, Rim. 105 55 Pierre 04 Feb 1862 Marcelline Bernatchez Montmagny 112 the ancestor identified as number 1 (or A, in Eugène before 1892 Eugénie Gendron Lévis, PQ or NH 55A some cases). The next column gives the date (b. 24 Jul 1859 Can. - d. 02 Oct 1918 Lewiston) of marriage, then the spouce (maiden name 56 Joseph 13 Jan 1880 Sophronie Langlois Montmagny 56A if female) followed by the town in which the 58 Hubert 05 Aug 1884 Célina Lacombe Montmagny 58A 60 Hubert 1m. 14 Jul 1903 Catherine Gaudreau Montmagny 60A marriage took place. There are two columns “ 2m. 16 May 1916 Antoinette Gaudreau Montmagny of numbers. The one on the left side of the 62 Jean-Baptiste 16 Mar 1907 Valentine Gagnon Carleton, ONT(ND) 62A page, e.g., #2, is the child of #2 in the right (b.9-1-1884 or 4-6-1884) (Joseph Gagnon 2m. Emma Clément 16-5-1896 Moose Creek, ONT) column of numbers. His parents are thus (Valentine was 22 yrs. old when married; i.e. b.1884-5. 63 Télesphore-Ls. 09 Nov 1869 Rose Charron St.Nicolas, Lévis 63A #1 in the left column of numbers. Also, it “ 2m. 07 May 1889 Aurélie Marchand Victoriaville, Artha. should be noted that all the persons in the 64 Joseph 21 Feb 1887 Angèle Girard St.Urbain, Chlvx. 64A first column of names under the same num- 65a Ambroise 09 Feb 1841 Luce Gonthier-Bernard St.Gervais 118 ber are siblings (brothers & sisters). There Louis 25 Feb 1851 Charlotte Lacroix St.Michel 119 65b Ambroise 12 Jan 1847 Marguerite Patenaude St.Jean-Richelieu 120 may be other siblings, but only those who 66a Ambroise 11 Aug 1852 Sophie Langlois St.Laurent, I.O. 121 had descendants that married in Maine are 66b François 26 Nov 1861 Eléonore Goulet Ange-Gardien 122 listed in order to keep this listing limited in 67 Rémi 08 Jan 1856 Tharsile Desrochers St.Antoine-Tilly 67A size. The listing can be used up or down - to Didier 22 Feb 1859 Marie Hamel Ste.Foye 67B 68 François-X. 12 Jan 1874 M.-Léa Beaudet Ste.Emélie, Lotb. 68A find parents or descendants. The best way (b.11-4-1849 Ste.Croix) a twin to see if your ancestors are listed here is to Antoine-Louis 16 Aug 1880 Arthémise Tremblay Ste.Croix, Lotb. look for your mother’s or grandmother’s (b.11-4-1849 Ste.Croix) a twin maiden name. Once you are sure you have 69 Clovis 30 Jan 1883 M.-Philomène Lavoie Baie-St.Paul, Chvx. 69A (b.Oct 1860) (Théophile Lavoie & Philomène Pilote) the right couple, take note of the number 71 Charles 25 Jan 1886 Rosanna Thibodeau Windsor, Richm. 71A in the left column under which their names Elzéar 28 Jun 1886 M.-Lise Joncas Windsor, Richm. appear. Then, find the same number in the 74 Adolphe 31 Jul 1882 Alexina Labadie Weedon, Wolfe right-most column above. For example, if (b.1862) (François Labadie & Mathilde Fortin) Napoléon 12 Jul 1904 Adéline “Nellie” Boudreau Ham Nord (to Sanford) it’s #57C, simply look for #57C on the right (b.1869) (sister of Frs. who m. M.-Anna Roussin 25-8-1902 Ham Nord) above. Repeat the process for each genera- 79 Cléophas 03 Sep 1878 M.-Louise Dumont Montmagny 79A tion until you get back to the first family in 80 Jos.-Éleuthère 23 Sep 1891 M.-Amanda Bernier Cap St.Ignace 80A the list. The numbers with alpha suffixes 97 Godias-J. 13 Jul 1885 M.-Dina Chamberland St.Isidore, Dorch. (b.8-8-1860 St.Isidore) (e.g. 57C) are used mainly for couple who Michel 1m. 04 Feb 1890 Florida Roy St.Isidore, Dorch. 97A married in Maine. Marriages that took place (b.1865 Can. - d.9-5-1905 Springfield, age 39y 10m) in Canada normally have no suffixes with the (Chrysostome Roy & Marie Gagné) rare exception of small letters, e.g., “13a.” “ 2m. 07 Nov 1905 Joséphine Roy, 31 Springfield, MA 97B (b.8-3-1862 St,Isidore) (Hubert Roy & Joséphine Paquet dit Lavallée) If there are gross errors or missing families, Achille 1892 Valentine Montreuil Minnesota 97C my sincere appologies. I have taken utmost (b.21-10-1865 St.Isidore) care to be as accurate as possible. Please 99 Évariste 06 Sep 1892 M.-Louise Coulombe Coaticook, Ststd. 99A write to the FORUM staff with your correc- 100 Joseph 01 Apr 1913 Alma-M.-A.-R. Bélanger Courcelles 100A 105 Joseph 20 Aug 1878 Adèle Pelletier St.François, NB 105A tions and/or additions with your supporting 112 Télesphore 26 Nov 1888 M.-Délima Lemieux Mont-Louis 112A data. I provide this column freely with the 118 Joseph 26 Sep 1871 Léocadie Beaudoin St.Raphael, Blchs. 118A purpose of encouraging Franco-Americans Ambroise 25 May 1875 Marie Labrecque St.Raphaël 132 to research their personal genealogy and to 119 François 14 Apr 1885 M.-Amaryllis Maurice St.Magloire 119A take pride in their rich heritage. (Continued on page 51) 50 WINTER/HIVER 2019-20 (COULOMBE continued from page 51) Charles 05 Nov 1889 Wilhelmine “Annie” Aubé St.Magloire 119B 120 Ambroise (b.26-7-1852 St.Jean, St.Jean cty.) 121 Eugène-Turias 31 Aug 1887 M.-Evangéline Gendron Québec(Hotel Dieu) (Ambroise Gendron & Esther Chamberland) 122 Philias 1m. 19 Nov 1888 Albertine Hudon-Beaulieu Plessisville, Még. “ 2m. 27 Apr 1891 Mathilda Gagné Thetford Mines, 122A (George Gagné & Marcelline Bourgault) Mégantic cty. (Mathilde divorced him on 3-4-1900 due to his imprisonment in NH State Prison for more than 1 year) 132 Adélard 07 Jan 1901 Elmina Théberge Armagh 132A

The following are descendants of the above who married in Maine & NH:

25A Paul 19 Jun 1859 Euphémie Lavoie Frenchville 25C (Benjamin Lavoie & Marie Laforest) (d. 16-8-1891 St.Isidore, age 67) 25B Gilbert 01 Apr 1883 Philomène Kirouack Brunswick(SJB) 25D Zéphirin 15 Jan 1856 Marie Turgeon St.Gilles, Lotb. 49B (b.9-7-1862 Cap-St.Ignace)(imig. 1883) (b.23-5-1854 Islet - 1-10-1903 So.Berwick, ME) 50 Louis 14 Apr 1856 Philomène Fortin Lambton 99 (Ambroise Kirouac & Anastasie Bélanger) Frédéric 27 Feb 1865 Caroline Roy Lambton 100 25C Paul∆ 0 7 Nov 1887 Lydia Perroe (Perron) Winn(RC) Honoré 19 Jun 1865 Tharsille Ruel Lambton 50A (Auguste Perron & Philomène Philomène Morin) 51 Joseph 11 Nov 1851 Delphine Turgeon Ste.Flavie, Rim. 105 Auguste-Eustache 07 Apr 1896 Catherine Pelletier St.John, Me. 25E 55 Pierre 04 Feb 1862 Marcelline Bernatchez Montmagny 112 George 08 Jan 1905 Priscille Ouellette Sheridan 25F Eugène before 1892 Eugénie Gendron Lévis, PQ or NH 55A 25D Aimé 19 Oct 1912 Annie-E. Peasley Randolph(Prot.) (b. 24 Jul 1859 Can. - d. 02 Oct 1918 Lewiston) (b.Mar 1888 Brunswick) 56 Joseph 13 Jan 1880 Sophronie Langlois Montmagny 56A 25E Dorothée-M. 18 Jun 1917 Antoine Martel Lewiston(St.Mary) 58 Hubert 05 Aug 1884 Célina Lacombe Montmagny 58A Jessie 17 Apr 1922 M.-Alina Poulin Lewiston(SPP) 25G 60 Hubert 1m. 14 Jul 1903 Catherine Gaudreau Montmagny 60A Lilly 01 Apr 1929 Léo Comeau Lewiston(SPP) “ 2m. 16 May 1916 Antoinette Gaudreau Montmagny 25F Charles-J. ∆ 04 Jan 1927 Iona Philbrick Rangeley(JOP) 25H 62 Jean-Baptiste 16 Mar 1907 Valentine Gagnon Carleton, ONT(ND) 62A Agnès Nov 1934 Timothy Mynahan Lewiston(St.Jos.) (b.9-1-1884 or 4-6-1884) (Joseph Gagnon 2m. Emma Clément 16-5-1896 Moose Creek, ONT) Rosanna ∆ 1m. 09 Jun 1931 Wayland Phillips Madrid, Me.(JOP) (Valentine was 22 yrs. old when married; i.e. b.1884-5. “ 2m. 07 Jan 1952 Albert-G. Côté Waterville(JOP) 63 Télesphore-Ls. 09 Nov 1869 Rose Charron St.Nicolas, Lévis 63A “ 3m. 27 Aug 1960 Alfred-V. Grenier Waterville(SH) “ 2m. 07 May 1889 Aurélie Marchand Victoriaville, Artha. 25G Roger-Robert 27 Nov 1941 Germaine-T. Pelletier Auburn(SH) 25J 64 Joseph 21 Feb 1887 Angèle Girard St.Urbain, Chlvx. 64A 25H Pearl-Maryan ∆ 14 Feb 1948 Linwood-Elmon Tyler Avon(Prot.) 65a Ambroise 09 Feb 1841 Luce Gonthier-Bernard St.Gervais 118 Agnès-May ∆ 11 Dec 1954 Howard-Thomas Seymore Portland(Prot.) Louis 25 Feb 1851 Charlotte Lacroix St.Michel 119 “ 2m. 19______Cook Maine ? 65b Ambroise 12 Jan 1847 Marguerite Patenaude St.Jean-Richelieu 120 25J Michael-R. 09 Jun 1962 Thelma-C. Laliberté Auburn(SH) 66a Ambroise 11 Aug 1852 Sophie Langlois St.Laurent, I.O. 121 Ronald-Roger 31 Dec 1966 Carol-Elaine Doiron Lewiston(St.Jos.) 66b François 26 Nov 1861 Eléonore Goulet Ange-Gardien 122 Sandra-G. 17 Jun 1967 Michael-N. Swift Lewiston(St.Jos.) 67 Rémi 08 Jan 1856 Tharsile Desrochers St.Antoine-Tilly 67A 32A Herméline 12 Oct 1924 Elphège Boudreau Rochester, NH Didier 22 Feb 1859 Marie Hamel Ste.Foye 67B 36A Nérée 17 Apr 1872 Marie Renaud Lewiston(SPP) 36C 68 François-X. 12 Jan 1874 M.-Léa Beaudet Ste.Emélie, Lotb. 68A Pierre ca. 1875 Exilda Lottinville Lewiston 36D (b.11-4-1849 Ste.Croix) a twin (b.8-5-1842 Bécancour) cordonnier (b.13-5-1852 Kingsey; Cyrille Lottinville & Louise Archambault) Antoine-Louis 16 Aug 1880 Arthémise Tremblay Ste.Croix, Lotb. 36B Mélanie 29 Oct 1888 Georges Beaumier Bécancour, Q. (b.11-4-1849 Ste.Croix) a twin (b.18-11-1859 Bécancour) 69 Clovis 30 Jan 1883 M.-Philomène Lavoie Baie-St.Paul, Chvx. 69A 36C Léonie-M. 26 Apr 1897 François Dubé Lewiston(SPP) (b.Oct 1860) (Théophile Lavoie & Philomène Pilote) Napoléon 02 Sep 1912 Alice Bélanger Lewiston(SPP) 36E 71 Charles 25 Jan 1886 Rosanna Thibodeau Windsor, Richm. 71A 36D Joseph-Napo. 26 Aug 1901 Oliva Boisvert Warwick, Artha. 36F Elzéar 28 Jun 1886 M.-Lise Joncas Windsor, Richm. (b.Mar 1876 Lewiston, Maine, plumber - d.15-11-1910 Lewiston)(bur. St.Joseph Cem., Biddeford) 74 Adolphe 31 Jul 1882 Alexina Labadie Weedon, Wolfe (wife, Oliva Boisvert 2m. Joseph Grenier 29-5-1912 Biddeford) (b.1862) (François Labadie & Mathilde Fortin) M.-Malvina 31 Mar 1918 Émile Boutet Biddeford(St.And.) Napoléon 12 Jul 1904 Adéline “Nellie” Boudreau Ham Nord (to Sanford) (b.21-4-1880 Warwick, Artha.)(parents said to be from the U.S.) (b.1869) (sister of Frs. who m. M.-Anna Roussin 25-8-1902 Ham Nord) Edouard 79 Cléophas 03 Sep 1878 M.-Louise Dumont Montmagny 79A (b.4-7-1882) 80 Jos.-Éleuthère 23 Sep 1891 M.-Amanda Bernier Cap St.Ignace 80A J.-Arsène 97 Godias-J. 13 Jul 1885 M.-Dina Chamberland St.Isidore, Dorch. (b.23-2-1885 Princeville, Artha.) (b.8-8-1860 St.Isidore) Félix-J. 30 Jun 1930 Clara-Fabiola Coutu Biddeford(St.Jos.) 36G Michel 1m. 04 Feb 1890 Florida Roy St.Isidore, Dorch. 97A (b.6-1-1889) (b.1865 Can. - d.9-5-1905 Springfield, age 39y 10m) 36E Philippe 04 May 1946 Émilienne Vaillancourt Lewiston(St.Mary) 36H (Chrysostome Roy & Marie Gagné) 36F Conrad-J. 05 Nov 1928 Cécile Vallières Waltham, MA ! 36J “ 2m. 07 Nov 1905 Joséphine Roy, 31 Springfield, MA 97B (b.15-6-1902 Warwick) (of Waltham, MA) (b.8-3-1862 St,Isidore) (Hubert Roy & Joséphine Paquet dit Lavallée) Joseph Achille 1892 Valentine Montreuil Minnesota 97C (b.& d. 6-7-1903 Warwick, Artha.) (b.21-10-1865 St.Isidore) Jeannette-Gertrude 99 Évariste 06 Sep 1892 M.-Louise Coulombe Coaticook, Ststd. 99A (b.5-2-1907 Biddeford) Bélanger 100 Joseph 01 Apr 1913 Alma-M.-A.-R. Courcelles 100A Edouard-Roland 105 Joseph 20 Aug 1878 Adèle Pelletier St.François, NB 105A (b.23-4-1908 Biddeford) 112 Télesphore 26 Nov 1888 M.-Délima Lemieux Mont-Louis 112A 36G Thérèse 30 May 1953 Raymond Collard Biddeford(St.And.) 118 Joseph 26 Sep 1871 Léocadie Beaudoin St.Raphael, Blchs. 118A Ambroise 25 May 1875 Marie Labrecque St.Raphaël 132 Julienne 29 Jun 1957 Gérard Asselin Biddeford(St.And.) 119 François 14 Apr 1885 M.-Amaryllis Maurice St.Magloire 119A (Continuation in the upcoming issue, SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2020) 51 Université du Maine Non-Profit Org. Le FORUM U.S. Postage Centre Franco-Américain PAID Orono, ME 04469-5719 Orono, Maine Permit No. 8 États-Unis Change Service Requested

THE FRANCO AMERICAN CENTRE LE CENTRE FRANCO AMÉRICAlN DE OF THE l’UNIVERSITÉ DU MAINE UNIVERSITY OF MAINE Le Bureau des Affaires franco-américains de l’Université du The University of Maine Office of Franco American Affairs was Maine fut fondé en 1972 par des étudiants et des bénévoles de la founded in 1972 by Franco American students and community volun- communauté franco-américaine. Cela devint par conséquent le Centre teers. It subsequently became the Franco American Centre. Franco-Américain. From the onset, its purpose has been to introduce and integrate the Dès le départ, son but fut d’introduire et d’intégrer le Fait Fran- Maine and Regional Franco American Fact in post-secondary academe co-Américain du Maine et de la Région dans la formation académique and in particular the University of Maine. post-secondaire et en particulier à l’Université du Maine. Given the quasi total absence of a base of knowledge within the Étant donné l’absence presque totale d’une base de connaissance University about this nearly one-half of the population of the State of à l’intérieur même de l’Université, le Centre Franco-Américain s’efforce Maine, this effort has sought to develop ways and means of making d’essayer de développer des moyens pour rendre cette population, son this population, its identity, its contributions and its history visible on identité, ses contributions et son histoire visible sur et en-dehors du and off campus through seminars, workshops, conferences and media campus à travers des séminaires, des ateliers, des conférences et des efforts — print and electronic. efforts médiatiques — imprimé et électronique. The results sought have been the redressing of historical neglect Le résultat espéré est le redressement de la négligence et de l’ig- and ignorance by returning to Franco Americans their history, their lan- norance historique en retournant aux Franco-Américains leur histoire, guage and access to full and healthy self realizations. Further, changes leur langue et l’accès à un accomplissement personnel sain et complet. within the University’s working, in its structure and curriculum are De plus, des changements à l’intérieur de l’académie, dans sa structure sought in order that those who follow may experience cultural equity, et son curriculum sont nécessaires afin que ceux qui nous suivent puisse have access to a culturally authentic base of knowledge dealing with vivre l’expérience d’une justice culturelle, avoir accès à une base de French American identity and the contribution of this ethnic group to connaissances culturellement authentique qui miroite l’identité et la this society. contribution de ce groupe ethnique à la société. MISSION OBJECTIFS: • To be an advocate of the Franco-American Fact at the Uni- 1 – D’être l’avocat du Fait Franco-Américain à l’Université du versity of Maine, in the State of Maine and in the region, and Maine, dans l’État du Maine et dans la région. • To provide vehicles for the effective and cognitive ex- 2 – D’offrir des véhicules d’expression affective et cognitive d’une pression of a collective, authentic, diversified and effective voice for voix franco-américaine effective, collective, authentique et diversifiée. Franco-Americans, and 3 – De stimuler le développement des offres de programmes • To stimulate the development of academic and non-academic académiques et non-académiques à l’Université du Maine et dans program offerings at the University of Maine and in the state relevant l’État du Maine, relatant l’histoire et l’expérience de la vie de ce groupe to the history and life experience of this ethnic group and ethnique. • To assist and support Franco-Americans in the actualization 4 – D’assister et de supporter les Franco-Américains dans l’ac- of their language and culture in the advancement of careers, personal tualisation de leur langue et de leur culture dans l’avancement de leurs growth and their creative contribution to society, and carrières, de l’accomplissement de leur personne et de leur contribution • To assist and provide support in the creation and implemen- créative à la société. tation of a concept of pluralism which values, validates and reflects 5 – D’assister et d’offrir du support dans la création et l’implémen- affectively and cognitively the Multicultural Fact in Maine and else- tation d’un concept de pluralisme qui value, valide et reflète effectivement where in North America, and et cognitivement le fait dans le Maine et ailleurs en Amérique du Nord. • To assist in the generation and dissemination of knowledge 6 – D’assister dans la création et la publication de la connaissance about a major Maine resource — the rich cultural and language diversity à propos d’une ressource importante du Maine — la riche diversité of its people. 4751