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Le FORUM Journal Franco-American Centre Franco-Américain

3-31-2021

Le Forum, Vol. 43 No. 1

Lisa Desjardins Michaud, Rédactrice

Abby Paige

Rhea Côté Robbins

Gérard Coulombe

Marie-Anne Gauvin

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Recommended Citation Michaud, Rédactrice, Lisa Desjardins; Paige, Abby; Côté Robbins, Rhea; Coulombe, Gérard; Gauvin, Marie- Anne; Lapierre, Dan; Nagle, Margaret; Myall, James; Myall, James; L'Heureux, Juliana; Moreau, Daniel; Brooks, Melanie; Wolf, Marcus; Cyr, Diane; Lacroix, Patrick; Desjardins, Mélody; Martineau, Jesse; Beaulieu, Timothy; Beebe, Suzanne; Edington, Rev. Steve; Scanlon, Barry; de la Prade, Xavier; Castonguay, Caroline; Milot, Claude; Guignard, Michael; Melanson, Michael B.; Larson, Russell; Pronovost, André; Ferrell, Frank; Murphy, Meghan; Marin, Paul; Héroux, Ronald G.; Levesque, Don; and Sand-Roy, Virginie, "Le Forum, Vol. 43 No. 1" (2021). Le FORUM Journal. 98. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/98

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, Rédactrice; Abby Paige; Rhea Côté Robbins; Gérard Coulombe; Marie-Anne Gauvin; Dan Lapierre; Margaret Nagle; James Myall; James Myall; Juliana L'Heureux; Daniel Moreau; Melanie Brooks; Marcus Wolf; Diane Cyr; Patrick Lacroix; Mélody Desjardins; Jesse Martineau; Timothy Beaulieu; Suzanne Beebe; Rev. Steve Edington; Barry Scanlon; Xavier de la Prade; Caroline Castonguay; Claude Milot; Michael Guignard; Michael B. Melanson; Russell Larson; André Pronovost; Frank Ferrell; Meghan Murphy; Paul Marin; Ronald G. Héroux; Don Levesque; and Virginie Sand-Roy

This book is available at DigitalCommons@UMaine: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ francoamericain_forum/98 Le FORUM “AFIN D’ÊTRE EN PLEINE POSSESSION DE SES MOYENS”

VOLUME 43, #1 SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021

Websites: Le Forum: http://umaine.edu/francoamerican/le-forum/ https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_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 Franco-Americans of Maine, Then and Now: $6.00 https://francomainestories.net Le Forum Sommaire/Contents

Lettres/Letters...... 3, 11 Changing a Present Focused on The Beyond Whiteness: Imagining a Franco- Past...... 33-34 American Future...... 3, 7, 8 by Timothy Beaulieu Le Centre Franco-Américain by Abby Paige Université du Maine In response to Steven Riel...... 11 L’État du MA...... 30-33 Orono, Maine 04469-5719 [email protected] Rhea Côté Robbins Can we honor native son Jack Téléphone: 207-581-FROG (3764) Kerouac?...... 30 L’État du ME...... 4-19 by Suzanne Beebe Two Franco Americans in Biddeford, ME....4-8

Volume 43 Numéro 1 So, who is tending the Kerouac flame in SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 by Gérard Coulombe Lowell?...... 31 Publishing Board La Pie Bavarde...... 8 by Rev. Steve Edington Don Levesque by Marie-Anne Gauvin Remembering Roger Brunelle, Lowell and Paul Laflamme Tante Blanche, Marie Marguerite Thibodeau Kerouac’s biggest cheerleader...... 32-33 Lin LaRochelle Cyr...... 9-11 by Barry Scanlon Louella Rolfe by Dan Lapierre Kent Beaulne L’État du VT...... 35-36 Claudia Desjardins: Hands-on lab Reminiscing, life in the ‘40s...... 35-36 Rédactrice/Editor experience benefits human health in by Xavier de la Prade Lisa Desjardins Michaud pandemic...... 12-13 by Margaret Nagle L’État du CT...... 38-39 Mise en page/Layout When Fake News About a Maine Epidemic Went A Solitary Birch Lisa Desjardins Michaud Viral...... 13-14 by Caroline Castonguay by James Myall L’État du RI Composition/Typesetting ...... 40 The Revolutionary War Veteran Who The Mill by Claude Milot Lisa Desjardins Michaud Eked Out a living as a Poor Squatter ...... 14-17 BOOKS/LIVRES...... 41-43 & 45 Aide Technique by James Myall Franco-Americans of the State of Maine U.S.A. Lisa Desjardins Michaud Soeurs religieuses: French-Canadian and Their Achievements...... 41-42 Health Care in New France and Maine by Michael Guignard ...... 17-18 Cormier Genealogy: Generations 1-7...... 43 Tirage/Circulation/4,500 by Juliana L’Heureux by Michael B. Melanson Franco-Americans paved a path for integrated Leduc to LaDuke: Ancestral Journey from Imprimé chez/Printed by baseball...... 18-19 Centre Franco-Américain, Orono, Maine Canada to America...... 43 by Juliana L’Heureux Publié 4 fois l’an par le Centre Franco‑Américain. by Russell Larson Le Forum est distribué surtout aux Franco‑Américains Dawson: The Story of New England Mill City Kerouac & Presley...... 45 des États‑Unis. Les énoncés, opinions et points de vue ...... 20 by André Pronovost formulés dans Le Forum sont ceux des auteurs et ne by Daniel Moreau représentent pas nécessairement les points de vue de Three Brothers, One MBA Program...... 21 MUSIC/MUSIQUE...... 44 l’éditeur ou de la rédactrice, ou du Collège des arts et by Melanie Brooks Frank Ferrell des sciences libéraux à l’Université du Maine. Le Forum is published 4 times a year by the First-ever online, bilingual portal to Franco POETRY/POÉSIE...... 45-47 Franco‑American Center. Le Forum is distributed in American archives launches this spring...... 37 Habi...... 45 particular to Franco‑Americans in the United States. by Marcus Wolf Statements, opinions and points of view expressed are by Meghan Murphy not necessarily those of the editor, the publishers or the Would the Woods that I know...... 46 College of Liberal Arts & Sciences of the University Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center...... 39 by Paul Marin of Maine. submitted by Diane Cyr Tous les textes soumis doivent parvenir à —For- Franco-Américains––Pourquoi, Pourquoi Pas?. ward all submitted texts to: Lisa D. Michaud, Rédac- ...... 46 trice-en-chef/Editor-in-chief, Le Forum, University of L’État du NH...... 21-27 by Ronald G. Héroux Maine, Orono, Maine 04469-5719, U.S., au plus tard Those Other Franco-Americans: St. Albans, quatre semaines précédant le mois de publication—at Part 2...... 22-24 Grandi a Grand Isle (au nord du Maine en least four weeks prior to the month of publication. by Patrick Lacroix Les lettres de nos lecteurs sont les bienvenues— 1960)...... 47 Letters to the Editor are welcomed. Hauntingly Silent: Some Questions Concerning par Don Levesque La reproduction des articles est autorisée sans Maine’s English Education Bill ...... 24-27 préavis sauf indication contraire—Our original articles by Patrick Lacroix COIN DES JEUNES...... 48-51 may be reproduced without notice unless otherwise 4 Life Lessons We Can Learn From the Filles Un Noël pandémique et les Prières...... 48-49 indicated. du Roi...... 27-29 par Virginie L. Sand-Roy L’équipe de rédaction souhaite que Le Forum soit by Mélody Desjardins un mode d’expression pour vous tous les Franco‑Amér- French Legacy Podcast...... 29 icains et ceux qui s’intéressent à nous. The staff hopes A Pandemic Christmas and Prayers...... 50, 51 by Jesse Martineau that Le Forum can be a vehicle of expression for you by Virginia L. Sand-Roy Franco‑Americans and those who are interested in us. Le Forum et son staff—Universitaires, gens de la communauté, les étudiants -- FAROG,

2 SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 Beyond Whiteness: Imagining a Lettres/ Franco-American Future Letters By Abby Paige oblivion. Peter C. Newman’s Hostages to Fortune asserts that United Empire Loy- History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our alists, banished from the nascent United history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals. States, carried the mantle of civilization north, into an untamed, unspoiled, unin- I attest to this: the world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White habited wilderness, “largely barren,” “with is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank. one big ‘VACANT’ sign across it.” While Newman does acknowledge in passing the ––– James Baldwin presence of a few “New France colonists I was pleased to read Timothy St. is about forgetting and erasing.”2 This is clustered in primitive huts along the riv- Pierre’s essay, “Acknowledging and Con- a common and credible critique of North erbanks of the mighty St. Lawrence,” it is fronting Racism in Franco Communities,” American colonial cultures. Historian Jean the Loyalists who “became the mother and in Le Forum’s fall 2020 issue.1 St. Pierre M. O’Brien studies it in depth in her 2010 fathers—nurturers and role models” of the calls on us to acknowledge how racism book, Firsting and Lasting, which analyzes Canadian nation, which they brought into and colonialism are embedded in Fran- how local histories of New English towns being by the sheer force of their fealty to 5 co-American spaces. He is right that such were written to obscure the violence of co- the Crown. confrontations seem particularly urgent in lonial conquest and erase or, oddly, eulogize Narratives that depict Anglo-Protes- the present historical moment. The wide- displaced Indigenous communities. Those of tants delivering civilization and modernity spread Black Lives Matter protests of last us who grew up in New England will recog- to primitives, waiting to be lifted out of their summer, which did little to interrupt the nize these narratives even if we have never ignorance and savagery, reveal the guiding 6 cycle of violence against Black people in the noticed their tortured logic. O’Brien writes: logic of English colonialism. While the ra- U.S.; the ongoing violence against migrants cial hierarchies of the U.S. and Canada have along the country’s southern border; the For the vast majority of authors the evolved away from one another, notions of disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 story of modernity they wanted to tell de- Anglo-Protestant superiority still operate pandemic on communities of color; and the pended upon the inclusion of Indian history, like a ghost in the Englishness. The machine increasingly explicit influence of White Na- and further, Indians provided dramatic is Whiteness. tionalism in the U.S. political system, have material that Americanized the narratives. In the U.S., White descendants of made the past several years feel unusually The central story line of the colonial past French Canada have attained our present eventful. In fact, they have merely revealed for New Englanders involved the heroic place in the racial hierarchy not by chal- long-standing patterns in how we operate overcoming of the “savage foe” in a valiant lenging that hierarchy, but by renegotiating as a society, which is why I doubt that even struggle to make the wilderness “blossom our proximity to Anglo- ness within it. Our these devastating events are enough to lift as the rose,” a phrase that is repeatedly ancestors understood that greater proximity most White Francos from our complacency. invoked as the metaphor for subduing the to Anglo-Protestant culture would bring us As St. Pierre observes, Francos ges- land in English ways.3 closer to the prestige, social status, author- ture toward our historical persecution when ity, influence, money, and other forms of it is convenient to do so, but much of our This selective remembering/forgetting power enjoyed and controlled by folks of sense of our own history is based on “a series is fundamental to the colonial project. The English origin. They bargained for greater of tropes, historical glosses, and exaggerated Puritans’ descendants wished to construct a safety, stability, and comfort than their self-perceptions” that obscure the lived re- narrative in which the Indian would repre- ethnic identities would afford them among alities of our ancestors. These facile glosses sent prehistoric nature, and English arrival the Anglo-Protestants who governed the keep us comfortable, but will not help us to marked nothing less than the beginning of vast majority of New England towns and “build a Franco- American identity and cul- culture and civilization in the “New World.” villages. This negotiation was different for ture that can address the modern reckonings Their ancestors, they believed, were superior each of our ancestors as they navigated the of the twenty-first century,” as St. Pierre beings, preordained to inherit the virgin gains and losses associated with assimila- invites us to do. Understanding our present territory that Indigenous “savages” were too tion, but it was the color of their skin that and historical relationship to Whiteness is simple to properly exploit. These narratives gave them a position from which to negoti- fundamental to building a Franco-Ameri- also relegate Europe into “Old World” irrel- ate. By compromising outward markers of can future, but doing so requires a kind of evance, as modernity itself is structured as a non-Anglo ethnicity, we have been able to remembering in which we rarely engage, New English enterprise. This narrative trick, assimilate into Whiteness and gain greater because we sense that doing so might disrupt intended to relegate Indians to the status access to what is now commonly referred to our safe and comfortable place within the of antiquities,4 is one colonizing peoples as “White privilege.” White majority. played on themselves, rendering their own The phrase unsettles many of us, but Métis scholar Chelsea Vowel has histories illegible. I have been grateful to add it to my vocab- written that “Indigenous cultures are all Colonial histories of English Canada (Continued on page 7) about remembering, while settler culture often relegate French settlers to the same (See more letters on page 11) 3 Le Forum MAINE MAINE (N.D.L.R. All photos used with permission from the McArthur Public Library Archives & Special Collections) Two Franco Americans in Biddeford, Maine Our Fathers : Joseph Salvas and Felix Coulombe: Stage Actors, Both As members of the J. Salvas Troupe of Actors. By Gérard Coulombe [Formerly of Biddeford, Maine]

Acting was a beloved activity of indi- Starting in high school, 1946, I did viduals like my father and future father-in not see my father because I had left for law. My future sisters in-law, frequently school before he was out of bed; although, had parts in many theatrical performances my sisters might have seen him, I did not, given by my future father-in law, Joseph as I was attending Saint Louis high school Salvas of Biddeford, Maine. He, Salvas led across town, and I had a job of one kind or Felix Coulombe and acted in his company of which my dad, another, and went to those jobs rather than been sad over the fact that she had agreed Felix Coulombe, was a long-time member. return home during the school day. Only that I be allowed to discern my vocation, The two, my father and my father- summers were different, when my sisters which was that I become a Brother of the n-law to be, had been these champions of might have seen him more regularly than I, Sacred Heart. The summer following sixth theater and acting, albeit at a time when because they were not of employable age. grade, my father readily hired a car and theatre was deemed the entertainment of I had one job after another while in high driver to take us to Winthrop, Maine, where the times, even as the motion picture indus- school. I was never an athlete, although I the Brothers had acquired an « L » shaped try was to soon become a most influential tried to be for one season of football. I was farm with an entrance on the Route above genre of entertainment, out pacing in-person a good observer of the game, but never a town but running through it on its way to the theatrical works. But vaudeville remained good enough athlete to become one. And, Capitol, Augusta. The good thing for those a mainstay of Saturday entertainment at so I worked at a variety of jobs. of you thinking where the school might the City Hall Theatre in Biddeford, Maine, have been, part of the farming property, a town in which my wife and I grew up to the back end of it, abutted Upper Narrow attend Catholic schools in and, later, met. Pond, Kennebec County, the front end was While I was in college, Juliette Salvas in Winthrop, the route going through it on and I had married. She was a graduate of its way to Hartford. Saint Mary’s School of Nursing in Lewiston, There, I stayed as a student. The stu- Maine, we had two children at the University dent body was small, not much more than of Maine, Orono, in what was called the two-hands-full. I must confess that mother South Apartments, with near barrack type made the sacrifice of letting me go; it could living, supervised by a draconian on the one not have been easy. I for one, enjoyed the hand but tough and fair man on the other, discipline and the prayerful atmosphere in we thought, for, as a tough gentleman who which we were to thrive. On the other hand, was not always thought to be so by married my future, was to become more traditional, students living on campus in the South in that after an illness that required hos- Apartments; it became for all of us who pitalization, I did return, fell down again lived there, a place where so many surpris- with the re-curring pain in my right hip, es took place weather-wise and otherwise, and this time, I was sent home to recoup. which in retrospect, wasn’t at all that bad. But, instead of returning to the novitiate, I If anyone had asked me about my entered high school, having skipped eighth father, the actor, I could not have believed Felix Coulombe grade, altogether, recuperating; immobili- it, as for my father in our household, he To be helpful and to stay occupied, I zation until the head of the femur healed. was, except for Saturday afternoons and started working after school and week-ends, « Leggs-Parkinson » was the disease. But, Sunday from ten-thirty a.m. to whatever and summers. I was a paperboy, worked at I later learned that girls were affected, too. hour we went to bed. The reason that my the market near Pike and Cross Street where I never learned how my father felt two younger sisters and I hardly ever saw I helped by stacking shelves, and doing the about my leaving, returning home, and never our dad, in that he was sleeping when we most important job of scooping ice cream going back to the novitiate, as we never had awoke, dressed, prepared for school, and atop the cones we sold. much to say, one to the other. It was always left home for school. In the interim, my mother might have (Continued on page 5) 4 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Two Franco Americans in Biddeford, tions to the McArthur Libary in Biddeford, Maine continued from page 4) Maine, where the collection is avalable for mother, in the main, who supervised our viewing upon request. growing up . And, it is here that I must add that mom left me to believe that I was to Postsript be responsible for myself because she had enough of my two sisters to care and coun- Neither my wife nor I knew of this sel, whereas, I, a man, could take care of collection until we, somehow, learned about myself. Indeed, I did , in that all the while I it. I, personally have been to the library in worked, I gave her my wages, and she gave Biddeford, upon short visits to Maine, but med whatever I asked for that I needed to the never long enough to view all photos is extent that I was working and self-reliant. the collection or other paraphernalia, such While the Joseph Salvas’ Company of as posters announcing a play at the City Franco American actors, men and women, Theatre or elsewhere in the New England with boys and girls as needed, the girls, of- States, wherever there were Franco-Amer- ten, from the Salvas family, his daughters, ican Communities. The church hall was Rose and Anne and, perhaps, the youngest, frequently the venue for such presentations. too, Marguerite, performed. My wife, the youngest, never did. It took me a long time before I learned my father had been an actor youth and older years, a lot more verbal than before he married. my father had ever been for, how do you Had I known as a kid that acting had know a father if all of the time because we been one of my dad’s avocations, I would lived in the same household, and, although have better understood his personal lack of he visited us, once with mom in New York, communication; I had not witnessed any where I chaired the English Department, of this, what might have called, sermon- with a Master’s degree in English from the izing, only because, as a altar boy, having University of Maine, that while a University had experiences as a listener to the priest Resident of Orono attending school on the preaching, which declamation sometimes G.I. Bill, a choice that I had made because uses acting to illustrate a point, I suddenly my wife to be was a recent graduate of the realized what my father was doing, whenev- Saint Mary’s school of nursing in Lewiston. er he spoke in company, or whenever, but, When discharged from the Air Force, rather infrequently, when his three older brothers than attend school, elsewhere in the coun- from Canada voyaged, via the Grand Trunk try, as I had thought I might, I registered Railway, to Lewiston to visit with relatives at Maine to await intended’s graduation. there, and then to Biddeford, via Portland, Joseph Salvas I may or may not have this right. But, for to visit with my dad. And, having double being more voluble than my dad, I had made bunked with us in Biddeford, and as my dad But City Hall in Biddeford had been their a decision to get married. I never heard the never owned a car in his life, and he never production center in the day. story of how my dad approached marriage, got himself a drivers license, whenever we Although I had never given acting a for, as our mom, often said of her marriage, traveled by car with company, as when his chance, myself. As a teacher, I had a friend, «We took the late train, » and as far as I was brothers visited, my dad rented a car and Mr. Barr, a teacher also, who had been a Hol- concerned, I might have, too. driver, even, as poor as we were, living in lywood child actor who had gone to college As for acting ,one of the actors in my a tenement all of our lives as children, we and had, too, obtained a teaching certificate father-in-law’s company, was a cousin of could not have had the money to afford such in teaching and directing plays In our town ours, related to my dad. Where, exactly, largess, as to rent a car and driver to have us of Port Washington, N.Y., where we taught, Conrad Coulombe actually came from, I all driven, he and I and his brothers, to Hart- he had been successful at directing high remain vague on the subject. In retrospect, I ford, Connecticut, where their married sister school students in plays, and, later, when he know Conrad’s wife might have felt abused lived with her husband and child who, as a moved to Michigan, he taught a few students by him because he never left his mother’s drafted adult during World War II, died in who later went on to appear on Broadway, home after he married, and they had four an accident, having been struck by a vehicle, and he was proud of this achievement. children, I believe. Conrad’s mother had re- as he crossed a Street in Baghdad while his While I, as his friend, had taken married, a Mr. Grenier, and I cannot say that outfit was posted in Iraq. opportunities to try out for roles in plays it was his or her home, while it was, obvious The acting company, owned by my wherever an adult was thought needed for from our visits that Conrad and his family father-in-law, Jovite Salvas, is remembered a particular role. So, I landed the role of lived with his mother and her husband. I in a collection of artifacts given by Jovite Sergeant Javorski in The Great Sebastian. I was old enough to wonder about that, but I Salvas, my father-in-law, who joined one don’t know that I knew it, but I was Russian never resolved the problem for the reasons of his actors, my dad, Felix Coulombe, to in the role. Later, I had fun acting, as much that I mentioned already.. For an actor, Felix donate artifacts from their individual collec- as my father had, although, I became in my (Continued on page 6) 5 Le Forum MAINE MAINE (Two Franco Americans in Biddeford, Maine continued from page 4) was never vocal. That is, as he was at work during half the day, he couldn’t share much with his family. And when he was at home and we were all together, my dad said little, and was content to vocalize only when we had guests that he knew well, and, in front of whom, he could speak eloquently and profoundly, much as if he were delivering his lines in a role that he was portraying while acting. And, so, my dad played a brief part in my life. As I have written, probably; he visited my wife, Juliette Salvas, and I when we lived in Port Washington, N.Y., where I taught English. A friend came for a visit just to meet my dad and to practice his French. But, in total surprise to both of us, my dad replied in English to the question posed in French. And so, both of us were stunned, as I had impressed upon our visitors that dad might just sit and not respond to any remarks in English because he did not speak it. But, the actor he was, he did and surprised us all, taking us all aback. What do you do with a man who is not supposed to speak English but does? That, was one part of my father. For the rest of his life he remained what I later understood to be his reticent manner. Oh! All the while, more than for forty years, having taken the late train to marry, he continued being for nearly half his life, the absent man in our lives. He might have worked days, but his choice hours were those between two in the afternoon and midnight when he arrived back home. Think about what he and we missed. Maybe, it was all for the better for him. I do not know how his wife, our mother felt. I got used to his hardly ever being home because I was away, too. My sisters told me, once, they had a better recollection of Dad than I do. As for both, my father and my father- in-law, they, in the interim years between home-grown Franco -American theatre do- Advertising image for play “Le Mystere Barton” (1933) ing French and French Canadian plays when younger, it was their « metier, » in between the work that they did in the real jobs that each held, all those years. My father might have been older than my father-in-law, but I *** doubt it. My dad had taken the late train, my mother’s term, one that I often heard her use Note: The Salvas/Coulombe collection is held by the Biddeford, Maine, McArhur in describing her marriage. Often enough, Public Library, Special Collections. I might say, that the term stayed with me, « the late train. »

6 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Beyond Whiteness: Imagining a Franco- Franco-American history fits into the larger work, how to vote, how to worship, where American Future continued from page 3) human narrative of the past five centuries. and how to bury their dead, so do I. These ulary. For me, it named the vague inkling I refuse to accept a history that erases, are the choices that define a person’s cultural I had, as a young person with loved-ones simplifies, or sanitizes my ancestors’ experi- life, yet many of us negotiate these matters more marginalized than I was, that I had ences, or cuts us off from the larger history passively. Most of us don’t worry about our not earned the ease with which I moved of the North American continent. When I Frenchness threatening our employability, through the world; my status derived from remember that my family has been on Turtle our income, or our ability to access services; the circumstances of my body. (A friend of Island9 for more than ten generations, I un- we don’t speak enough French to wonder mine uses the phrase “White body privilege” derstand that treaties made between settlers how we will teach it to our children. Safely for additional clarity.) It is no accident that and Indigenous people apply to me. When removed from direct experiences of discrim- Timothy St. Pierre grew up with a sense that I remember that my Acadian ancestors were ination, many Francos wish to avoid the “the histories and experiences of Black and sheltered by Mi’kmaq and other Indigenous unpleasant, traumatic, or humiliating echoes Indigenous people” were “largely peripheral peoples, I feel an obligation to speak up of our ethnic history, and therefore engage to my own life, something disconnected in support of Indigenous sovereignty and with culture as a hobby, like a sports team and relatively unimportant to my own daily self-determination. When I remember the they root for or a social club that offers them experience or my own family’s history.” As- KKK burning crosses against Catholics in good food, music, and light conversation. similation has enacted and demanded of us New England, I feel an obligation to speak They are (understandably) protective of their such disconnection. It asks us to be silent and up against White supremacists marching ancestors, and therefore see family trees as forget about personal and historical connec- halls of fame and ancestry DNA results as tions with people less assimilated than we Conceiving of assimilation scorecards. Culture becomes an exercise in are. Whiteness gives us no vocabulary to talk self-protection and nostalgia. about itself. Our discomfort with naming our as an ongoing process, rather For those of us invested in imagining Whiteness and talking about it openly is an than a job my ancestors com- a Franco-American future, nostalgia is an obstacle. It leads us into a cul-de-sac where indication of its symbolic power. Claudia pleted, helps me to practice a Rankine asks, “If you have never written Franco-American culture is reduced to a set consciously about race why have you never more conscious relationship of recipes and quaint, heroic legends about felt compelled to do so?” James Baldwin with my Franconess –– and my men in canoes. It is not alive. If it were, wrote, “The purpose of art is to lay bare the it might impact our lives in unpredictable questions hidden by the answers.” Whiteness. ways. It might ask things of us: to remem- In the same issue of Le Forum where ber suffering or painful mistakes; to make Timothy St. Pierre’s essay appears, poet anywhere. When I remember the structural amends; to sacrifice or struggle; to tell the Steven Riel bravely asks difficult questions discrimination experienced by generations truth. Conceiving of assimilation as an on- about his own family history and rightly of francophones by anglophone institutions, going process, rather than a job my ancestors insists: I feel an obligation to speak up against completed, helps me to practice a more the structural racism faced by Black and conscious relationship with my Franconess If we are too ashamed to tell the truth Brown people. My family’s generational — and my Whiteness. I understand what about poverty and violence in our families history of living along the U.S.’s northern Baldwin meant when he wrote that history because we believe we that the past some- border gives me a sense of solidarity with is the present. My choices and actions have how reflects badly on us, not only will we people with a similarly long history on the historical significance. They will resonate never be able singular, but instances caused border to our south. My family’s service through generations. The culture I choose to by wider social and economic forces — we in the U.S. Civil War strengthens to my live now can serve as a bridge between the will also not be able to perceive how their commitment to the cause of freedom for past and the future, to make them cohere. We experiences influence our present lives.7 African-Americans. My ancestors’ poverty have the opportunity to live a culture great- nurtures my skepticism about capitalism and er, more specific and enduring, than mere When we remove our genealogies my sense of gratitude. Practicing this kind Whiteness allows, but only by contending from the larger historical narratives in which of remembering can be difficult and painful. with Whiteness can we bring such a culture they unfolded, they become incoherent, and It can feel transgressive. It requires us to sit into being. dangerously so.8 This is what I understand with uncomfortable feelings of shame, guilt, Timothy St. Pierre to mean when he cau- and anger, and hold them in tension with our 1 Timothy St. Pierre, “Acknowl- tions, “When we exclusively focus on mo- pride and our love. But, increasingly, this is edging and Confronting Racism in Franco ments where we ourselves were the victims how I practice my culture. Communities,” Le Forum, Vol. 42, No. 3. of oppression and bigotry but ignore the It is with no small amount of hope that 2 Chelsea Vowel, @apihtaw- moments where we ourselves have perpe- I remind us: our assimilation is still in prog- ikosisan, Twitter, November 28, 2017, trated oppression and bigotry against others, ress. We are still engaged in the negotiations 9:18am, https://twitter.com/jfhigh/sta- this is racism.” Incomplete stories protect us that our ancestors began. Just as my ances- tus/935639955178528768 Accessed Octo- from difficult truths, but that is not all they tors made choices about which side of the ber 30, 2020. do. They also exclude non-White members border to live on, which languages to speak, 3 Jean M. O’Brien, Firsting and of our community, erase their contributions which wars to fight, who to marry, how to Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence and experiences, and obscure how the raise children, who to befriend, where to (Continued on page 8) 7 Le Forum MAINE MAINE (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) (Camp Hardknocks continued from page 8) LA PIE BAVARDE

À tous et à chacun:

Parlons des oiseaux rapaces noc- turnes un peu, c’est-à-dire les hiboux et les chouettes. Je parie que vous connaissez Chouette rayée (barred owl) seulement une de ces espèces qui nichent dans notre état et au Canada. Ce que nous appelons hibou en français sont les oiseaux –– Votre pie bavarde. Marie-Anne rapaces nocturnes avec de aigrettes qui sont des plumes retroussées sur la tête. Les gens Le grand duc (great horned owl) appelle le grand duc d’Amérique le hibou à tête de chat parce que la silhouette de sa tête Je me suis levée ne sachant pas quelle bête

ressemble à un chat avec ses oreilles bien pouvait crier comme ça. Ignorante de bien en évidence. Ces deux petit panaches de de choses dans la nature j’ai pensé peut-être plumes ne sont pas des oreilles. Le grand que c’était un orignal. Il faisait claire de duc, en anglais great horned owl, est celui lune et j’ai fait le tour du chalet en regardant le mieux connu. Seuls six oiseaux rapaces par les fênêtres. J’étais seule et pas assez nocturnes avec des aigrettes (7 dans l’ouest) brave de sortir dehors! Je ne voyais rien. s’appelent hiboux en français. Les autres J’ai entendu ce cri plusieurs fois au cours (Beyond Whiteness: Imagining a Franco- sand aigrettes s’appellent des chouettes. de l’été au point de pouvoir un peu l’imiter. American Future continued from page 7) En anglais on ne les diffère pas. Les deux C’est pire qu-un coq au levée du soleil. J’ai sont des owls. essayer d’imiter le cri à mon père qui a dit, Nous avons dans notre environne- “Je pense que c’est le hibou à tête de chat.” in New England, University of Minnesota, ment trois rapaces nocturnes communs dont Ce n’était pas le grand duc mais il m’a mise 2010. un le grand duc. Les deux autres sont des sur la bonne piste. J’ai cherché dans mes 4 “Dead Indians are the only antiquity chouettes, la petite nyctale (saw-whet owl) et livres sans succès. À la retraite ayant joint that North America has.” Thomas King, la chouette rayée (barred owl). Rare sont les le Club d’ornithologie j’ai refait du mieux The Inconvenient Indian, Anchor Canada, gens qui voient ces oiseaux justement parce que j’ai pu le hululement de mon hibou. La 2012, p. 54. que ils sont nocturnes. Vous connaissez fondatrice a tout de suite répondu, “C’est le 5 Peter C. Newman, Hostages to probablement mieux les oiseaux de nuits chouette rayée.” En anglais, pour se rap- Fortune, Simon & Schuster, 2016. P.1-7. sans plumes, hein! Non seulement sont- peler du son, on dit, “Who cooks for you, 6 This is not to minimize or excuse ils nocturnes mais leur vol est silencieux. who cooks for you all”. C’est la dernière the violent and exploitative histories of other La structure de leurs plumes ne fait aucun partie qui peut reeveiller les morts! Facile colonial powers, but rather to highlight how bruit au vol. Cette spécialité de vol leur est à identifier de vue et de son. Elle est rayée U.S. and Canadian culture still operate from nécessaire parce qu’il chassent la nuit aux horizontalement de tête et verticalement du this origin. sons que peuvent faire leurs proies. Leurs ventre. 7 Steven Riel. “A Legacy as Plain oreilles sont comme les nôtres à chaque côté Je l’avais entendu plusieurs fois avant as the Nose on My Face,” Le Forum, Vol. de la tête recouvertes de plumes et leus têtes de la voir bien des années plus tard. Un jour 42, No. 3. pivotent par en arrière. ensoleillé de printemps en me promenant 8 “This is one reason why writing Si vous entendez un Hou, hou-ou, dans le bois prés de chez moi je m’amusais à the history in a one-sided ‘everything was hou-hou, c’est le crie du grand duc, le plus chercher les oiseaux que j’entendais chanter. always happy’ way is wrong. It makes populaire de trois. Mais si jamais vous en- Un chant nouveau à ma droite me fait tourner people’s own experience incoherent to tendez le crie de la chouette rayée vous ne avec le soleil dans mon dos. Avant d’avoir them.” David Vermette, July 28, 2020. l’oublierez pas. Après ma retraite je me suis le temps de mettre mes jumelles j’ai vu un Comment on “There has been some back mise à l’étude des oiseaux mais j’ai entendu ombrage arrivé derrière moi. Me retournant and forth... " Laurie Graves, July 25, 2020, son crie avant, sans le savoir. C’était au beau lentement j’ai fait face à une shouette rayée. 5:04pm, Franco-American Connection, mileu de la nuit au lac Long de Ste-Agathe. Sans aucun bruit elle s’était perchée sur une Facebook https:1/www. facebook com/ Je me suis révaillée les cheveux droits branche sèche pas plus de cinq ou six pieds groups/francoam ericanconnection/per- sur la tête, le coeur me débattait et j’avais de moi. Je l’avais étudie dans mes guides malink/10163759164010386 Accessed le bouche séche tellement j’ai eu peur. et j’en étais ravie de lui faire face. Je l’ai November 30, 2020. Houhou-houhou, houhou-houhouâou. C’est admirée plusieurs minutes sans bouger. Le 9 Various Indigenous cultures, mostly le dernier houhouâou qui est inoubliable. moi prochaine je vais vous raconter mon in the northeast, refer to the North American continent by this name. 8 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 Tante Blanche, Marie Marguerite Thibodeau Cyr By Dan LaPierre

Tante Blanche, was born on March Tante Blanche, was a person of great 23, 1738, at Grand Pre, Kings County, Aca- strength and ability. During her life, began dia, Nova Scotia, Canada. to treat the Acadians in her villages. Was a Her Father, Jean Baptiste Thibodeau, mid-wife, fixed bones, pulled teeth, sewed was born in 1707, died 1795, at St. David, cuts, healed the sick and buried the dead. Fa- As a special honor she was buried inside Maine. Her Mother, Marie M. LeBlanc, ther Thomas Albert, in his book, says, if you the church of St. Basile, Madawaska, New born, 1710, died 1797, at St. David, at 87, didn't conform you got a fist in the forehead, Brunswick, Canada. having lived a long life. Tante Blanche, from Tante Blanche. married Joseph Cyr, before 1760, at an I don't see Joseph and Tante Blanche unknown age. She was the Mother of 12 getting a grant in Madawaska. Most prob- children, some dying young or with sick- ably moving in with her son, who had time ness. to establish a home, a few years before. The Cyr's-Sires, were forced to flee six Joseph Jr. is listed on the 1790 grant list, of times during the French-British wars. From George Sproule. At the age of 52, their age Beaubassin, N.S. To Fort Beausejour, N.S. was now against them and unable to start a Then again to St. Jean-Port-Jolie, Quebec. homestead in the virgin forest. She used her Then to Kamouraska, Quebec, back to St. trade instead to help the growing settlement. Ann de Bay, New Brunswick, and then Looking at her son's lot see many of Madawaska Settlement. her family, Father, in-laws, uncles, aunts, brother's and sisters, on both side of the St. John River. They lived more towards the north of the Green River than the south The Tante Blanche museum was named in of the Madawaska River. A distance of ap- her honor. proximately 3 miles. These lots today are Cyr Farms, Endico Potato Company, and that were to arrive. may have changed hands again. Beautiful The settlement counted all their and rich farmland that produce high quality food and supply's. It was the custom back potatoes, having been a crop insurance then. inspector there, on this farm in 1984. Tante Blanche, along with her son, Being, 58, years old during the Black Firmin, and Olivier, a brother, pulled the Famine, faced her most hardship winter. sled with provisions from house to house The men had gone out to hunt game and in the settlement, Tante Blanche carrying caught in an 8 day snowstorm. They had to a backpack and medicines, for the settlers General Monckton launched raids hunker down in make-shift lean-to's, keep who were in dire predicaments. Doing and pushed out the Acadians, once again from freezing, keep a fire going. And with miles everyday possible through snow on from St. Ann's point, clearing the way for the blow of an axe survive in the best they snowshoes. Saving the lives of the hungry arriving Loyalists. How these poor Acadians could in a hostile environment. I'm sure they and sick, discouraged at when their husbands survived is unknown, but mostly got help thought of their loved ones back in the settle- would return from their hunt, and at the point from the Maliseet who were their friends ment and how they were surviving. of despair. and provided shelter and food as they moved It is not known which month they She continued her work, until no north. ran into trouble, most probably in March or longer able to, passing at 72, and is buried At Ste-Anne de Pays Bas, 1783 a April, 1797, after the crop failure of 1796. at St. Basile, New Brunswick. Her husband, considerable number of French settlers are Starvation set in. During spring thaw, it Joseph had died 5 years before. (See page found, many having been there for over 15 was not possible to go across the river to 10 for visuals) years. Joseph Cire, wife, Tante Blanche are St. Basile, because of the danger involved, Notes, from Acadian Roots, by Dottie there, with 9 children and 30 acres cleared. with swift water and ice. Hutchings and Paul Cyr . A total of 61 families. Having no title to The oxen probably had enough hay as Papers of Prudent L. Mercure, History of Mad- awaska, History of Madawaska, Thomas Albert, their land, flee once again to Madawaska that crop was harvested during the July and The Land In Between, Beatrice Craig and Guy before 1790. Many Sire's left in 1785 to Aug season. The buckwheat crop had failed Dubay, Heroes of the Acadian Resistance, Dianne settle in Madawaska, and received a grant due to early frost. Gardening was ruined. Marshall, The Road to Canada, Gary Camp- in 1790. Those who evacuated knew of the hard times bell. 9

Things that Happen*

Le Forum MAINE MAINE (Tante Blanche, Marie Marguerite Thibodeau Cyr continued from page 9)

(Continued on page 11) 10 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (More letters from page 3) And specifically, my writing, plague the Franco-American literature. I am Lettres/ “...we are our historical self while we not a sentimental writer, nor a memoirist are in the present.” only—my focus was to free my legacy of the Letters shackles imposed on women and go beyond followed by, his assessment, the taboos of subject—as the hyper-virgins In response to Steven Riel’s “A Leg- “that the measure of our lives does testify of my “sinful” self...how dare I write acy as Plain as the Nose on My Face,” that not have to be simply a disturbing legacy what I write. I do not experience my writing appeared in Le Forum, Vol. 42, #3 and his we have received”. as accepting a disturbing legacy because my quote from my book, Wednesday’s Child: resolution is written in the final chapter of My intent with the statement, “...we victor, and certainly not victim. As Rhea Côte Robbins writes, “...we are our historical self while we are in the I can appreciate all of what Steven are our historical self while we are in the present” is not measuring my life receiving has written in his article, I agree with much present.” And I argue—no, I insist—that “simply a disturbing legacy,” but a complex of what he said, but he missed the point of the measure of our lives does not have to be measure of how we are comprised of ev- my statement of how I am of my historical simply a disturbing legacy we have received, erything that has formed us and moving in self as I am my present self—fashioning my but the positive things we fashion from it. our present and future—creating ourselves own existence—not dictated to by the past When I contemplate how hard my mother anew. and its judgements. strove to rise above the circumstances of her My premise for the book was to un- broken home, I see a life marked by nobil- derstand, as my working question for the Rhea Côté Robbins ity, not social stigma. Through her, I have book kept me focused over the course of author of witnessed what Côte Robbins describes: the five years it took me to write the book: “The legacy of women in our family. To take What does it mean to be a Franco-American Wednesday Child and brokenness and make things whole again.” woman and growing up in Waterville, Maine And through my Great Uncle Harry, I have in the South End/’down the Plains.’ My fo- ‘down the Plains’ seen men in my family do this, too. cus was to write beyond the stereotypes that

(Tante Blanche, Marie Marguerite Thibodeau Cyr continued from page 10)

11 https://uma- ine.edu/news/

Le Forum MAINE MAINE testing. With current events, I thought it (N.D.L.R. Reprinted with permission from UMaine News) would be exciting to apply my skills to help my school monitor the disease. Now, I work between all three labs this semester, where Claudia Desjardins: Hands-on lab I am involved with a variety of projects. Additionally, I presented my capstone re- experience benefits human health search on REV at the 2020 UMaine Student Symposium, and received the award for the in pandemic highest scoring undergraduate presentation in the natural sciences category. December 28, 2020 When did you start working in the University of Maine senior Claudia before we get the chance to test individuals,” Wheeler lab on efforts related to the pan- Desjardins of Bangor pursued a major in Desjardins says. “That way, we’ll know ear- demic? And can you give me a sense of your animal and veterinary sciences and a minor ly on if the university needs to take action to typical day or week this semester, balancing in mathematics to make a difference in prevent further spread on campus.” classes, work in the lab and other UMaine the lives of animals and humans through It has been exciting to generate and activities? disease research and prevention. As an un- witness this data firsthand, Desjardins says, I started working in the Wheeler lab dergraduate, she collaborated with UMaine “and incredibly fulfilling when your work this August. This semester, I took the equine researcher mentors for a study of Maine’s is making a positive impact on the rest of management class at the J.F. Witter Teach- wild turkey population and helped test ticks the community.” ing and Research Center, so some days I for pathogens, including Lyme disease. We asked Desjardins to tell us more am up at 5 a.m. to report to morning horse Ultimately, she discovered her passion about her UMaine experience: chores at 7 a.m. Afterward, I was either in for laboratory diagnostic the Wheeler Lab or testing — skills that proved the Tick Lab to begin particularly important in the my benchwork for the midst of the pandemic. day. Once I got to a For fall 2020, good stopping point, she joined UMaine’s I attended my remote COVID-19 wastewater classes, and then I was monitoring team, a part of back to work. Balanc- the UMS Scientific Adviso- ing classes between my ry Board focused on provid- three lab jobs has been ing timely health and safety a challenge, but it’s a guidance for Maine’s public good feeling to be busy universities. The wastewa- again after suddenly ter monitoring team is led losing my routine last by Robert Wheeler, UMa- spring when we went ine associate professor of remote. microbiology. In the Wheeler lab, Desjardins is in- Tell us more about your undergrad- Why UMaine for you? volved in the initial processing of wastewa- uate research experiences: I chose UMaine because the atmo- ter samples taken at UMaine, the University My first research experience began sphere was welcoming and familiar, since of Southern Maine and University of Maine with my senior capstone on reticuloen- both of my brothers graduated from here. at Fort Kent. Once the samples are purified, dotheliosis virus (REV) in Maine’s wild It was also close to home, so it was a great the wastewater monitoring team runs a turkey population. I joined professor Pauline choice for me. qPCR test that amplifies the nucleic acid of Kamath’s lab, the Wildlife Disease Genetics interest, allowing the researchers with the Lab, to take on this project. This is where How would you describe the aca- help of special software to detect how many I discovered my passion for diagnostic demic atmosphere and student experience copies of the virus are in the sample through techniques in a lab setting, especially when at UMaine? the graph generated by the software. it comes to furthering our knowledge on dis- The atmosphere here is very support- This is important in the health and ease — particularly animal diseases. I was ive and motivating. I have met so many safety needs of our community, Desjardins able to expand on my skills after accepting driven students and faculty who I look up says, because people can shed the virus a position this summer in the Tick Lab at the to. The people here are always ready to before they begin showing COVID-19 UMaine Diagnostic and Research Laborato- cheer you on. symptoms. ry, where I do molecular lab testing on ticks “Asymptomatic transmission is a huge for their associated pathogens, including What other activities, hands-on expe- concern with COVID, and by regularly the causative agent for Lyme disease. From rience or research opportunities have you screening our wastewater, we can determine there, I met professor Wheeler and joined been involved in outside of class? (Continued on page 9) if there is a significant prevalence on campus his lab to conduct the COVID wastewater (Continued on page 13) 12 https://uma- ine.edu/news/ FALL/AUTOMNE 2019

MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Claudia Desjardins: Hands-on lab Meadow. UMaine has taught me to embrace experience benefits human health in change and to have an open mind to new pandemic continued from page 12) What have you learned from working opportunities. I also learned that it’s okay with/being mentored by Dr. Wheeler, one to take your time learning about yourself. I have studied REV in Maine’s wild of UMaine’s leading researchers? When I graduated high school, it seemed turkey population for my capstone, and I I learned so much from Dr. Wheeler, like everyone expected me to have the rest have also been involved with research on such as data analysis with qPCR and how of my life planned out, but that certainly ticks in Maine and the prevalence of their to use the Bio-Rad software. I have also wasn’t the case. I didn’t enjoy the major I associated pathogens. I had the opportunity learned from his example about what it takes was in, so after my first year I switched into to co-author a manuscript on deer ticks in to be a great leader. Not only is he a highly AVS where all these opportunities started Maine for the Vector-Borne and Zoonotic knowledgeable researcher, but he also truly popping up. Over the course of four years, Diseases journal. Aside from that, I have cares about the progress and success of every I got experience in leadership, event orga- been an active member of the German Club student that steps foot into his lab. nizing, farming, animal care, lab benchwork since my freshman year, giving me leader- and so much more. ship opportunities as the president. As an Describe UMaine in one word: AVS major, I have been involved with the Inspiring What are your plans when you chores and animal care at the Witter Center, graduate? Where are you headed in your where I had the opportunity to work with Explain: career? the sheep, horses and cows for my hands-on At UMaine, there is a contagious I finished my coursework in Decem- classes. When I was involved in the dairy “go-getter” attitude from my peers, advisers, ber and am being hired full time to continue barn, my days would start as early as 2:45 and professors. I have met so many people and enhance the wastewater testing initia- a.m. for milking, followed by a full day of that have inspired me to do better. The mo- tive. I hope that in my career I can continue regular classes. One of the most rewarding tivation from them helped me discover my to make a difference in the lives of animals experiences I had was assisting with the passion for research and disease prevention and humans through disease research and lambing season in spring 2019 through the in both humans and animals. prevention. Ewe-Maine Icelandics Sheep Club, where I welcomed my ewe’s twins into the world What difference has UMaine made Contact: — a ram named Shadow and a ewe named in your life? [email protected]

And there was one group in particular When Fake News About a Maine the guards were intended to police: “The authorities sent large quantities Epidemic Went Viral of anti-toxine [sic] and disinfectants to the place, and ordered the strictest quarantine January 31, 2021 Acadians, Fort Kent, Health, Journalism, Maine regulations to be enforced, but the French Canadians among whom the disease has By James Myall been making the principle ravages, are not to be restrained. They are by nature restless, On October 17 1897, the San Francis- from the east coast press. The article is date- and have been wholly beyond the control of co Call published a sensational story about lined Boston. And indeed the history of the the physicians and the Board of Health. Not the northern Maine town of Fort Kent, some diphtheria outbreak in Fort Kent, and how only have communities wholly disregarded 3,500 miles distant: it was covered in the media can be traced in house quarantine, but people from the in- the Boston newspapers. fected sections have travelled up and down the river, spreading the disease.” “Two hundred and fifty cases of On Oct 15, both the Boston Journal diphtheria and twenty five deaths are the and Boston Herald ran articles which were appalling record up to the latest reports almost identical to that which appeared in Both Boston papers included this from Fort Kent…the disease has grown the Call 2 days later. However, the most slight against the area’s Acadians, as did beyond control, and the strictest measures sensational claim which appeared in the Call the Call. have become necessary. An armed cordon – the cordon of armed guards – appeared Critically, however, this wasn’t the of guards has been ordered.” differently in the Boston press. The Journal only article on the subject to appear in the made no mention of the guards, while the Boston press. Just two days later, on Oc- It’s easy to see why the Call included Herald said only that such measures were tober 17, the Herald printed an important the story, with its talk of disease run amok, being considered: clarification: quarantine enforced at gunpoint, and some cultural stereotypes for good measure. Un- “The doctors say that unless the state “Diphtheria at Fort Kent: Reports fortunately, the story doesn’t appear to have will provide a strong force of guards, the res- Somewhat Exaggerated but Still the Situa- much basis in fact. idents along the St John River will continue tion is Very Serious.” to move about at pleasure.” The Call probably reprinted the story (Continued on page 14) 13 Le Forum MAINE MAINE (When Fake News About a Maine Epidemic did not single out the Acadians for blame as once the anti toxins were administered, only Went Viral continued from page 13) the newspapers had initially done. In fact, one of the remaining 75 cases ended with Johnson praised the local Catholic clergy a death. Additionally, new local boards of More headlines over the following for helped him spread public health advice health were organized in New Canada, Wal- days walked the initial story back still fur- to the general population. At Fort Kent, the lagrass, and Frenchville, with local residents ther. On October 19, small notice appeared parish priest, F X Burque (Bourque?) lent his instructed on the importance of disinfection under the heading “Nothing Serious Feared.” assistance to Dr Johnson, as did the town’s and quarantine methods as well as ways to And on October 22, a full week after the first health officer, Dr F G Sirois who has until indenting and treat many other diseases. resorts were published, the Herald reported then been unsuccessfully trying to contain It’s not clear why the initial press that “The outlook for controlling the disease the epidemic almost single-handed. Anoth- accounts of the outbreak were so fantastical. is now believed to be more favorable.” Ac- er Acadian, Doctor J F Archambault, was Perhaps it was a case of misun- cording to the Herald, just derstanding as the news one person had, in fact, spread. Or perhaps a pub- been arrested. lisher just decided to add Official accounts his own embellishments. also show how much the Certainly there was a tra- first reports in the press dition of associating immi- were overblown. The grants with public health Maine State Board of scares, as I wrote in the Health included a detailed case of smallpox in Maine account of the outbreak in 1887. Public leaders and its mitigation in the have acted similarly today, board’s 1898 annual re- trying to brand Coronavi- port. The board’s account rus the “Chinese Virus” is much more straightfor- But while we are ward. Doctor Wellington able to reconstruct a more Johnson, who oversaw the accurate version of the state response, wrote that events in Fort Kent in while local health officials View of Fort Kent, ca 1900. 1897, it’s far less likely had had trouble containing Image: Maine Historical Society/Maine Memory Network contemporary readers in the diphtheria initiallyit California had the same was brought under control quickly. Johnson called in to assist. ability. Instead, they were left with a distort- confirmed that one person was arrested for Ultimately, the outbreak was brought ed view of events that reinforced existing refusing to quarantine; but made no mention under control by Johnson, Sirois, and Ar- prejudices. of an armed cordon. chambault within a couple of weeks. John- With thanks to Steve Collins for bring- And while Johnson did mention that son credited several measures. The doctors ing the original Call article to my attention the disease was “being carried from place were armed with anti-toxins which were on Twitter (some nine months ago!) to place by those who were not disposed to remarkably successful. Of the first 75 cases obey quarantine laws and regulations,” he in the area, 25 had resulted in death. But

centennial celebrations. The Revolutionary War Veteran Who Washburn, though born in Livermore, operated a law practice in Orono for sever- Eked Out a Living as a Poor Squatter al years. He said he had been at the 1838 November 12, 2019Home, Maine, Orono, Quebec, Revolutionary War election, which was “the last time [he] saw Antoine” before the latter’s death in 1839. By James Myall However, Washburn would go on to help Antoine’s widow Sarah in her pursuit of a A murmur ran through the assem- known by his first name alone. And on this pension after Antoine’s death. bled crowd as the news spread. Antoine September day in 1838, he was coming to Antoine did in fact have a surname, (or “Antwine” as some pronounced the cast his vote in the election for Congress at LaChance (though it was sometime spelled name) was making an appearance! A later Great Works (now the town of Bradley). By Lyshon). He and his wife had many children, account described him as “Very infirm, and mutual consent, it was decided that “instead some of whom took Antwine as a last name, in his primitive style of dress and sugar of Antoine’s going to the ballot box, the while others took Lyshon. As the name loaf cap, made an exceedingly grotesque ballot box should come to him.” suggests, LaChance was a French Canadian. appearance.” Such was Antoine’s reputation as a He was one of the first residents of what The 88 year-old man who lived in local character that this story was recounted became the town of Orono, having arrived Orono at the edge of town was something of by Israel Washburn, the former governor there around 1785(?). He was a veteran of a local celebrity, so much that he was mostly of Maine, in 1874, for the town of Orono’s (Continued on page 15) 14 FALL/AUTOMNE 2019

MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (The Revolutionary War Veteran Who Eked Arnold’s invading forces wrote about his es- Colonel Moses Hazen was command- Out a Living as a Poor Squatter continued cape in the spring of 1776 in his journal, and er of the Second Canadian Regiment and from page 14) recalls being aided by sympathetic French another veteran of the Arnold Expedition. He the Revolutionary War, one of thousands Canadians on several occasions. was relentless in his advocacy for a renewed (?) of French Canadians who joined the According to LaChance, his next ser- effort to invade Canada (which never came American cause. vice in the army was six weeks beginning to pass), and the push in 1778 was just one A lot of what we know about LaChance in January 1778 serving with a “Captain of these efforts. Almost nothing appears to comes from his own account of his military Page” as a pilot in a scouting party to the have been written about the scouting party service, when he wrote to the federal gov- Chaudière River in eastern Quebec. This is from the upper Kennebec to the Chaudière ernment for a pension. In an 1833 affidavit, probably the same scouting party mentioned in the winter of 1778, but if its purpose was LaChance said that he was born “at Quebec” by Major-General William Heath to George to create a diversion, it may have succeeded. (a phrasing that implies he was born in or Washington in a letter dated 7-10 February, The loyalist Governor of Quebec ordered the near Quebec City, rather than simply within 1778: posting of soldiers to the Chaudière later that the province of Quebec) in 1751. He volun- year, as well as the construction of a fortified teered to serve with the Continentals during block house. the US invasion of Quebec in 1775. After the time with Captain Page, He joined the forces of Colonel James there’s a gap in LaChance’s history until Livingston, a New Yorker living near Mon- June 1779, when he that he served as a ma- treal who joined the patriot cause and raised rine on board a privateer, the Monmouth, a band of volunteers for what became known under Captain George Ross at Castine, as Livingston’s Brigade, or the 1st Canadian Maine, for three months. LaChance joined Regiment in the Continental Army. When the Monmouth just in time to take was part LaChance joined the Continentals in De- in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition, cember, they were preparing to lay siege to which saw the patriot forces fail to recapture Quebec City, having routed the forces of the Castine from the British. The expedition was loyalists at Montreal in November. such a debacle that Paul Revere, one of the The patriot forces, who numbered commanders, was subject to a court-martial only a few hundred (with no artillery) failed on his return to Boston. The Monmouth and to take the fortified and well-defended city. other ships in the expedition were beached In the spring, reinforcements arrived from and burned on the shores of the Penobscot Britain and the patriots were forced to near the present town of Brewer. abandon the siege. LaChance said he served After this episode, there’s another un- six months with Livingston, before he was explained gap in LaChance’s service record captured, which well have been at the battle until 1781, when he says he served three of Trois Rivières, in June 1776, where the months under Major-General Philip Ulmer remains of the patriot forces were defeated (a commander in the Massachusetts militia) and forced to retreat to Fort Ticonderoga in Anonymous sketch of a Canadien couple, c in the defense of Camden. In this capacity, New York. The British would follow them, 1750-80. City of Montreal Archives. The man he served with William Coburn, who would and capture Ticonderoga in June 1777. is wearing a “capotian” or “sugar-loaf hat” go on to be one of LaChance’s neighbors But our protagonist was not in cap- popular in the 18th century. in Orono. Coburn testified to their shared tivity for long. He reported having escaped service together in support of LaChance’s “soon after” (?) though frustratingly he did “Colonel Hazen was here a few days application for a pension. It’s possible that not say how, and he managed to rejoin the since to obtain several Articles requisite for when the war ended, Coburn and LaChance Continental forces. Even though the Con- the Troops intended to make the Irruption came to Orono together. tinental Army had retreated from Canada, into the upper District of Canada. He re- From Washburn’s recollections, we there were still Canadians sympathetic to quested that a small Scout of Ten or Twelve get a few details of LaChance’s life in Or- the patriot cause operating in the province, men might be sent from the upper Settle- ono. He seems to have lived somewhat on including some like Clément Gosselin, ments on Kenebeck river to the French Set- the margins of the community. Washburn who were official agents of the Continental tlements on Chaudier to spread a report of a described him as a squatter, living on land Congress. large body of Troops coming that way. I have he didn’t own on the edge of town (the Again, LaChance offered no details adopted the proposal and have ordered a site is now part of the University of Maine of his escape or return to Continental lines, party to proceed accordingly. I have directed campus). According to Washburn, he “did but he could well have made his way out them to proceed with all proper precaution, a little at farming, more at shingle-weaving, of Canada via the Chaudière and Kennebec to report that they are sent forward to mark and still more, perhaps, at fishing, living Rivers across the highlands and into Maine. a road, and that a large Body of Troops are hand-to-mouth, but yet always managing This was the reverse of the grueling route to follow, they are to enquire if provisions to get enough.” taken by Benedict Arnold’s forces in 1775 , can be purchased for the Army, at what rate Washburn relates a couple of anec- and at least one other patriot prisoner, Simon &c. and indeed to hold up every colouring of dotes which poke fun at the French Cana- Forbes, escaped British custody along the deception, and to make a precipitate return, same route. Forbes, who had been part of this may perhaps divert their force.” (Continued on page 16) 15 Le Forum MAINE MAINE (The Revolutionary War Veteran Who Eked company May 17, 1777, which could repre- it seems that she did not immediately apply Out a Living as a Poor Squatter continued sent Antoine’s return from British captivity, for it. Perhaps she was unaware of that pro- from page 15) and is recorded as “on command” in Decem- vision of the law. She certainly needed the dian’s manner of speech and temperament. ber 1777, which could reflect his assignment financial assistance. Her application, made He was accused of being “prejudiced against ahead of the scouting party to the Chaudière. in 1843, was accompanied by a letter from paying debts,” and the anecdotes center on Much of this, however, is speculation. Nathaniel Wilson, on behalf of the Over- Antoine’s taking advantage of the charity LaChance was eventually awarded seers of the Poor of Orono, stating that “Mr of a benefactor. Add to this the description a pension, under the Congressional Act of Lachance died some 4 or 5 years since and of his appearance, above, and we get a 1832, with a pension of $60 a year from left his widow very poor & she has since picture of someone slightly misfit and out 1834. By this time he was eighty years old been supported by this Town.” The letter of place. LaChance was illiterate and at and his service had ended a half century went on to say that a pension would “truly first only spoke French – neither of which earlier. When Antoine died in 1839, his oblige a respectable & poor woman” would have been unusual The pension was re- for a French Canadian of his stored but only after years time. He signed his pension of wrangling. A letter dated application with an “x,” and December 9, 1845 from the noted that his lack of mastery director of the Pensions Office of English might have meant stated that the federal authori- he misremembered the precise ties needed more evidence of names of his commanders in Antoine’s service before they the war. could grant the widow’s pen- Nor did his service to sion (despite having approved his adopted country help his the original pension twelve situation significantly. His years previously). She was pension application files show initially awarded a pension that he had trouble proving based on 7 months and 15 days his service. He said he had of service, which amounted to received a discharge certif- $34.97 per year, far less than icate but lost it. Correspon- Antoine’s original award. Af- dence with the Massachusetts ter more correspondence, this Secretary of State shows that Street fight during the Battle of Quebec, 1775. Modern interpretation by was increased to the full $60 they held no records of crew CW Jeffries. Image: Wikimedia Commons by 1849, a full decade after or marines on the Monmouth, Antoine’s death. and that they couldn’t find his name in widow Sarah also had to fight to have his In a final indignity, Sarah’s application connection with Colonel Livingston, Major service recognized and to receive a widow’s for a land grant in 1855, based on Antoine’s Ulmer or Captain Page. pension. service, was also denied, despite the fact I fared no better when I went looking Although Sarah was entitled to An- that she already had the pension, and the for documentary evidence beyond the pen- toine’s pension as the widow of a veteran, land grant required just 14 days of service. sion application, even with For someone who the advantages of digitized became a local legend, records at my disposal. No there are significant holes records survive for Living- in what we know about ston’s battalion before the Antoine LaChance. Where end of 1776, once the reg- exactly he was born* and iment was at Ticonderoga. who his family were re- LaChance said he served mains a mystery, as do any in the company of Captain details of his early life in Abraham Livingston (the Quebec. What motivated Colonel’s younger broth- him to join the Revolu- er), and in the muster rolls tionary cause? Why did of this company for late he finally settle in Oro- 1777, there are two entries no? Nonetheless, that one entry for a private we know anything about “Anthony Shoage”, which him at all is unusual for a could perhaps represent an Franco-American of this Anglophones rendering of era. The information we Antoine LaChance. “An- Destruction of the American Fleet at Penobscot Bay, 14 August do have paints a picture of thony Shoage” is recorded 1779. Dominic Serres. Image: National Maritime Museum a man with a long life that as having enlisted in the (UK)/Wikimedia Commons (Continued on page 17) 16 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 Soeurs religieuses : French-Canadian Health Care in New France and Maine January 29, 2021 Franco-American News and CultureCOVID19, Hôtel-Dieu, Lewiston, Montreal, Quebec, Sisters of Charity

By Juliana L'Heureux During the COVID19 pandemic, of Charity from Hyacinthe Canada, met the was emerging as one of the state’s leading nurses are recognized as being more es- urgent need to care for the city’s thousands manufacturing centers. The shoe and textile sential than ever. They are the front line of French-Canadian immigrants and their industries were flourishing. The migration of professional caregivers. Often, nurses stay children. This religious order is also known the French Canadians, mostly from Quebec with the patients who are hospitalized when affectionately as the “Grey Nuns”, or “les Province was huge, at times reaching to family members are unable to be with their soeurs grises”, founded by Saint Marie-Mar- 100 to 150, arriving each day at the Grand loved ones because of the infectious virus. guerite d’Youville. Trunk Railroad Station on Lincoln Street, in Nursing’s long history of caring is Lewiston. The population had increased to rooted with care provided by religious 35,000, but there was no hospital. women that served communities from their This changed in June 1888, when the convents or “ hospices”, meaning inpatient Sisters of Charity of St. Hyacinthe purchased institutions. a house on Sabattus Street, in Lewiston, In French, these hospices were called along with 36 acres of land, all owned by Hôtel-Dieu. Sarah J. Golder. The Golder house became a Justifiably, the nursing profession in 30-bed hospital with an addition that lodged America is honored to be recognized in the the sisters and 40 orphans. This hospital, annual Gallup Poll as continuing to rate the first in Lewiston/Auburn and the first highest for honesty and ethics. Catholic hospital in Maine, became known There is certainly precedent for this variously as the Sister’s Hospital, the French distinguished public opinion honor, de- Hospital, or the Catholic Hospital. scribed and documented in, “Along A River: As a matter of fact, the sisters were The First French Canadian Women”, by Jan experienced with organizing hospitals. They Noel. The practice of “soeurs religieuses” helped to found the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, (religious nuns) to provide care for the sick the first hospital established in that city. is rooted in the founding of New France. Hôtel-Dieu, literally translated in Moreover, the culture of caring transcended English as Hotel of God, is an old French into New England, when French-Canadian term for “hospital”, referring to the origins religious orders established hospitals and Grey Nuns St. Mary’s Regional Medical of hospitals as religious institutions. nursing schools. St. Mary’s Hospital – now, Center sculpture St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, in Lew- Nursing and French-Canadian history In the city of Quebec, Hôtel-Dieu iston, is one example whereby the Sisters Beginning in 1888, Lewiston/Auburn (Continued on page 18)

(The Revolutionary War Veteran Who Eked Out a Living as a Poor Squatter continued from page 16) included service to his adopted country, but who also found himself marginalized and “Shoage, Anthony” detail from muster roll for Captain Livingston’s Company, Colonel overlooked. Livingston’s (1st Canadian) Regiment, December 12, 1777. Image via Ancestry.com tion at the University of Southern Maine. In * A number of online family trees link 2015, I co-authored "The Franco-Americans the Antoine LaChance of this story to an of Lewiston-Auburn," a general history of Antoine Pepin dit LaChance who is listed that population from 1850 to the present. I in a British report of French Canadians who was also a consultant for the State Legis- joined the revolutionary cause. This Antoine lative Task Force on Franco-Americans in was living at Saint-François de la Rivière 2012. I live in Topsham with my wife and du Sud in 1775. However, he cannot be the two young daughters. Antoine LaChance who came to Orono, because other records show he stayed in St James Myall François and fathered children there during While I currently work for an Augus- https://myall.bdn- the time we know our Antoine was living ta-based non-profit, I spent four years as the blogs.com/2020/01/ in Orono. Coordinator of the Franco-American Collec- 17 Le Forum MAINE MAINE (Soeurs religieuses : French-Canadian (1701-1771). The hospital began caring for Both Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec and Mon- Health Care in New France and Maine patients in 1740, and was a larger establish- treal’s Hospital General owed their success continued from page 17) ment than Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec, with about to the ability the sisters had to energize the was officially founded in 1637, to meet the 80 beds and included social services, as well community and attract support from dedi- colony’s need for healthcare, by Marie-Mad- as patient care. This hospital had the repu- cated directors. eleine de Vignerot, the Duchesse d’Aiguillon tation of having an “open door” and nursed Noel’s research about The First (1604-1675), who was a niece of Cardinal indigents as well as women who were ex- French-Canadian Women, documents, with Richelieu. She entrusted the task to the footnotes, much more interesting informa- Canonesses of St. Augustine of the Mercy tion about the amazing group of brave, of Jesus, commonly referred as Hospitaller talented, and caring women who helped to Sisters, a religious order knowns for their settle New France, and developed health vocation as nurses. care and education, for the people. These in- Three young nuns left their monastery stitutions are still operating in various forms in Dieppe, France, on the coast of the En- today. In fact, in Quebec, the religious order glish Channel, and arrived in New France continues to be involved in the Hôtel-Dieu on 1 August 1639, with the goal of opening organization. the hospital. Mothers Marie de Saint-Ignace This history for providing health Guenet, Marie de Saint-Bonaventure For- care transcended into the development of estier and Anne de Saint-Bernard Le Cointre hospitals and social programs provided by were the nuns who led this mission. the religious orders in New England. The Although pro-bono support was pro- nuns were exceptional role models for thou- vided for the patients in the hospitals, the sands of nursing students who learned to be fact was, physicians were scarce. Therefore, Registered Nurses in the excellent schools nuns carried on day-to-day duties, including affiliated with religious hospitals, in Maine those of apothecaries, ward supervisors and New England. and hospital administrators. The sisters un- Like the nurses that rightfully have derstood their roles as healers and learned Along a River- The First French-Canadian received high ratings in the Gallop Polls, the their skills well. Some of them considered Women, by Jan Noel French-Canadian religions were an excep- themselves to be nurse practitioners (as per tional group of dedicated religious women information documented in the Hôtel-Dieu periencing difficulties or trouble. There was who inspired others, with their devotion for museum archives). also a home care service where the sisters helping others. Nurses, like me, are in awe Montreal’s Hospital General was run cared for victims of Typhus in their homes. of their many accomplishments. by the “Grey Nuns” a religious order found- Catholics and Protestants were cared ed by Saint Marie-Marguerite d’Youville for by the Grey Nuns. Louis Frances Soxalexis (b. 1871, Penobscot Reservation, ME– d. 1913 in Franco-Americans paved a path Burlington ME), a member of the Penobscot Indian tribe of Maine, nicknamed The Deer- for integrated baseball foot of the Diamond, played professional February 5, 2021 Franco-American News and CultureMike Cherry, Nashua baseball in the National League for three Dodgers seasons, spending his entire career (1897- 1899) as an outfielder for the Cleveland By Juliana L'Heureux Spiders. His lifetime batting average was Franco-Americans have experienced way to integration in American baseball- .313. (Reported by David Fleitz) the damaging stigma caused by ethnic reported by Mike Cherry for WMUR9 in Nap Lajoie (b.1874 in Woonsocket, racism, as reported in a blog published Nashua, NH R.I- d. 1959 in Daytona Beach Fl). He was several weeks ago. Many transcended this the first superstar in American League his- experience by excelling in sports. In fact, Franco-American baseball players tory. Napoleon Lajoie (typically pronounced a report about the Nashua Dodgers (New helped to pave the way. Three examples: LAJ-way, though Nap himself is supposed Hampshire) baseball team described how to have preferred the French pronunciation, Franco-American sports heroes may have Freddy Parent (b. 1875 in Biddeford, Lah-ZHWA) was born on September 5, contributed to an acceptance for integrated ME – d. 1972 in Sanford ME) Shortstop 1874, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, the baseball rosters. Freddy Parent, the “Flying Frenchman,” youngest of eight surviving children of Jean “Nashua itself was unique,” his- led the Boston Americans with Most Valu- Baptiste and Celina Guertin Lajoie. The torian Hannings said. “Because of the able Player (MVP)-type seasons to the first Lajoie clan traced its origins to Auxerres, Franco-American influence, they were a modern World Series championship in 1903, France, though Jean Baptiste was born in lot more tolerant than any other location in and the American League pennant in 1904. Canada, and emigrated with his family to the country.” Lifetime batting average .262. (Reported by the United States in 1866, initially settling In fact, the Nashua Dodgers led the Dan Desrochers) (Continued on page 19) 18 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Franco-Americans paved a path for bers hang on the stadium that provided a Inducted into the Maine Baseball integrated baseball continued from page 18) gateway of integration into American pro- Hall of Fame in Rutland, Vermont before moving to fessional sports. Woonsocket. Lifetime batting average .338. “They could’ve been the greatest ball- (Reported by David Jones) players you’ve ever seen, but if they weren’t The first integrated roster in sports: accepting of the situation that they were in The Nashua Dodgers was a farm club of the and they weren’t treated as well by not only Brooklyn Dodgers, operating in the class-B the organization but the people who came to New England League between 1946 and games, I think we would have had a much 1949. It is believed to be the first profession- different story,” Daly said. al baseball team based in the United States in the twentieth century to play with a racially integrated roster. NASHUA, N.H. — When the Nashua Dodgers won their first New England Cham- pionship 75 years ago, they did so with the first integrated roster in American baseball. The 1940s were a transformative time Walter L’Heureux for American baseball. The great players of the Negro leagues had no path to the major leagues until Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey paved the way, signing Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe to minor league contracts. “All three of them, they tried to pack- age them to bring them into a league, and certain leagues, like Illinois, threatened to close the entire league down if they sent three players of color,” reports Negro Base- ball League historian Rob Hannings. In the St. Ignatius Cemetery in Sanford Robinson went to Montreal, where headstone for baseball player Freddy Black athletes faced less discrimination at Parent and his wife Fidelia. L’Heureux the time. Rickey then looked for similar sur- photograph. roundings for Campanella and Newcombe “Nashua itself was unique,” Hannings said. “Sports and Franco-Americans in “Because of the Franco-American influence, Woonsocket, Rhode Island 1870-1930”, Henry L’Heureux they were a lot more tolerant than any other is an essay written by Richard S. Sorrell. location in the country.” “There is little doubt that those of French Ca- “Their talent spoke for themselves,” nadian descent in the major leagues suffered sportswriter Steve Daly said. “They prob- from (discrimination), particularly because ably shouldn’t have been at this level of they were frequently put in the category of baseball. They were so much more talented other southern and eastern Europeans and than their teammates.” they were consequently seen as culturally Campanella and Newcombe ascended inferior to those who arrived earlier….”, as two of the top players in the league, quick- wrote Sorrell. In fact, the Franco-Americans ly earning the respect of their teammates clearly aspired to rise above this stigma and and coaches. sports provided many with this opportunity. “The manager of the Lynn Red Sox, Walter L’Heureux and Henry L’Heureux are a guy named Pip Kennedy, ran into Buzzie brothers and my husband’s first cousins who Bavasi after the game and said, ‘You guys achieved recognition through their excel- wouldn’t have beaten us if it wasn’t for lence in sports. They are both included in About Juliana those’ — and then dropped the N-word. And the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame. Juliana L’Heureux is a free lance writ- Bavasi just freaked out, and they had to be er who publishes news, blogs and articles separated,” Daly said. Merci to Mike Cherry for permission about Franco-Americans and the French The Nashua Dodgers won the title to quote and reference this article. https:// culture. She has written about the culture in in 1946. Newcombe, who led the team to twitter.com/MikeCherryWMUR weekly and bi-weekly articles, for the past another championship in 1947, has a plaque 27 years. outside Holman Stadium, in Nashua. https://francoamerican.bangordai- Newcombe’s and Campanella’s num- lynews.com/author/jlheureux/ 19 Le Forum MAINE MAINE

Matthew Pelletier

Photo courtesy of Maine Memory Network “I come from a small city in Maine, called Lewiston. If you were to drive off the interstate exit, through the suburbs, into downtown, and stop at the corner of Pine and Lisbon Streets, you would see City hall, the library, a colorful mural, trees lining the wide sidewalks, and just down Pine Street, you see a tower made of brick. Under it are four stories of shiny new glass windows. If you walk even closer and stop over the canal this building stretches for two long blocks, towering over you like a fortress. Let’s say we had the power to turn back time 500 years. No more buildings, no more canals. All it is is a forest. Most of these buildings have only been here for a hundred years, maybe a couple hundred in some places. You put that into the perspective of cities in Europe, some have been standing since the medieval age. The thing about cities is that they are not just buildings and murals and streets. Cities are the people that live there. The history that brought it to where it is, and the tiny minuscule decisions of some people that end up entirely changing other people's lives down the road. There is a story behind these places. It has themes that are still so relevant to this day. I call these Mill Cities. Think of Lowell, Lawrence, and many others in Massachusetts, or Manchester, in New Hampshire, Woonsocket in Rhode Island, and Lewiston, Waterville, Biddeford, Brunswick, in Maine. These all share astoundingly similar stories. If there was only a way to capture the feel- ings, struggles, and lives of all these people. Maybe there is. Maybe, as long as it’s a fictional place in a fictional story, these lives can be captured and their stories retold.”

That’s the first paragraph spoken in the first episode of a YouTube series I’ve been working on. This is a ten-part video series on the evolution of a fictional New England Mill City using real history. The form is like a history podcast (inspired by Dan Carlin’s Hard- core History) mixed with scenes from the city-building game, Cities: Skylines. The fictional area consists of an old farming town named Stamford, the mill city named Dawson, and the neighboring twin-city of Wight. All in the fictional Amasek Valley. Each episode is an era in history, spanning nearly 500 years:

Era/Episode 1: English and French colonialism in North America (1530 - 1710) Era 2: English colonial settlement of the Amasek Valley (1710 - 1800) Era 3: Early industrialization and Irish immigrants (1800 - 1850) Era 4: Mass industrialization (1850 - 1861) Era 5: Immigration of French-Canadians (1861 - 1880) Era 6: Continued immigration and golden age (1880 - 1918) Era 7: Mill decline and xenophobia (1918 - 1948) Era 8: Continued decline, suburbanization, and urban renewal (1949 - 1985) Era 9: Economic rock-bottom and a new wave of immigration (1985 - 2005) Era 10: Revitalization and gentrification (2005 - present)

YouTube channel: UnnamedNarrative Twitter and Instagram handle: @unnamedwithmatt 20 MAINE MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 Three Brothers, One MBA Program January 22, 2021 Alumni Profiles, MaineMBA, News, Student Profiles Billy, Jonathan, and Daniel Roy grew skill sets required in an organization. My up in Frenchville, Maine. They all earned strengthened understanding of the different their bachelor’s degrees at the University business-oriented skill sets has helped me of Maine and are now all enrolled in the better communicate with coworkers across MaineMBA program. “Honestly, the three departments. of us never planned to work on our MBA’s simultaneously,” Billy says. Jon, who works Why did you decide to earn your at the University of Maine Advanced Struc- MBA at UMaine? The Roy brothers from left: Jon, Billy, and tures and Composites Center as a research Billy: This was a no-brainer for me. Dan engineer and project manager, was the first My brothers and I are Black Bears through to begin the program. Dan and Billy joined and through. We take pride in what we ly work for. They care about their people and him last summer. learned and the relationships we built at our treat us with respect. I hope to someday step While the brothers are naturally com- alma mater. We believe in what UMaine has into an executive role here. If and when that petitive with each other, they’ve gone their to offer and have profited from rewarding day comes, I expect I will be fully prepared own way professionally and geographically. careers that would not have been possible to handle the role’s responsibilities due to Read on to learn more about the journey without our education and networking at my experience and education. they’re taking at the Graduate School of UMaine. I could not see myself pursuing an Business. MBA at any other institution. What has been your favorite class in Dan: Sales Manager for Valvoline, Jon: I work for the University, and the MaineMBA program? LLC. He lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. one of the perks of that is free tuition for Jon: I have really enjoyed many of the Jon: Research Engineer and Research continued education. courses I’ve taken, but one of my favorite Project Manager at UMaine’s ASCC. He Dan: I always found the University classes was Management of Contemporary lives in Bangor, Maine. of Maine promoted a very open, warm, Organizations with Dr. Muralee Das. It’s Billy: Construction Project Manager and inviting culture leading to the creation the course that convinced me to pursue the for Knowles Industrial Services. He lives in of lasting relationships. My friends from MBA. The content was so practical, relat- Windham, Maine. undergrad have remained some of my best able, and insightful. I have a good amount of friends to this day. I found the education to management experience from being a Drill What do you think is the benefit of be top-notch yet affordable. The value is Sergeant in the Army and my role with the an MBA degree? incredible! I am convinced that top students UMaine Advanced Structures and Compos- Dan: Data analytics has been an from the University of Maine can compete ites Center. Just about everything the course interest to me for the last couple of years. with students from anywhere in the world. covered resonated with me. Another favorite Last year, we asked a company analyst to class was Financial Management with Dr. create a commission report for our team How has the MaineMBA program Pankaj Agrrawal. I didn’t think I could learn that would give us insight into the key per- helped you in your current professional so much about an unfamiliar field in such a formance metrics of contracts we executed role? short amount of time. Dr. Agrrawal is a bril- with customers. The analyst did a good job, Jon: The MBA has been a great and liant professor, and I enjoyed the literature but my boss and I felt that he wasn’t quite effective tool in strengthening my effec- covered during the course. getting what we were looking for because tiveness and efficiency as a manager. I have he wasn’t aware of our day-to-day activities. been very fortunate to directly apply almost What is the benefit of earning your I decided that I wanted to provide value to all aspects of what I have learned to my MBA alongside your brothers? our team and organization above my daily current job in project management, budget- Billy: We’re very close to each other. responsibilities. Our Senior Vice President ing, operations and personnel management, Family is very important to us. It’s a good offered to have the company pay for my marketing, customer relations, and more. feeling to work towards the same goal with MBA, and I was thrilled with the idea. two other people that I respect and look up Jon: My goal is to pursue execu- What is your goal upon completion to in life. tive-level leadership roles in the future. I of your MBA degree? Dan: Jon was very encouraging and found that an MBA is one of the best tools Billy: I plan to use this degree to help helped explain what Billy and I should to prepare for those types of management my company into the future. Some senior ex- expect from our courses and how to best roles. An MBA gives you the knowledge ecutives within Knowles Industrial Services balance it with our careers. All three of us you need to see the big picture and develop are beginning to prepare their exit strategy, have very demanding jobs, which we are the core competencies required for effective and financial management of the company is incredibly passionate about, so it can be business management. It helps you develop something we need to prepare for. I believe challenging to figure out how to best prior- the foresight to predict risk and make sound completing my MBA will help with this itize time. Having my brothers alongside me and informed decisions. I also feel like it company’s successful future progress, and I in the MaineMBA program gives me confi- has been a powerful tool for me in building intend to be a significant part of that process. dence. I’m very proud to have two intelligent empathy towards the different professional Dan: I love the organization I current- and ambitious older brothers to look up to. 21

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2020-11-19 PL Borderlands, Franco-Americans, French Language, Lake Cham- plain, Mallet, Major Edmond, Roman Catholic Church, Saint-Jean-Baptiste, St. Albans, Vermont, Survivance Six years after the invasion of St. The convention did not make much of Albans by Confederate agents, a different a splash in the Quebec press. The on-going spectacle played out in the town center, war between France and Prussia was of far though this one, too, was the doing of people greater interest to editors and readers. But who had descended from Canada: the St. Albans gathering did reverberate in a noticeable way in the pages of La Minerve, At 11 o’clock in the forenoon in Quebec City. the Convention formed in procession, In September 1870, La Minerve print- under escort of the St. John Baptist ed convention reports from an unnamed Society of this place, and, led by the correspondent, their likeliest author being St. Albans Brigade Band, marched Charles Thibault. This person denounced the through the principal streets, bearing presence of Arthur Buies in St. Albans. The the colors of the United States and editor of the irreverent, liberal, and occasion- of France, besides the flags of their ally anticlerical Lanterne, Buies attended the organization… convention simply from personal interest. In The day was August 30, 1870, and the press, he and the Minerve correspondent Charles Moussette received this procession would disagree on whether he was invited to at St. Albans’s Academy Hall. Thus opened speak at the August 31 banquet, which said the annual convention of French Canadians something of the religious and political dis- in the United States.[1] course that was or could be held in nascent Though more modest than subsequent Franco-American organizations. conventions, this was no small affair. It drew At the request of New York delegates, St. Albans Weekly Messenger, September 2, 1870 delegates from communities as far apart as Buies served as the recording clerk for an Detroit, Michigan, and Biddeford, Maine. afternoon session. When he returned later St. Albans’s time as a centre de ray- From Quebec came Charles Thibault, who that day for the banquet, pastor Zéphirin onnement of French-Canadian culture in the was beginning to make a name for himself Druon—from a makeshift pulpit, apparently United States came to a close in the years as a Conservative activist and public speak- as master of ceremonies—prevented him following the convention. Almost exactly er—he was then already an exponent of the from addressing the delegates. First, Druon a year after that event, fire destroyed the providential mission of French-Canadian called Edouard Lacroix of Detroit when offices of Le Protecteur canadien. Antoine emigrants. Also present was Michel-Adrien some in the audience asked the Lanterne Moussette had already sold his share in the Bessette, member of the provincial assembly editor to speak. Then, Druon went a step paper to become a backer of Ferdinand Gag- for the riding of Shefford, who had married further and announced to the members non’s first journalistic effort in Worcester, many years earlier in nearby Highgate, that this was the man behind the scurrilous L’Etendard national. After the fire, Druon, Vermont. A Catholic priest from Coaticook, attacks on the bishop of Montreal.[3] As it now sole proprietor, sold the list of Protec- in the Eastern Townships, also visited the was getting late, the pastor called delegates teur subscribers to Montreal businessman convention; he had a special interest—and to leave with him such as to adjourn for Georges Desbarats, who owned Gagnon’s a special mission—as a colonization agent the day. Many did. Buies was kept from paper. Gagnon, later deemed the “father for the provincial government.[2] delivering a proper address. As Quebec’s of the Franco-American press,” was thus divergent ideological visions disembarked doubly the heir of early efforts in St. Albans. in St. Albans in the persons of Thibault and Soon after the demise of the Protec- Buies, truly French Canada was transplanted teur, Moussette and Frédéric Houde created in the United States. Of course, if willing L’Avenir national in St. Albans; they sold it to make small, political concessions to the either the next year or in 1873. Towards the Great Republic, cultural and religious elites end it had an impressive 3,500 subscribers in French Vermont and French New England and was circulated in the western states. In would overwhelmingly follow the vision 1873, Gagnon and Houde joined forces to laid out by Thibault and Druon. establish Le Foyer canadien. Houde moved the paper to St. Albans—the third French periodical in the city in five years—while St. Albans Weekly Messenger, September 2, 1870 (Continued on page 23) 22 NEW HAMPSHIRE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Those Other Franco-Americans: St. established.[4] That spirit of organization kudos and the local English newspaper, Albans, Part II continued from page 22) carried into politics: in 1892, the French-Ca- the Messenger, published a special issue to nadian Republican club of St. Albans wel- mark the occasion. A grand parade passed Gagnon sold his share and established the comed future president William McKinley. through the city on June 24 in the presence long-lived Travailleur that made his fame. We cannot argue that the winds of of Montreal mayor Camilien Houde and the The Foyer ceased publication in 1875. Still, nativism never blew through the area, but bishop of Burlington, Edward Ryan. Adult that an editor would move a French-lan- this was a tight-knit community where membership in this USJB council—over guage newspaper from central Massachu- economic interests facilitated a sense of 600 people—was then at an all-time high.[6] setts to northern Vermont is very telling of common cause. Well into the twentieth Franklin County continues to have the French fact in this era—not to mention century, French Canadians formed an im- one of the highest rates of French-Canadian the contemporary stature of a city that would portant share of the railway labor force. An ancestry in New England. In 1990, among be eclipsed by new patterns of migration. influx of farmers Quebec helped to revitalize Vermont communities, the town of Norton, further east in Essex County had the highest proportion of people of French-Canadian descent. But places like Swanton and the City of St. Albans were not far behind—and were in fact ahead of Winooski. A sense of connection to this immigrant and ethnic past was still visible in 2000, when a full quarter of respondents in Vermont claimed their first ancestry as French or French-Canadian. In the decade that followed, St. Albans hosted a French-Canadian Heritage Festival. People who grew up in the region—artist Michèle Choinière, for instance—still tell the story of ethnic Vermont and Franco-America. Today the culture survives not in the narrow ideological sense anticipated by Father Druon, nor perhaps in the language, but in customs and connections that invite The initial wave of French-Canadian migrants attended services at the first wider participation and interest—something Catholic parish in St. Albans, St. Mary. (Digital Commonwealth) more eclectic, more inclusive. Do you have a French Vermont story you would like to share? Comment below or on social media!

The legacy of French-Canadian com- the countryside following the Great War. munity organization in St. Albans also lived French-owned shops were prevalent along in the most illustrious Franco-American of Lake Street, in the vicinity of Holy Angels the late nineteenth century. The anglicized Church, but it was not unusual for business Civil War veteran Edmond Mallet was owners on Main Street to hire French-speak- allegedly inspired to renew with his heri- ing clerks. Certain derogatory terms seem tage when picking up an issue of Druon’s to have arisen at least as much from class Protecteur; according to Alexandre Belisle, prejudice as from ethnic feeling. the paper “converted” Mallet to the cause of French was heard on the streets of St. Franco-American survivance. Albans and the convent school still offered French Vermont culture did not some of the core subjects dans la langue de disappear or become irrelevant. A grand Molière (or Crémazie) following the Second Orin Lacroix’s farm equipment business celebration of St. John’s Day involving World War.[5] In fact, some eighty years af- was one of many establishments owned Canadian delegations occurred in 1875. The ter the great French-Canadian national con- by Quebec-born individuals in the city. French community had earned, by virtue of vention it had hosted, the French-Canadian (Messenger, April 29, 1948) its numbers, its own religious space in 1871; community in St. Albans continued to thrive. a proper French Church, Holy Angels, was When the local council (no. 37) of the Union [1] Though some family relation built in the 1880s. Around the same time, Saint-Jean-Baptiste reached its fiftieth anni- between Antoine and Charles Moussette is a circle of the Dames de Sainte-Anne was versary, in June 1951, it earned widespread (Continued on page 24) 23 Le Forum NEW HAMPSHIRE assimilation in Maine in 1919, unless we Hauntingly Silent: count Rumilly’s cryptic reference to Walsh’s stance on education.4 In more recent Franco-American Some Questions Concerning historical syntheses, the education bill of 1919 usually earns a few sentences meant Maine’s English Education Bill to corroborate other evidence about forced Americanization in that era. These books by Patrick Lacroix almost all cite another secondary source, and with reason: primary evidence of Franco “…provided, further, that the basic language of instruction in the common school branches mobilization against the bill is scant.5 Why in all schools, public and private, shall be the English language. Nothing in this section this is so deserves greater consideration. shall be construed to prohibit the teaching in elementary schools of any language as such.”1 Background to the Bill On April 1, 1919, Governor Carl We can imagine the Association Milliken of Maine signed into law a bill Canado-Américaine (ACA) and the Union The Maine legislature passed the authorizing the state’s superintendent of Saint-Jean-Baptiste (USJB) drawing atten- English-language education less than six education to enforce English-language tion to the issue and raising funds across months after the end of the First World War. education in public and private schools.2 the region. Quebec newspapers would have In the prior two years, concerned about This assimilationist measure would hit all joined the fray and insisted on the cultural immigrants’ commitment to their adoptive minority language groups in Maine equally. threats standing before expatriates in the country, the federal government had close- As the largest of these groups, however, United States. ly monitored and sometimes censored the Franco-Americans had special cause to be We can picture it now. But our mind’s foreign-language press. Through the Com- aggrieved and to feel targeted. eye—informed by a tale of endless cultural mittee on Public Information, it had also We can imagine the uproar when and religious battles—has betrayed us if this launched propaganda campaigns aimed to Milliken proposed this measure at the is the image we are forming. foster “one-hundred-percent Americanism.” opening of the Seventy-Ninth Legislature While many present-day Fran- Loyalty to the United States was defined in three months earlier.3 We can imagine the co-Americans are aware of this bill and its increasingly narrow cultural terms. At war’s Franco-American elite forming committees, effects on their cultural survival in Maine, end, a new threat appeared on the horizon: drafting petitions, and marching Maine’s the circumstances surrounding the bill’s radical elements—no less foreign—aligned French-Canadian and Acadian communities inception and enactment are murky. Surpris- with the Bolsheviks. The country was enter- into the fight for their cultural survival. In ingly, landmark works penned by Adolphe ing the Red Scare; an exclusive nationalism the prior decade, it had done exactly that Robert and Robert Rumilly in the 1940s was still the answer.6 to remove parish property from the control and 1950s—works that closely mirrored To foster “Americanism,” state leg- of the Catholic bishop of Portland, Louis the records of the ACA and USJB—made islators introduced English education bills S. Walsh. no mention of an organized struggle against (Continued on page 25)

(Those Other Franco-Americans: St. esteem as a leading religious figure in Civil Sources Albans, Part II continued from page 23) War-era Montpelier. Beyond the sources linked in the text, Alexandre Belisle devotes a full chapter to likely, I have yet to determine with certainty [5] Vermont was spared English-lan- the Protecteur in his history of the Fran- what it was. guage education laws that marked many co-American press. Edouard Hamon’s work other northeastern states in the 1910s and on religious organization and a local online [2] Still, repatriation does not seem to 1920s. Here, French Canadians, the largest history of Holy Angels are very brief; more have held the same significance that it would foreign-language minority group in the extensive newspaper and archival research in later conventions’ debates. state, found numerous Anglo-Saxon allies. would be needed for a fuller story of the par- S. N. Griscoll of St. Albans stated before ish. Digitized newspapers on the Library of [3] The local société Saint-Jean-Bap- the House Committee on Education that Congress website, Newspapers.com, and the tiste had welcomed Bishop Ignace Bourget “French Canadian families are putting the Collection patrimoniale of the Bibliothèque while he traveled to New York City a year abandoned farms of northern Vermont on et Archives nationales du Québec hold an and a half earlier. the map and we should not discourage them overwhelming amount of information on by not allowing the teaching of the French St. Albans down to the 1960s. La Minerve, [4] In the early years of Druon’s tenure language in the schools.” available in digital form on the BAnQ web- in St. Albans, the local education committee site, covered the national convention in early agreed to rent out the Catholic church’s [6] St. Albans’s French heritage was September 1870. I accessed census records basement as a temporary classroom for again on display when the city celebrated on Ancestry.com. public school children, relieving pressure its bicentennial in August 1963. On this For more on French Vermont, check on overcrowded tax-funded schoolhouses. occasion, Quebec premier Jean Lesage sent out episodes of Brave Little State (VPR) and Druon seems to have been widely respected Guy Lechasseur, a member of the legislative Northwest Passages (produced by the Saint in the community; he had earned similar assembly, as his official representative. Albans Museum). 24 NEW HAMPSHIRE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Hauntingly Silent: Some Questions cidate the issue—to an extent. Although John Valley, two from Lewiston, one from Concerning Maine’s English Education willing to support Franco-Americans on the Brunswick, and the last from Biddeford Bill continued from page 24) Democratic ticket, La Justice had a record (Louis B. Lausier, then beginning a long across New England. In 1919, asserting the of endorsing Republican candidates. It had and distinguished political career).11 Aside bona fide patriotism they had manifested welcomed GOP victories in the fall of 1918. from Fort Kent’s William J. Audibert, who during the war, Franco-Americans strongly Among those winners was Carl Milliken.9 introduced petitions, historians must strug- denounced the measures put to the Massa- In light of the federal Americanization gle to find evidence of these legislators’ chusetts and New Hampshire legislatures. campaign and its own suspicion of the la- presumed public opposition to the education Historians have studied these struggles bor movement, the paper’s stance was not bill. Before the “silent playground,” there and revealed that French speakers were not unusual. In 1919, editor Alfred Bonneau seemed to be silence of a different kind in cowed into complete silence during Ameri- may have continued to back the GOP as a the chambers and committee rooms of the canization campaigns. But what of Maine? bulwark against radicalism and chosen to state capitol.12 Biddeford’s French-language weekly place education on the backburner. newspaper, La Justice, made no mention In Lewiston, voters went to the polls Questions and Interpretations whatsoever of the education bill. More re- to elect a municipal government on March 3, search will determine whether Lewiston’s Le 1919. There, the Franco-American commu- One prominent figure—far more influ- Messager devoted more attention to the ed- nity was closely aligned with the Democratic ential than Irénée Cyr—did draw momentary ucation debate than its counterpart in Bidd- Party; one of their own, Charles Lemaire, attention to the bill. No stranger to the State eford; other Lewiston newspapers evince no sought reelection as mayor on the Democrat- House, Bishop Walsh appeared before the groundswell of Franco-American activism ic ticket. The GOP put up a strong fight and Committee on Education on March 5 accom- in the city. Of the petitions submitted to the came within a hundred votes of unseating panied by Peter Charles Keegan, the former legislature in February and March in protest member for Van Buren; Cornelius Horigan, of the English-only law, not one originated “The foreign languages the former and future mayor of Biddeford; in Biddeford or Lewiston. In Nashua, New and veteran and attorney Albert Beliveau of should be taught in the 13 Hampshire, L’Impartial carried articles on Rumford. All were Democrats. the education battle in its own state and in elementary school as they Walsh was primarily concerned Massachusetts, but none on the situation in can be learnt easier at that about the extension of the state superinten- Maine. Surely it would have taken note of dent’s jurisdiction to private schools. The ferocious protests in the Pine Street State— time than at any other period Catholic hierarchy in the Northeast was had such protests materialized. of life . . . It is easy for French more worried about the slippery slope of The bill on English instruction was teachers to teach through the growing state control of parochial schools largely buried in the record of legislative than about anglicization. In prior hearings, business reproduced by Bangor’s Daily French language to children Walsh had explained to legislators that the News. Evidently, for English speakers of of French extraction English basic course of instruction in parochial central Maine, this was not a hot-button schools was already in English. There is little issue—a means of stoking patriotic fervor, or and it is about the only way it doubt, however, that prior to 1919 subjects cementing their support for the Republican can be done.” beyond the state-mandated course of study Party. But neither was it a carefully kept were taught in French in Franco-American 10 secret to be sprung on unsuspecting minority Lemaire. We may wonder whether Lewis- parish schools.14 groups at the end of the legislative session. ton Democrats sought to avoid the education How did the man charged with enforc- For one thing, there were acts of issue because it would have pushed a soft ing the law view language? State Superin- protests prior to the enactment of the bill. Irish vote to the Republicans. tendent Augustus O. Thomas expressed re- House members from Aroostook Country Yet more likely was a sense of power- markable openness when he testified before introduced petitions from Madawaska, Fort lessness among Franco voters. At the state the Education Committee. The bill “does not Kent, Caribou, St. Agatha, Van Buren, and level, Maine’s Republican establishment prohibit the teaching of foreign languages,” other towns and villages, all contesting the seemed unshakable. The exclusion of people he declared. “The foreign languages should bill.7 Contemporary newspapers made much of French-Canadian and Acadian descent be taught in the elementary school as they of the fact that the postmaster of Fort Kent, became a vicious cycle. The Republican can be learnt easier at that time than at any Irénée Cyr, who had previously served in the establishment’s record of Anglo-Saxon, other period of life . . . It is easy for French House, traveled 300 miles to testify before Protestant nativism pushed Franco voters to teachers to teach through the French lan- the Committee on Education in February. the Democrats; seen as a captive electorate, guage to children of French extraction En- The St. John Valley French were leading the these voters could no longer expect GOP glish and it is about the only way it can be charge against assimilation. outreach. (La Justice would in time change done.” Thomas declared that he “was willing The Aroostook petitions only add to its colors.) Beyond their industrial bastions, to make any change necessary to safeguard the puzzle. What would explain relative Franco-Americans were relegated to a po- the right and objects of the bill.”15 silence in Biddeford and Lewiston? litical wilderness. From such declarations and others, we In 1919, the State Senate had but one might conclude that the primary object of the A Partisan Issue? Franco-American member, a Republican bill was not to banish other languages, but from Lewiston. Six Francos sat in the House, to ensure sufficient proficiency in English in Electoral politics may help to elu- all of them Democrats—two from the St. (Continued on page 26) 25 Le Forum NEW HAMPSHIRE (Hauntingly Silent: Some Questions Richard also writes.22 The law spared paro- attempts to bring this borderland people Concerning Maine’s English Education chial schools, but those under control of the into the great (English-speaking) American Bill continued from page 25) bishop or of other teaching orders could not family through school reform. But through among minority groups. The time at come expect the same linguistic leniency. its concerns and acts of protests, the French to bring unilingual island communities into But didn’t the bill state otherwise? population in this region would find itself the U.S. mainstream.16 It read, again, “that the basic language of without the support of downstate compa- One scholar asserts that after 1919, instruction in the common school branches triots.26 French-language instruction was illegal for in all schools, public and private, shall be The education bill proposed and fifty years in Maine.17 There is no question, the English language.” This too has led to adopted in 1919 captured the spirit of from the letter of the law and Thomas’s confusion. The same section of the state Americanism that swept through the country statements, that French could still be taught education code previously made reference following the First World War—a spirit that as a language. Historical misunderstandings to “private schools approved for tuition and had not yet seen its most extreme manifes- occur on whether the bill could allow the attendance purposes” (seemingly eligible for tations. Though various factors explain why teaching of other subjects in French. What, state funds) and it may be that the private Franco-Americans did not protest more indeed, is a “basic” language of instruction, schools touched by the language clause were vociferously in certain parts of the state, and would it be different from an exclusive precisely those. It also happens that this sec- the key lies in the role of public and private language of instruction? tion appeared in the duties assigned to the schools. In this sense, the events of 1919 say Some clarity comes from the equally State Superintendent of Public Schools. All as much about vastly different experiences symbolic moment when, in 1969, the legis- of this would point to the effective exclusion within the Franco-American community as lature—with the notable support of Elmer of parochial schools.23 about the fracture between Anglo-Saxon Violette of Van Buren and Albert Beliveau’s In her recent doctoral dissertation, Protestants and their French-Canadian and son Severin—voted to permit foreign-lan- Elisa Sance highlights the different educa- Acadian neighbors. guage education in the first two years of tional regimes that explain the responses elementary school. Violette’s remarks at of different Franco-American localities. With special thanks to Michael Guig- that time are worth noting. “Thirty years Maine’s public education system was high- nard and Camden Martin. ago,” he declared, “they were starting us in ly decentralized; its town-based structure the French language [in grade school], and meant that local trustees had considerable Patrick Lacroix’s work on Fran- then on to English.” Only gradually, in the authority over what would be taught and by co-Americans has appeared in numerous interwar period, had French disappeared whom. In Aroostook County, predominantly peer-reviewed journals and his manuscript, from the classroom, Violette stated.18 French-speaking towns hired Catholic reli- “Tout nous serait possible”: Une histoire In the 1930s, at Lewiston’s Ecole gious orders to run public schools where the politique des Franco-Américains, is under Sainte-Marie, Lucien Aubé did not en- French language was in an exalted position.24 contract with the Presses de l’Université counter serious study in (or of) the English However, in industries cities—where they Laval. language until fourth grade. By sixth grade, were most concentrated, more likely to pool 1. Chapter 146, Acts and Resolves as pupils could expect half-day instruction in resources, and under more assertive clerical Passed by the Seventy-Ninth Legislature of each language.19 Michael Guignard adds leadership—Franco-Americans were less the State of Maine – 1919 (Augusta: Ken- that “in Biddeford parochial schools up to dependent on public schools. nebec Journal, 1919). the sixth grade in the 1950s we had a half day The absence of a coordinated cam- 2. “Public Acts Signed by the Gov- of French; religion and bible history [were] paign in such places suggests that Fran- ernor,” Lewiston Evening Journal, April 3, in French, and then we studied French— co-Americans there understood that their 1919, 6. grammaire, dictée, épellation et lecture!”20 parish schools would remain untouched by 3. Legislative Record of the Seven- the 1919 bill. They also seemed to willingly ty-Ninth Legislature of the State of Maine Public v. Private accept a two-tier system. Church schools (Augusta: Kennebec Journal, 1919), 26. provided instruction that matched French 4. Adolphe Robert, Mémorial des Historian Mark Richard explains that Canadians’ values and cultural aspirations; Actes de l’Association Canado-Américaine when they arrived at Sainte-Famille parish upwardly-mobile families seeking a main- (Manchester: L’Avenir national, 1946); in Lewiston, in 1926, the Sisters of Saint stream English-based education for their Robert Rumilly, Histoire des Franco-Amér- Joseph (a teaching order) chose to limit children could send them to public schools. icains (Montreal: Union Saint-Jean-Baptiste French instruction to one hour per day in When the parochial schools and their teach- d’Amérique, 1958). The part of Lewiston’s hopes of easing Franco-Americans’ accul- ing staff narrowed the amount of French Institut Jacques-Cartier, the city’s foremost turation. They felt pressure from Bishop instruction in the interwar period, this was Franco-American society, in the debates of Walsh to meet the spirit if not the letter of not a matter of public policy, but an issue to 1919 remains unclear. the education bill passed a few years earlier. be resolved within the Church.25 5. Included here are the works of Richard finds little resistance or opposition The St. John Valley French understood Gerard J. Brault, François Weil, Armand from Lewiston’s Little Canada to the Sisters’ that their reliance on a publicly-funded Chartier, Yves Roby, and David Vermette. decision—except from Le Messager, which school system meant that they would not 6. We should note that this debate oc- remained committed to the half-day sys- escape “basic” education in English. This curred before the second incarnation of the tem.21 “[T]he [1919] law did not apply to the may have been the unspoken intent of the Ku Klux Klan had gotten any meaningful elementary schools where the nuns taught,” education bill, for there had been prior (Continued on page 27) 26 NEW HAMPSHIRE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 out on the dreadful, long voyage. 4 Life Lessons We Can Learn Boarding the ships into the unknown shows us their determination to leave their From the Filles du Roi less fortunate lives in France. All for the JANUARY 22, 2021 FRANCO-AMERICAN HISTORY, LES FILLES DU ROI, chance of making a life in a land they never WOMEN’S HISTORY knew. Through historical accounts, we can only get a glimpse of the challenging lives BY MÉLODY DESJARDINS of these women. From history and current forms of storytelling, we can gather lessons Les Filles du Roi, or The King’s knew in France. They suffered terrible con- from the past that can enlighten our modern Daughters, arrived in New France between ditions on these ships, from a lack of proper times. 1663-1667 with the mission to repopulate hygiene to the looming risk of sickness. If And the stories of these captivating the province. that weren’t enough, they also faced possible women have a lot to teach us. King Louis XIV provided about 800- death on the very ship bringing them to new So what core values can we learn from 1000 young women mostly in their 20’s with opportunities. Les Filles du Roi? dowries, clothes, supplies, and a place to live We today cannot imagine how uncom- with the nuns. fortable these conditions must have been for 1) Grit These women boarded ships to the months on end. Once onboard, these young Going anywhere into the unknown is New World, leaving behind everything they women had no other choice but to tough it scary. So imagine boarding a ship to a lo- cation you’ve never been to in those times. You couldn’t look it up online and see if you might like the area. You boarded the ship for months and had to go along with whatever happened. Many Filles du Roi were leaving be- hind broken lives in France. However, those The King’s Daughters mural by artist Annie Hamel in Montreal. (Continued on page 28) (Hauntingly Silent: Some Questions in the Bangor Daily News stating that “there 20. Personal correspondence. Guig- Concerning Maine’s English Education would be nothing to prevent parochial and nard adds, “I had known nothing about [the Bill continued from page 26) private schools giving instruction in other 1919 law] until the 1980s.” foothold in the region. languages, so long as they complied with 21. Mark Paul Richard, “From Fran- 7. Legislative Record of the Seven- the provision of the law.” What was the co-American to American: The Case of ty-Ninth Legislature, 303, 322, 352, 392. law’s purpose if not to institute instruction Sainte-Famille, an Assimilating Parish of 8. “Language in the Public Schools,” in English? See “Committee Hearings at Lewiston, Maine,” Histoire sociale/Social Lewiston Daily Sun, February 27, 1919, 10; Augusta Thursday,” Daily News. History, vol. 31, no. 61 (May 1998), 79-80. “Fort Kent Is Much Opposed,” Lewiston 16. This is not to deny the presence 22. Richard, Not a Catholic Nation: Evening Journal, February 27, 1919, 7. of firebrands whose nativism was far less The Ku Klux Klan Confronts New England 9. “Grande victoire républicaine,” La elastic. in the 1920s (Amherst: University of Mas- Justice, September 13, 1918, 2. 17. Susan Pinette, “Un ‘étonnant mut- sachusetts Press, 2015), 54. 10. “Lemaire Elected But City Gov- isme’: L’invisibilité des Franco-Américains 23. State Superintendent of Public ernment Is Republican,” Lewiston Daily aux Etats-Unis,” La jeune francophonie Schools, Laws of Maine Relating to Public Sun, March 4, 1919, 1, 10. américaine: Langue et culture chez les Schools (Augusta: 1919), 50, 52. 11. Legislative Record of the Seven- jeunes d’héritage francophone aux Etats- 24. Elisa Sance, “Language, Identity, ty-Ninth Legislature, 3, 8, 48-52. Unis d’Amérique, ed. J. E. Price (Paris: and Citizenship: Politics of Education in 12. The term is borrowed from Ross L’Harmattan, 2017), 185. Madawaska, 1842-1920” (Ph.D. disserta- and Judy Paradis’s essay in Voyages: A 18. Legislative Record of the One tion, University of Maine, 2020), 103, 111, Maine Franco-American Reader, ed. Nel- Hundred and Fourth Legislature of the 170-172, 178. Also see Béatrice Craig and son Madore and Barry Rodrigue (Gardiner: State of Maine – 1969 (Augusta: Kennebec Maxime Dagenais, The Land in Between: Tilbury House, 2007). Journal, c. 1969), 1495-1496. The Upper St. John Valley, Prehistory to 13. “Bishop Walsh Opposed Bill Re- 19. Lucien A. Aubé, “From the Pa- World War I (Gardiner: Tilbury House, lating to Public Schools,” Daily Sun, March rochial School to an American University: 2009). 6, 1919, 1, 4. Reflections on Cultural Fragmentation,” 25. Protests may have become un- 14. “Committee Hearings at Augusta Steeples and Smokestacks: A Collection imaginable after the defeat of the Sentinel- Thursday – Educational Committee,” Ban- of Essays on the Franco-American Expe- lism in the 1920s. gor Daily News, February 7, 1919, 11. rience in New England, ed. Claire Quintal 26. Sance, “Language, Identity, and 15. “Bishop Walsh Opposed Bill,” (Worcester: Editions de l’Institut français, Citizenship,” 106-107, 180-181. Daily Sun. More puzzling yet was a report Assumption College, 1996), 639-640. 27 Le Forum NEW HAMPSHIRE (4 Life Lessons We Can Learn From the of thin air: somewhere along the line, it was Once arriving in New France, the Filles du Roi continued from page 27) spoken into existence. surviving Filles du Roi found themselves hardships were only the beginning of the Prior to the journey, they were already among strangers: men, women, and land- challenges they would face on their voyage. approved to become Filles du Roi, which scape alike. The only people they knew were Sickness was prevalent on these ships required them to be “proper” women. What each other, navigating the harsh reality of and some Filles du Roi died on board. For could these women do about slander besides 17th century country life. those left, it had to take grit to keep their striving to be the best wife and mother they This meant hard labor just to survive, wits about them in those unsanitary and could be? especially during the freezing winters of horrifying conditions. When dealing with slander, defend New France that they were unfamiliar with. Even after they had built their life in yourself (or the proper young women in Many of these young women were New France with a husband, life was still your ancestry). But set the record straight accustomed to city life in Paris and had to grim with surviving the wilderness. And with your head held high with the confi- learn to prepare for what was coming. their married lives did not always mean dence of knowing the truth about yourself. happily ever after. Sometimes, grit comes with holding back 3) Choice For the women in “Promised to the from wasting energy on ridiculous lies and Crown,” a historical fiction novel that fo- knowing who you are above it all. You would think that at the time, cuses on three Filles du Roi, they discover the women would be put into an arranged that their lives don’t change for the better 2) Courage marriage. But the Filles du Roi had free will in New France. They each suffer their own over who they wanted to marry. losses, but must find the strength within It is said that courage is being afraid, Even in the 17th century, when the themselves to survive. but facing the challenge anyway. reason they were asked to move was to Some women had a change of heart populate the province, these women still about leaving France and decided to stay held the power of making their own choice. after all. This is not to suggest those specific The nuns who housed the women women were not courageous. But deciding planned socials for them to meet the men to get on that ship after others turned away is of New France. Which meant they could nothing short of bravely facing the unknown. choose their future husband wisely and on In “Alone in an Untamed Land,” a their terms. teenage girl named Hélène faces the same The Filles du Roi had a lot of power choice. She gets on the ship, but is torn be- for women at the time. tween the only home she’s ever known and Even if a man made a proposal to one the chance at a new life in Montréal. of the Filles du Roi, the decision for the marriage to move forward was solely at the “I may never see France again. I wept. discretion of the woman. Only an approval My cheeks were damp with the mist and so I from her would result in a marriage contract think that no one saw. I did not care if they and a life together. did. I only wished to be alone inside myself National Geographic’s Barkskins tv and let the image of France burn into my series (based on the novel by Annie Proulx), mind.” partially focuses on the Filles du Roi. The “Promised to the Crown” by Aimie K. –– HÉLÈNE ST. ONGE, ALONE IN show portrays a matchmaking social to sug- Runyan. AN UNTAMED LAND gest what the mingling in New France might have been like for the men and women. To keep going in a situation when Melissande, the headstrong Filles du everything is crumbling all around you, grit Roi, says she will only choose a rich man keeps even the smallest bit of hope alive. to provide for her. Meanwhile, her shy but Their main focus had to be survival. They devoted companion, Delphine, wants to had to hold on until the day they were mar- choose a man for love and family. ried to fulfill their promise of repopulating New France. “If you put your mind to it, you can However, with this promise, slander remake yourself here.” was brought onto the names of the Filles –– MELISSANDE du Roi. Even today, there is a narrative that the Filles du Roi were prostitutes. Although No matter how different their wishes, this has been debunked, this myth continues they respect each other’s choice. They then to live on. focus on their own mission to find a husband Before we enter arguments to right- and secure their new life. fully defend these women, remember how “Alone in an Untamed Land” by Maxine much resistance they were against in the Trottier as part of the Dear Canada 4) Hope 17th century. But this myth didn’t come out historical fiction series. (Continued on page 29) 28 NEW HAMPSHIRE (See page 33 for more from New Hampshire) SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (4 Life Lessons We Can Learn From the Because these women had hope for Filles du Roi continued from page 28) a new life, they kept the culture alive for The life of the Filles du Roi wasn’t generations of descendants they would never all that great at the end of the day. Living know. In our present time, we can remember in the 17th century as a woman was a harsh the intense struggles these women experi- reality that we in modern times could not enced and become inspired to do our part possibly imagine. in reviving the culture they saved. Living in Québec when the possibility Whether that is learning French, add- of death came back every winter must have ing celebrations and holidays of days past French-Canadi- been terrifying. Not to mention many other to our calendars, sharing our culture with threats from the wilderness year round. others, or other positive ways to show the an Legacy Podcast

A scene from Canada: Today, there are more than 2 million The Story of Us of one descendants of French-Canadian Filles du Roi after immigrants living in New England. becoming a wife and These are Our Stories. mother. Episode 56: Louis Cyr The World’s Strongest Man with Jason Newton

With these unforgiving realities came world our remaining presence, we all have childbirth in a time without proper hygiene, these women to thank. medical care, or painkillers. These women We must remember that the reason we usually had many children to repopulate are here today as Québécois, French-Cana- New France. Plus, they received payment dians, Acadians, and Franco-Americans is for each child they had which created more due to the Founding Mothers of Québec, incentive to have many children. our fierce Filles du Roi. It was a life of horrendous labor pain, over and over again. So they grew their family, receiving those payments that were also crucial for survival. But with that pain came life and a future for French-Canadians When we first interviewed Jason, we in the land that would be known as Québec. were lucky enough to have him in the studio. If it wasn’t for the Filles du Roi, there After our interview with him, we starting might not even be a province of Québec to- talking and came across a topic all of us day. The hope for the future of New France were interested in, Louis Cyr. So Jesse and fully relied on the Filles du Roi. Jason researched “The World’s Strongest Man” and have an amazing episode for you. The facts about him may or may not be true but his legacy is a great one. We hope you’ll enjoy this episode, it’s a little different but Les Filles du Roi arriving in New France, as we hope you love it. depicted in Barkskins. Don’t forget to check out our Patreon for extra bonus content. If you’ve always wanted to have a French-Canadian Legacy t-shirt, GOOD NEWS!! Check out our Moderne Francos merch on Teespring. All money earned from All About the both goes directly to improve the podcast. Listen to the show on Sound Cloud, Franco-American Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play Music, Cast- Experience box and Apple Podcasts. Once you subscribe One of the Filles du Roi signing a marriage or follow us on any of those services each contract, depicted by Canada: The Story new episode will be added to your library. of Us. https://modernefrancos.com https://fclpodcast.com 29 Le Forum MASSACHUSETTS (N.D.L.R. The following op-ed was written by frequent Le Forum contributor Suzanne Beebe and was printed in the December 14, 2020 edition of the Lowell Sun daily newspaper. It asks why Lowell has failed to provide readers and admirers of Franco-American writer Jack Kerouac a place where they can learn more about him in the city of his birth. The Visions of Gerard cover (lower right corner) graces the current Penguin Books printing of the novel and was designed by Daniel Rembert.) Can we honor rously and encountered the great minds of for a few years — St. Louis de France in literature. There’s a small Kerouac display at Centralville — stands empty, unused, and the National Historical Park Visitor’s Center awaiting sale by the Archdiocese of Boston. native son on Market Street. But there is no one place Kerouac wrote about those buildings in his in Lowell where short-term visitors can view novel Visions of Gerard. At this writing, Jack Kerouac? exhibits or attend events that provide a com- there is no public commitment on the part prehensive look at his life and work in the of the Archdiocese to preserve them as part Jack Kerouac is a world-renowned context of his city and its Franco-American of any purchase agreement. Nor has the city writer. He opened new avenues for American community. exerted any discernible effort to influence writers of the 20th century. He was central to Other cities and towns manage to the Archdiocese in its sale of the St. Louis the Beat Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. honor their artistic giants, whether the artist site, although a 2005 survey conducted by He wrote the founding novel of the Beat lived there for years or was born there and the Massachusetts Historical Commission Movement: On the Road. recommended it be declared eligible for the He also wrote five novels about National Register of Historical Places. Lowell, plus a stream of poems, letters, Shouldn’t the city at least consider and other novels exploring life, death, and what it might do to keep those buildings spiritual realities as he experienced them standing — and how at least one of them in his travels, writing, worship, addictions, (perhaps the church?) might become a center and relationships. And he was a product of for public exhibits and events centering on Lowell’s Franco-American community — Kerouac, his work, and the Franco-Ameri- not speaking English until he was six, always can community that shaped him? Couldn’t speaking French with his family members, the city explore with UMass Lowell’s continuously in contact with French and Kerouac Center how a partnership of the French-Canadian literature and culture, two could work with the Archdiocese to and never abandoning the French-Canadian achieve mutually satisfactory goals while strain of Catholicism that colored and shaped fully honoring the native son who helped his worldview. change American literature in the 20th cen- Do we fully honor him here in his left. Stockbridge has its Norman Rockwell tury? Opportunities like the St. Louis site’s native city? What do we offer visitors from Museum. Salinas, Calif., has its Steinbeck availability don’t arise every day. Surely, the around the globe who come to explore his National Center. Tulsa, Okla., has its Woody city, the university, and the Archdiocese can roots in Lowell and see the places where he Guthrie Center, while small-town Okemah, find a way to capitalize on it. The only thing lived, studied, worshiped, drank, brawled, Okla., (Woody’s birthplace), is working to that seems needed is the will. fell in love, and played sports even as the restore the original Guthrie home. larger world called him to grow beyond Cambridge has the Henry Wadsworth his birthplace? (Though Lowell constantly Longfellow House. Concord has the Alcott called him to return again and again.) How family’s Orchard House, where Louisa May do we establish the link to his ethnic com- Alcott wrote Little Women. Concord also has munity and the ethnic culture that grounded the Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel him? Hawthorne homes. Lowell itself has the There’s Commemorative Park on Whistler Museum, the birthplace of an artist Bridge St. with its lovely polished monoliths who lived here the first three years of his life, engraved with passages from his books. despised the city and its industrial nature, There’s the plaque on the Lupine Road and never returned, famously saying when cottage where he was born and lived in his he declared himself to have been born in St. infancy. There’s a growing archive of mate- Petersburg, Russia, “I shall be born when rials by and about him being gathered, orga- and where I want, and I do not choose to be nized, and digitized by the Kerouac Center born in Lowell.” Can’t we at least provide a at UMass Lowell for scholars, writers, and museum or center on the scale of the Whis- Kerouac devotees of every background and tler Museum for a world-famous author who calling. There’s the Kerouac corner at the loved the city of his birth, wrote about it, Pollard Memorial Library, where he spent visited regularly, and is buried here? days expanding his mind and mastering his Right now, the church where Kerouac command of English as he read omnivo- was baptized and the school he attended 30 MASSACHUSETTS SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (N.D.L.R. The Lowell Sun daily newspaper of Lowell, MA, published the following OPINION piece. It appeared in the January 2, 2021 edition of the Lowell Sun. Permission for reprinting has been granted by Rev. Steve Edington.)

So, who is tending the Kerouac flame in Lowell?

By REV. STEVE EDINGTON

A quick introduction: I am a near have been touched by the writings of Ker- 30-year member of the Lowell Celebrates ouac. It is a joy to witness, every October, Kerouac Committee and have twice served those who make the trip to Lowell to nurture as the organization’s president. and replenish their Kerouac Spirit. Our current President is Judith Bes- Here is where my pride mixes with sette. LCK was originally formed in 1986 frustration: The lion’s share of keeping the to create the Kerouac Commemorative at Kerouac flame and spirit alive in Lowell falls Bridge and French streets. It has continued to an all-volunteer group with no paid staff, on, producing an annual Jack Kerouac Fes- and no physical base of operation, and who tival in October, a Kerouac birthday obser- do all we do on a nickel-and-dime budget vance in March, and other various Kerouac that we manage to cobble together from one Jack Kerouac related events. year to the next to keep LCK going. Such Since the time of LCK’s founding, has been the case now for the past 30 years Kerouac Centennial will get underway. Jack Kerouac has become an internationally even as Kerouac has become a global figure. was born on March 12, 1922 in Centralville. recognized literary and cultural figure. As Yes, the University of Massachusetts I am pleased to be the convener of a broad- the year 2000 approached, Modern Library at Lowell has the Jack and Stella Kerouac based coalition in Lowell that is coming to- ranked his signature novel, “On the Road,” Center for the Public Humanities. I com- gether to make plans for a series of Kerouac 55 in the top 100 American novels published mend the very good work my friends, Pro- Centennial events to take place during 2022. in the 20th century. Time Magazine rated fessors Michael Millner and Todd Tietchen, This coalition consists of representatives of it as one of the 100 best English language do in giving Kerouac his much-deserved the kinds of groups and organizations cited novels published between 1923 and 2005. standing in academia. But what about Ker- above. Kerouac’s literary legacy has become an ouac’s standing in the city of his birth that In addition to giving Jack Kerouac the integral part of the curricula for American first shaped his literary consciousness? recognition he deserves in his hometown in literature courses taught at American col- I appreciate the fine contributions the the 100th year of his birth, my hope is that leges and universities around the country. Whistler House and its staff make to Low- those of us who are coming together now can Reflecting on all this, I view my in- ell’s artistic and cultural life. show the way forward — in the years beyond volvement with Lowell Celebrates Kerouac I’m also aware that these contributions 2022 — for keeping the Kerouac flame in with a mixture of pride and frustration. are done in the name of world-renowned art- Lowell burning even brighter. I am proud to join with my fellow ist who quite vehemently renounced his ties LCK committee members in keeping the to Lowell. What about a world-renowned Rev. Steve Edington is the Minister Emeritus Kerouac flame alive in his hometown. I am writer who devoted five of his numerous of the Unitarian Universalist Church of pleased at the ways we honor and celebrate novels to his Lowell origins, and honored Nashua, N.H. He is the author of The Beat his Lowell roots, as shown in the five Low- its Franco-American culture? Face of God: The Beat Generation Writers ell-based novels he wrote that portray the But, in the end, it’s really not about my as Spirit Guides and Kerouac’s Nashua city in the 1920s and 30s. I am pleased to pride or my frustration. It is about the city of Connection. host the Kerouac tour requests we get year- Lowell, along with its many historical, cul- round, by way of our website, from persons tural, educational, and artistic communities who want to see his birthplace, gravesite, and organizations, coming to a fuller aware- as well as many other places in Lowell that ness of just what they — what we — have Jack describes. I especially remember meet- here with respect to the ever-growing legacy ing a busload of students from Aberdeen, of Kerouac. We at LCK have, in recent years, Scotland, a few summers ago who wanted received some modest support for our efforts a Kerouac tour included in their American from the city for which we are grateful. Let’s East Coast visit. treat this as a start towards an even greater I’m grateful for the friendships my civic engagement in Lowell when it comes LCK involvement has given me with per- to celebrating Kerouac. sons all around the country and world who A little over a year from now the Jack 31 Le Forum MASSACHUSETTS (N.D.L.R. The Lowell Sun daily newspaper of Lowell, MA, published the following Roger Brunelle Appreciation piece in its March 4, 2021 edition. Permission for reprinting has been granted.) Remembering Roger Brunelle, Lowell and Kerouac’s biggest cheerleader by Barry Scanlon LOWELL – Even at the end of a had his own enthusiastic take on Kerouac. 48-year teaching career, Roger Brunelle Nearly all of the tours he did were for free. couldn’t wait to leave his Lowell home to Just for the enjoyment of it and he was reach his classroom. enthusiastic to tell the Kerouac story. And Rising at 5:15 a.m., Brunelle would the tours were an extension of Roger the approach each day with the zest of a first- teacher. No one can replicate what he was year teacher. doing. Roger brought a unique perspective “He was out of the house like a bullet,” of what made Kerouac tick.” his wife of 48 years, Alyce said. “If you The tours brought scores of interna- knew him, he was always on the go. He faced tional travellers to Lowell. Brunelle would life every day like here we are, let’s go. It often speak French during the tours. One was so important for him to reach the kids.” of the tours, “Ghosts of the Pawtucketville Brunelle, 86, died Feb. 10 at a Boston Night,” would be held at dark. hospital after a short period of declining Sean Thibodeau took the tour in the health. early 1990s when he attended Lowell High. Roger Brunelle at Kerouac Park in Best known for championing famed “I was a student at LHS at the time downtown Lowell. (Photo courtesy of Lowell writer Jack Kerouac, Brunelle was and immediately caught Kerouac fever. Brunelle Family.) a curious man who never stopped learning, Roger was a natural tour leader. He had an guistics from Middlebury College. He also a man incredibly proud of his French-Ca- expansive voice and expressive gestures — studied in Paris. nadian heritage. and just oozed mirth and passion. He read “He had a very formal education. He was also proud to call Lowell Kerouac’s French passages in their original He was a very sophisticated guy but he home. ‘joual patois’ with special gusto. He later was also very regular. He would talk to “He loved Lowell. That’s why he nev- taught me to pronounce my own last name. anybody and he treated everyone the er moved from Lowell. He was a Lowellian As a third generation French-Canadian, same. He loved all the deeply Lowell at heart. He loved everything about Lowell,” French speaking was lost with my grand- things that people in Lowell love about Alyce Brunelle said. father and I grew up not knowing any of the city. The Kerouac influence kind of Kerouac died in 1969, at age 47, it. Roger helped me feel connected to my gave him a distinctive niche,” Marion said. after writing such books as “On the Road” roots and encouraged my curiosity and ed- Brunelle taught French and Latin to high and “Doctor Sax.” In the mid-1980s, there ucation,” said Thibodeau, the coordinator school students in Dracut, Lowell, Ayer and was a resurgence of interest in the Low- of Community Planning at Lowell’s Pollard Nashua, the majority of which (29 years) ell-born Kerouac. Leading those efforts Memorial Library. was spent at Ayer High. was Brunelle, who was born 12 years after “Roger lived life with his whole “He loved his kids. His head was Kerouac, one of the founders of the Beat beautiful heart on his broad sleeve. He and always in a book. He loved Roman history. Generation. I shared a love for Kerouac and for Lowell’s He loved Latin,” his wife said. “Roger loved Lowell as much as Jack public library. There were a few times when Brunelle was Susan Curtin Copeland’s did. Roger understood Jack to the point he asked if I could open the library off hours French teacher for four years at Ayer High where they could have been brothers,” Alyce so he could give a quick tour to out of town School. Brunelle said. Kerouac enthusiasts. I never said no to Rog- “He had such a love for language, A founding member of Lowell Cele- er,” Thibodeau added. friendship and people. We loved to ask him brates Kerouac, Brunelle operated tours of In addition to his wife, Brunelle is questions on his travel or family to get him Lowell inspired by Kerouac’s writings. Each survived by a son, Denis Brunelle, of Dra- off the lesson. Every college acceptance tour had a name. Most were walking tours, cut, and daughter, Dr. Stephanie Brunelle, letter he read and yelled out in celebration but if there was enough interest Brunelle of Seattle, Wash. for us. He was a gentleman and a gentle offered bus trips. The tours were a 35-year He attended St. Louis School in man. I wish I had a chance to tell him what labor of love for Brunelle. Lowell, then graduated from a high school a positive influence he was to us,” Copeland “By the mid-80s he was very inter- in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He received a wrote on a sympathy page set up by McK- ested in raising the profile of Kerouac,” bachelor’s degree from St. John Seminary enna-Ouellette Funeral Home. said writer and publisher Paul Marion. “He in Brighton, then a master’s degree in Lin- (Continued on page 33) 32 (N.D.L.R. This article appeared in the February 22, 2020 edition of the Lowell Sun daily newspaper and is reprinted with their permission.)

NEW HAMPSHIRE/MASSACHUSETTS SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 can organizations throughout New England. Changing a All doing some truly amazing work up against difficult odds. What I have noticed, is our groups tend to focus a lot on the past Present Focused and academic type stuff. That is very im- portant, but I fear as a larger community we On The Past have become one dimensional (i.e. talking about the past). By Timothy Beaulieu One thing that seems to come up periodically is that Franco-Americans are I am someone who is newer to the largely unknown in Québec . There are small French-Canadian/Franco-American world. pockets of Québécois who know of us and a It can be a disadvantage at times and ad- large amount who don’t. After a few years of vantage at others. I am not a French speaker social media interaction with the Québécois (yet) and my recent family history is devoid they fall into two generally defined teams. of the traditions handed down from Québec Équipe no 1: We view Franco-Amer- . That said, Franco-Americans like me don’t icans as assimilated and dead. carry some of the emotional scars that many Équipe no 2: I am interested in our who grew up in the culture have. It can be a cousins in the US and happy they are inter- great advantage when rediscovering where ested in us. we came from. I’m a big fan of Équipe no 2. I don’t Growing up in my American upbring- dislike Équipe no 1, I understand their view- ing I have heard that people from Québec, point. I have tried to engage with them and Statue of Ferdinand Gagnon in generically called the French, are hard to it has not gone so well. Maybe they’ll come Manchester, NH work with and stuck up. Hearing that your around, but we aren’t there yet. entire life can turn off potential “re-born So how do we work with Équipe no 2? reached out to us. When I began speaking Francos” from even engaging in a very with Luc I could tell he was an obvious vibrant community. A “re-born Franco” is Reaching Équipe no 2 member of Équipe no 2. Luc was a big fan of someone who was raised completely away the local Double A team in Manchester, The from the culture, but for whatever reason, When my working group and I New Hampshire Fisher Cats, and also curi- has come back on their own. launched New Hampshire PoutineFest in ous to know more about Franco-Americans. Somehow, I was able to see through 2016, one of my hopes was that it would act Over the last several years Luc and I those untruths and connect with the Franco as a beacon for any Québécois looking south have become pretty close friends. His efforts community. Huge shout out to movie the of the border to realize we were still here. to learn English and mine to at least try to Réveil for giving me the final push to do In the years since NH PoutineFest, pick up some French have come in handy. something. social media contact to the Event and the In 2019, we planned a small baseball Franco-American Centre of New Hampshire tournament of sorts between kids living A Present focused on the Past has sharply increased….and not just to say around his town of Saint-Hyacinthe, QC, Bonjour. and kids in Nashua, NH. It went really well Fast forward to present day, I have In early 2018, a very motivated and for a first time. Our goal is to bring it back been interacting with many Franco-Ameri- talented Québécois named, Luc Trépanier, (Continued on page 34)

(Remembering Roger Brunelle, Lowell and of many things that gave him his connection Kerouac’s biggest cheerleader continued to Kerouac. The tours he gave during our from page 33) Kerouac Festival weekends in October were (Photo by Suzanne Beebe) The Rev. Steve Edington, a retired wonderful. We still do these tours for our Unitarian Universalist minister and Kerouac annual festivals, but there will never be an- author, is the past president and the current other tour guide like Roger,” Edington said. treasurer of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. The Lowell Celebrates Kerouac “It was Roger who introduced me to Festival this October will be dedicated to Lowell Celebrates Kerouac when I took Brunelle’s life and legacy. one of his Lowell tours back in the summer In a 2019 story in The Sun, Brunelle of 1989. I came onto the LCK Committee said, “I was a high school teacher and I a couple of years later with a lot of encour- taught French and Latin. To me, words are agement and support from Roger. He was like a game and it was like that with Ker- of great assistance to me in some research ouac. That’s why I relate to him so closely, Roger Brunelle (left) receives plaque from I did on Jack Kerouac’s French-Canadian because what he did was he did not write John McDermott of Lowell Celebrates ancestry. Roger was very proud of the language. He printed his spoken language Kerouac in 2019 as Alyce Brunelle looks on. Franco-American roots, and this was one on paper.” 33 Le Forum NEW HAMPSHIRE VERMONT (Changing a Present Focused On The Past continued from page 33) Le rêve de Gagnon once COVID-19 is a thing of the past. In talking with Luc over the years I One of my favorite noticed he was surprised how many Fran- authors, David Vermette, co-Americans were interested in Québec and gave a lecture that I attend- the Québécois. Most folks in Québec only ed at Saint Anselm College heard the Équipe no 1 narrative growing up. a few years back. It was a great lecture mostly focus- A Pipeline of Francophones Returns? ing on some of the infor- mation in his iconic book, One of the main reasons from my, A Distinct Alien Race. In non-academic perspective, on the fading of this lecture he mentioned a the French language in New England is our person I had never heard of Kids from Saint Hycinthe isolation from Québec. Once immigration before, Ferdinand Gagnon. stopped around 1930 and recent immigrant Gagnon’s story really resonated with me. in Le Forum. He is a bilingual Québécois families stopped going back “home” in the Gagnon was a journalist who envi- living outside the province of Québec. His 1950s and 1960s we then see a couple gen- sioned a national union of French-Canadians in-depth knowledge of history and contem- erations that are largely unilingual. in the US and Canada. He also put some time porary Québec is a huge asset to the team. Around the start of the global pandem- into having Franco-Americans move back ic, I mentioned to Luc that I was looking into to Québec , this didn’t go so well. While he Next Steps starting a bilingual blog that took a different wasn’t always so popular amongst many in th approach to our shared story. The intent of the community at the time (19 century), It will be interesting to see where the blog, Ma famille canadienne-française, his idea really interested me. He was also this goes in the post COVID-19 world. My was to bring the descendants of New France born and raised in Saint-Hyacinthe and spent hope is we can do what Irish-Americans and back together. It would do this by educating quite a bit of time in Manchester, NH. Italian-Americans cannot do. That is, use the Québécois on who Franco-Americans I had a passing conversation with our proximity and recent shared history to are and showing Franco-Americans they can Jesse Martineau from the French-Cana- bring us back together…fulfilling Gagnon’s be proud who they are. Essentially reaching dian Legacy Podcast about names for a Dream. out to Équipe no 2 and pushing back on the potential Facebook group and he brought American narrative I was taught about our up Gagnon…I loved it. I explained the idea Timothy Beaulieu is the Founder of shared culture. Luc was all in. We began to to Luc and literally the next day he created NH PoutineFest, a Trustee at the Fran- create some fun content for the blog and also a Facebook Group – Le rêve de Gagnon or co-American Centre of New Hampshire, Ad- looked at how we could have a unique social Gagnon’s Dream in English. visory Board Member of The Association for media aspect to the page. the Advancement of the French Language What’s the Purpose? and Francophone Culture in the United States, and writes for the blog Ma famille There are quite a few Facebook canadienne-française. groups out there on French-Canadians, most of which focus on Genealogy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it is leaving a gap. Le rêve de Gagnon is focused on the living. Some examples 1) What’s going on in Québec today? 2)What’s Happening in the Franco-American World 3) Businesses in the French-Canadian Com- munity 4) new projects launching and yes “some” genealogy stuff. We don’t shy away from tough topics in the group. If we don’t talk about things how else will we learn? It’s led to some pretty great learning opportunities. We are super fortunate to have some great administrators working with us too. Melody Keilig adds a younger female Fran- co perspective to our group. She is part of the “reborn Francos” and is doing some awe- some work with her blog Moderne Francos. Victoria Lambert and her fiance visit Franco American flag in Montreal Patrick Lacroix needs no introduction Québec City 34 NEW HAMPSHIRE VERMONT SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 have been the poster boy for Ivory Soap. My sister Rachel who was two and my mother REMINISCING, life in the ‘40s who was seven months pregnant with my sister Monique were in the front seat. They by Xavier de la Prade both were rattled but not hurt. When my brother André calls me from The other major event in my first I remember the war years when a flag Vermont, one of our favorite activities is to ten years on the planet was the accident with a star hung from a cable across the main reminisce about our childhood. One day, we in my Dad’s Model A 1929 Ford. Back in street in Graniteville. It was to show we had asked each other what was the first thing we November of 1944 we were all driving to a local boy fighting overseas. I remember the could remember about Graniteville. For me, Uncle Roma’s in Orange, VT. We were all night they knocked at our window during a it was my grandmother’s wake. I was only going to drive down to our grandparents’ in blackout drill. My mother had put on a low two years old. My grandmother passed away Worcester, MA to celebrate Thanksgiving. light to warm a baby bottle. I remember at the age of 63 from a very preventable Uncle Roma had a 1932 Pierce Arrow, a playing outside and shouting “Nazis” when ruptured appendix. However, living on an much more comfortable and safer car for planes flew overhead. Occasionally, we isolated farm 15 miles from the hospital in the 400-mile round trip. It was snowing hard would hear a car horn blaring. Those were the middle winter, that was a death sentence. and it was dark outside. About a quarter of the “Boys of Tuff End“ being rowdy. They Because my grandparents’ farm was so a mile away from my uncle’s place, we had got their kicks by sticking matches in car isolated, the wake was at our house. I can horns. remember the eerie low light in the living Life was good. We had a lot of friends room, the casket itself, but for the life of me, and a lot of freedom. We explored the woods, I cannot remember my grandmother. Both built cabins, snowmen, skied, played hock- André and I, along with four other siblings, ey, etc. School however, did not start on a were all born in Barre, Vermont. My parents positive note. I ran away from school on my were first generation Québécois. However, first day of Kindergarten. That was serious. we lived in Graniteville, about five miles in Dad was called to handle this. He rarely left the hills next to the granite quarries. In one his hot furnace where he made shanks and of the houses we lived in we could see the threads for the drills used in quarrying gran- derricks (huge hundred foot cranes built ite. He found me next to the railroad tracks with Oregon Douglas fir), hear the warning and gave me a soft kick in the tush. “Ne fais whistles and the heartbeat of the compres- plus jamais ça!!!” I think I was frustrated sors. The town was a mixture of Francos because I barely spoke English. I would and Irish but we all got along. The biggest count to twelve in English and then convert controversy was whether or not our parish to French. I did learn to read the “Dick and church, St. Sylvester’s, should be painted Jane” primer quickly and enjoyed reading yellow or green. our weekly “Messenger”. I still remember the picture of Truman holding up the news- OUR FIRST HOUSE paper claiming Dewey had won.

My parents bought their first house THE NEW BUICK in Granitville in 1942 for $900. It was defi- Xavier and Madeleine Laprade wedding, nitely a fixer upper. The only toilet was in May 1940. Standing: Amédée Laprade Even though my parents already had the cellar directly over the sewer pipe. My and Joseph Beaudin. Sitting: Madeleine two boys and two girls by 1947, they had parents, who both grew up on farms, worked (Beaudin) and Xavier. been able to save enough to trade in their hard to remodel it and make it livable. A 1934 Chevrolet for a new Buick. This car a flat tire. My dad decided to walk to Uncle forty hour work week was anathema to was my parents’ pride and joy. Neither drank Roma’s for help. While he was gone, my them. On a farm you worked from sunrise or smoked, they had a big garden and canned brother and I were standing on the back seat to sunset. So, my dad would clean up, relax over one hundred quarts of fruit and vege- looking out the Model A’s rear window. We and have supper after his eight hours as a tool tables, and they always looked for a sale. could see these bright lights coming down maker at the Rock of Ages Corporation and They always shopped at the super market the road. Soon the snow plow’s lights were then put on his carpenter’s apron. Weekends that had a weekly special of three pounds upon us. The driver did not see the black also were spent remodeling. Step by step, of hamburger for one dollar. They barely car on the unlit street in the fast falling our living quarters improved, no more Sat- got by on my dad’s meager salary. My mom snow. Crash, bang!!! I was almost four, so urday night baths in a washtub. I was lucky told me once they had as little as five dollars I ducked. My brother, who was a toddler, did again because being the oldest, I was the in cash sometimes until the next pay check. not. His injuries looked as if he had been in a first to wash in the clean, lukewarm water. I Now the house was remodeled, they war zone, but miracles of miracles, no glass can still remember my mother telling me to had their new car, and they had time on their shards went into his eyes. (Merci à Saint Jo- make sure I washed my “peanut”. hands. What do you do when you’re off seph.) My grandmother was devastated. Vic work, and back then there was no TV? You THE MODEL A FORD was her “petit bonhomme de savon”. With his curly hair and very white skin, he could (Continued on page 36) 35 Le Forum VERMONT MAINE (REMINISCING, life in the ‘40s continued from page 35) of the four houses at $20,000. For our family looked for another job. My dad decided to then head to the beach. We would also though it was devastating. Fortunately, my buy a milk route. That was before the days look for peaches. Monday, Tuesday and parents had a $2,800 fire policy that allowed First-ever online, of the tankers. A milk truck would bring the Wednesday evenings our kitchen became them to buy a duplex. That was the duplex milk cans to a dairy. My dad would get up at a canning factory. As children we all had at the side of the quarry that was later taken bilingual portal to 4:30 AM and collect milk cans before going our responsibilities, like going down cellar down to expand the quarry. I was sent to live the quarry to work an eight-hour day. On to get the empty jars, putting on the rubber with Uncle Roma and Aunt Bertha’s family. Franco American archives weekends, he would fill up the truck with gaskets, covers, etc. They were all super nice but the second day, shavings for different clients. He would take At Easter we always got two bunnies. like at school, I ran away. Back at the fire launches this spring my brother and I on these Saturday mornings We loved them but we did not know they scene the next day I was walking through and on some of them we froze. After about were for food. They were our responsibility. our burnt house when a beam fell on my March 12, 2021 a year my father started having ulcers. He Lo and behold, we started having baby bun- head. My dad was at the end of his rope. He was just working too hard. He would go see nies. By Thanksgiving, when there was no begrudgedly brought me to Doctor Bailey’s a supposed healer, “Le Septième”. In Franco more grass to feed them, my dad butchered for stitches. No wonder he had ulcers. folklore the seventh son of the seventh son them. We all helped prepare them for the One of my Dad’s neighbors, Mr. Le- has magical curing pow- tourneau chided my dad one ers. I do not know if he Sunday before the fire. He helped my dad. He must told my dad that God would have seen a regular doctor punish him for working on also because he took this Sundays. My dad took this as medical powder in a funny an omen and never worked on blue oval box for a long Sundays again. time. One thing for sure The rest of 1949 was he must have told him to spent helping our dad rebuild slow down, so my dad sold the house. It was a slow pro- the route. cess because my dad was Before selling the building alone most of the 1947 Chevrolet flat bed, time. All of his friends and we had an unusual holiday. relatives who had good inten- “Mon oncle Oscar et mon tions of helping rarely if ever oncle Moïse” came down showed up. We did live in an from Quebec to Granite- unfinished house for a while ville with my Mom’s aunts The new BUICK 1947 but like they say in French, as well. The gang decided we would take the Chevy to Worcester to freezer. I will never forget the visit my grandparents with everyone in the day when my brother Vic said, body. With Uncle Roma’s family we were holding up an intestine filled probably fifteen. We must have looked with rabbit scat, “Doesn’t this like gypsies but we made the 200-mile trip look like a rosary?” safely not withstanding a lot of moaning and groaning. FIRE!!!!! FIRE!!!!!

THE 1936 LASALLE In 1949 Armageddon hit. My dad and uncle were out My dad’s next car was a classic. It was cutting the wood they needed a 1936 LaSalle. It was basically the Cadillac to heat their homes in the with a different grill. It was black with a winter. Around 6:30 on a hot hood a mile long and a spare on each fender. August night, my uncle came It looked like a gangster car. I asked my running to say that our house dad why it had two spares. His answer was, was on fire. What happened The spectacular picture above, taken shortly after the fire at Upper “Sometimes you need them”. On one of our was that our neighbor fixed Graniteville started last evening, shows three homes which were destroyed trips to Lake Champlain we did need them. cars as a sideline and he was by flames. Left to right the houses are those of Joseph Letourneau, Homer Every summer our Sunday outings Miller and Xavier LaPrade. The unoccupied Rene Morin red block, not soldering a gas tank. The tank shown in the photo, located on a hill back of the Letourneau home, was would be the eight o’clock Mass and then had not been completely emp- the fourth building burned. (Photo by Jeanne Rousse.) off to the tomato fields and the fruit stands tied so it exploded and four around Mallet’s Bay. The weather was mild- houses burned that day. One of the big prob- “Petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid”. Little er near Lake Champlain and a lot of tomato lems was the lack of a water and hydrants. by little, the bird builds his nest. growers would let you pick your own. We Hoses had to be laid out for a mile to an old So, thank you André for reminiscing. would fill two or three bushel baskets and quarry. In the newspaper, they put the losses Each one of our lives is quite a journey. 36 VERMONT MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021

First-ever online, bilingual portal to Franco American archives launches this spring

March 12, 2021

Franco American Programs at the Uni- versity of Maine will collaborate with four other institutions in the region to launch the Postcard is from the Fortunat Michaud collection first-ever online, bilingual portal to Franco https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/fmichaud_postcards/ American archives and history collections from repositories across North America this spring. “We also recognize, however, that American Digital Archives/Portal fran- Franco American Digital Archives/ Franco American primary sources exist co-américain at 7 p.m. on March 16. This Portail franco-américain, formerly known outside of our partners’ care,” Pinette says. online event is free and open to the public. as the Franco American Portal project, will “In fact, thousands of records documenting Anyone can register for the event through offer access to various primary sources the lives and activities of Franco Americans the Franco American Programs’ events about the French-Canadian, Acadian and beginning in the nineteenth century can be calendar. Québécois(e) diaspora communities of the found in over 75 other major collecting in- Northeast. Available records will include let- stitutions throughout the United States and “This collaboration works hard to ters and other correspondence, scrapbooks, Canada, including the Library of Congress, overcome barriers to the discoverability of family and business records, newspapers, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Franco-American archival materials, and in photographs and other media depicting Fran- Québec (BAnQ), New York Public Library, doing so it aims to open them to new forms co-American history, culture and people. Harvard University and more.” of study, and to improve access to pieces of our communities’ histories that may have Information about the project can be “It is our intention to place all of these become hidden,” says Jacob Albert, project found at francoportal.org. materials and their home repositories in manager for Franco American Programs conversation with one another through our who led development for the project. “This online, bilingual portal to portal. Making plain the contents of Franco Franco American archives, manuscripts, American collections and their locations For more information about the proj- and finding aids begins with our partners’ collaboratively will cast light on the truly ect and its contributors, contact Pinette, bilingual, materially diverse collections as national and international scopes of Franco [email protected], or Albert, jacob. the portal’s originating cache,” says Susan American history and life,” Pinette says. [email protected]. Pinette, director of UMaine’s Franco Amer- ican Programs. Primary sources detailing the UMaine has been active in Franco The National Endowment for the French-Canadian, Acadian and Québé- American studies for more than 50 years. Humanities provided an almost $60,000 cois(e) diaspora of New England can The university established the Franco Amer- grant to help finance the development of sometimes be difficult to find. The digital, ican Centre in 1972, then created a Franco Franco American Digital Archives/Portail bilingual archive portal will make them American Studies Program, still the only one franco-américain. The University of Maine more visible, searchable and accessible to of its kind in the U.S., in the 1990s. at Fort Kent Acadian Archives, the Univer- researchers, educators, students, genealo- sity of Southern Maine Franco-American gists and the general public. Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; Collection, the French Institute at Assump- Users will be able to browse and [email protected] tion University in Worcester, Massachusetts, search through the catalog of records fea- and the Msgr. Wilfrid H. Paradis Archives & tured on the website, which it will categorize https://umaine.edu/news/ Special Collections at Saint Anselm College by indicators like place, family name, sub- blog/2021/03/12/first-ever-online-bilin- in Manchester, New Hampshire, partnered ject or cultural theme. Once a user selects an gual-portal-to-franco-american-archives- with UMaine to develop it. item to view, the portal will connect them to launches-this-spring/ The project team is seeking other in- that item at its original source in the digital stitutions willing to contribute to the portal sphere or a physical archive. by sharing access to their materials depicting UMaine Franco American Programs Franco American history. will host a Zoom presentation for Franco More from Maine on page 38 37 Le Forum CONNECTICUT MAINE of the diaspora. At home, my grandparents over the Atlantic, they survived a war that used French for different purposes. For my should have stayed back in Europe, and A Solitary Birch father, French was a secret language only they suffered through the Great Upheaval his parents shared; it was spoken in short where families and friends were ripped apart by quips and hushed tones. For my mother, violently. They endured forced sterilizations Caroline Castonguay it was used more often, although she and in Vermont and even harassment from the her sister tended to respond in English. KKK. Yet, we are a stocky breed and we Last year, when I studied abroad in It became clear during their adolescence persist against all odds. France, I expected a home-coming of sorts. that speaking any French at public school I want to know if my ancestors feel French-Canadians are quite proud of was somehow wrong, and that perpetrators indignant at being seen by my mother only their culture. However, there tends to be a would be punished accordingly. My aunt in half-shadow and then cast aside. But I subliminal message ushered from genera- was forced to repeat kindergarten and during also want them to know that I’m carrying the tion to generation that France is still the old middle school, my mother was back-hand- ceinture fléchée; I’ve tied it firmly around country. France is still adorned in luxury, ed in the face with a thick, hard-covered my waist as I continue to move forward, Versailles its crowning jewel; it is the aloof dictionary, courtesy of an English-speaking with them, for them, because of them. I still pinnacle of sophistication. For all my ances- nun. On multiple occasions, their knuckles make pâté chinois, my grandmother makes tors, France was home, if only for a time. were rapped, the wood cracking so loud that tourtière. Our holiday house is filled with Yet when I arrived and began speaking the classroom was disconcerted into a timid the sweet aroma of ployes, tarte au sucre, with people there, I felt alienated. I had no silence. They were forced to assimilate. It and bûche de noël. I still tap my feet and special connection and there was no famil- was at this point that the language was lost, link arms with my younger sister when I iarity to be found. People were not taken for when I was born, I was not taught a lick play a quadrille on Spotify. My heart still with my last name. There were no signs of of French. aches upon hearing C’est la belle Francoise. recognition, no sentiment of reunion. My I still tell and translate our stories of oral Quebecois expressions were shunned, and I’m angry because I feel tradition, from the “Chasse-Galerie” to the any detection of a non-native Parisian accent “Loup-Garou”. I have even picked up Que- led to being ignored or worse, laughed at. I am too American to be becois vocabulary and phrases, which I try For so many years I studied French so as to French-Canadian, and too to use as often as I can. I am the raconteur connect with that lost part of me. I told my of my family. host mom when I initially arrived that I was French-Canadian to be But I also want mes aieux to know considering living there someday. She American. I’m angry. I’m angry because I feel I am turned to look at me incredulously and told too American to be French-Canadian, and me “I don’t think you should do that”. Why? I formally learned French in high too French-Canadian to be American. I’m In her words, “you’re French-Canadian”. school and college. I attended classes, angry because I am the sole individual in Distinctly not French; somehow lesser. poured over toppling mountains of books, my family, outside of those in Canada, who Clearly, too much time had been spent in diligently listened to French music for still speaks even a little French. Hundreds the New World and so any familial bonds, in hours, practiced and honed my speaking at of years of tradition and wisdom, lost in a their eyes, had dissolved. I was just another every opportunity. However, nothing could few strokes of the tongue - yet, it means a stranger. ever teach me my grandparents’ accent. My lifetime of searching for me. Why didn’t my At this point, I decided to lean more grandparents don’t speak with a modern school teach me about the Great Upheaval? into my true heritage. But, even now I won- Quebecois accent; they speak with an older Why did I have to dig through Google to find der: what is a French-Canadian? I want to Acadian accent. While similar, there are historical figures like Léo Major? Why do ask my ancestors that question, and I want to distinct linguistic and auditory differences we in America rejoice at posters that declare know if it’s already too late for me since I am that are difficult to replicate. When they die, sentiments such as those along the lines of: writing this in English. I want them to hear their antiquated language will die with them. “if you’re reading this in English, thank me, to hear my case, and to decide for me My mother is still subconsciously a soldier”? I wonder what my 11th great who I am. Have too many winters passed? ashamed of her heritage. Rural French-Ca- grandmother, the first French child born in My family is completely French-Ca- nadians have a reputation, or at least they New France in 1620 would think upon hear- nadian, with no exceptions on either side. used to, of being rough - alcoholics and ing demands of “speak English, you’re in It is filled with names like Roche and Louis drug-users. My own family lineage is full America”. I wonder if their children would and Jacques, with men and women with of poor potato farmers who placed zero have been kept in cages too. dark hair and fair skin like fresh snow. Their value on education. By middle school, many Whenever I have the time during the eyelids tend to droop tenderly at the edges, had left to work full time in the potato and winter season, I go walking in the woods. and their noses tend to be more proud and tobacco fields or to fell lumber in the dense There, the world is shrouded by a white veil; prominent. My grandparents were all from sylvans of the glacial north. What my mother I like to believe that I’m piercing it, that I’m Canada. They came from simple farms and doesn’t acknowledge or perhaps doesn’t walking through a portal made of maple and overcomplicated, large families (my father understand is the oppression pine to the past. I lose myself in thought as had 54 first cousins). When my grandparents French-Canadians have faced. Where I meander, my boots sinking in the deep moved to the United States, they moved to she sees weakness, I see resilience. Our snow. In another’s gaze perhaps I’m a ghost, a factory town for work and became part ancestors survived the perilous journey (Continued on page 39) 38 CONNECTICUT MAINE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center Preserving, teaching and sharing for the future. Honoring our past. Celebrating the present.

Biddeford is home to many great Catholique" of Quebec, "La Semaine women, both past and present. We have had Paroissials" of Lewiston and had articles artists, musicians, opera singers, authors, in various French magazines,"Le Messenger civic leaders, teachers, activists and much de New York" and "Renovation" in France. more, but many do not realize Biddeford She won many literary prizes as a had its own “Poet-Laureate” of international result of her writings and poetry. In 1936, fame. Her name was Helene Thivierge. Helene won both first and second prize Helene was one of 5 children born of in an international in a contest sponsored immigrant parents. Her father, Narcisse, was by the National Literary Circle and was a doctor and opened the first french phar- awarded the title of “Poet-Laureate”. She macy in the City of Biddeford. Her mother was awarded the "Medal of Merit" in Boston helped to found the first parochial school in by the French Consul, Albert Chambon on the city under the supervision of Reverend May 7th, 1950. Ponsardin and was Helene’s first teacher. In addition to her writing, Helene Helene also taught at St. Joseph’s School for was involved in many civic organizations The Biddeford Cultural and more than 20 years, the same school that her and causes. She was one of the founders Heritage Center, a joint collabo- mother founded. of St. Andre's Home and Hospital and the ration of like minded people and Helene loved writing and graduated at first president of its auxilary. She was well the top of her class. She wrote under various known, admired and respected in the com- organizations, is hoping to preserve, pen names for "La Justice" in Biddeford, munity. She died in 1963 and is buried at St. share and teach the heritage, culture the "Bulletin" of Biddeford, "Le Soleil" Joseph's Cemetery in Biddeford. and rich history of the City of Bidd- in Quebec. She also wrote for "L’Action eford and its people for present and future generations by piecing togeth- er the fabric of our ethnic quilt,one piece at a time. (A Solitary Birch continued from page 38)

a dark omen of what could be; or maybe in a quick glance I am a contemplative birch tree, thanks to my pale skin and burnt umber tresses. The streams, the frost, the birds, they are all silent. I try to imagine a shack is just up ahead, in a snowbank, with lumberjacks making tire d’erable. Gossamery smoke is twirling and rising from the chimney, en- ticingly dissipating into the arctic breeze. It briefly coils and curls a faint wispy finger, beckoning me forward, only to dematerial- ize with the rest of the apparition. At other times, I dream there’s a cabin with a fire gently roaring inside, filled with all of my forebearers; I walk in, not even needing to knock, and they know me. They even smile. But the vision always melts away as soon as we try to speak; I don’t let the fantasy go Helene awarded the "Medal of Merit" beyond that. Alone in the quiet, I atone by Helene Thivierge in Boston by the French Consul, Albert pausing and listening. I listen for a whisper, Chambon on May 7th, 1950 an affirmation riding the wind which blows southward towards me. Je me souviens. 39 Le Forum RHODE ISLAND

Woonsocket broke. The local newspaper taking with it a section of flooring and the The Mill described water five feet deep pouring down roof above. It wasn’t long before thousands city streets, carrying away a television set, of cartons, which had been perched precar- by Claude Milot a couch, an empty showcase, a mannequin; iously on the edge of exposed floors, began cars from dealerships on their sides, upside to plunge into the cascading surf. I grew up in Manville, Rhode Is- down, on top of each other; mud all over The demons of destruction weren’t land, a village on the Blackstone River, four everything. finished. Less than a month later the mill miles south of Woonsocket. Towns downriver fared no better, burned to the ground. People came from The Blackstone has been called the especially the mills in places like Albion all over to see it; so many, in fact, that their hardest-working river in the United States. and Ashton where my mother had worked in cars blocked some roads needed by fire It is not long, flowing a mere 48 miles from 1943. Raging waters ripped the steel bridge equipment to reach the blaze. its source near Worcester, Massachusetts, to in Berkeley from its moorings; debris piled The Manville fire was the largest Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where it empties up against other bridges; spectators gathered fire in Rhode Island history. People who into Narragansett Bay. But In those 48 miles above to watch the tumbling waters. looked down from Woonsocket saw a huge the river drops 1,300 feet, supplying water- I went down to the Manville bridge cloud of smoke; some thought it looked power for 200 years to a string of mills along to see for myself. The river was so high I like an atomic bomb had been dropped. The the way. One of those mills was in Manville. smoke could be seen from Providence, 20 I say “was,” because a complex of retirement miles away. homes now covers the area where the mill Authorities could not agree on how once stood. the fire started. A friend and former class- The Manville mill has a long his- mate of mine claimed to have the definitive tory. At its apex in the early decades of the version. He told me that that sparks from 20th century it was the largest textile mill acetylene torches used by welders working in all of New England, with over 100,00 on the roof during repair operations had spindles, 4,200 looms, and as many as 3,200 fallen through the roof and ignited rubble on workers. Then the Depression hit, reducing the floor below. The flood had destroyed the production by 50%. In 1932 employment water lines that fed the sprinkler system, and dropped to 400. But fortunes were soon by the time fire engines showed up, the fire to change. When World War II produced was out of control, fed by exploding barrels a great demand for cotton cloth, it turned of chemicals, walls with who-knows-how- Manville into a boom town. Some 2,500 mill many coats of paint, plus 800,000 square employees worked three shifts, 24 hours a feet of wooden floors impregnated with a day, to satisfy the demand. Sadly, the good century’s worth of oil drippings from hun- times did not last. dreds of textile machines. The post-war period saw many of Within minutes the blaze was the Blackstone Valley textile mills move Manville Mill, Largest fire in Rhode so hot it destroyed a nearby crane. Fire south where labor was plentiful and cheap. Island, September 12, 1955 companies concentrated on wetting down The Manville plant was no exception. buildings across the river. Fortunately, winds Unable to restore the mill’s glory days, the couldn’t tell where the 18-foot dam was. carried the fire downriver, and the village owners closed its doors in 1948. From then The water barely passed under the bridge, was spared. Five hours after the fire started on, the mill would be used as a storehouse which had been 30 feet above the river be- there was nothing left to burn. by various companies. But that was not the fore the flood. I saw a refrigerator float by. A large flock of pigeons circled the end: it would come less than a decade later Others said they had seen coffins. That may remains for hours. They had roosted in the with a disaster seared in my memory. very well have been true, because when the mill towers and now had no place to land. The month of August in 1955 had Horseshoe Dam broke, the rushing waters The same could symbolically be said for the been hot and dry, and people were hoping carved a huge swath out of the cemetery many hundreds of villagers who had earned for a little rain to break the spell. On August below. Dozens of caskets went for a ride their living in the mill before a flood and a th 18 they got a lot more than hoped for. A through Woonsocket streets looking for a fire had reduced 200 years of history to a dying Hurricane Diane passed over the area new final resting place. pile of smoking rubble. and deposited a record 9.5 inches on Woon- Spectators came from all over to socket. Some surrounding areas got as much view the worst destruction of all. Standing as 11 inches. Cold Spring Park where I had on the bridge, they witnessed the mill’s played Pony League baseball was under wa- weave shed, which had straddled the Black- ter. Several streets were washed out. Flood stone for more than a century, topple into the waters threatened industrial properties all boiling, flood-swollen river. With it went the along the river. One man was electrocuted five-story brick tower jutting from the west when he tried to remove a live power line side of the mill. Then a huge section of the from his son’s car. Then it got worse. main building, undermined by the torrent The dam at Horseshoe Falls above below, fell into the river. A wall collapsed, 40 Le Forum BOOKS/LIVRES BOOKS/LIVRES had it been published in Biddeford. Back 50 years ago when I started writ- https:// ing about Franco-Americans, I concentrated digitalcommons. on their most common occupation, mill library.umaine. Franco-Americans workers. Recent books also focus on Franco edu/cgi/ Americans as millworkers. In his excellent viewcontent. of the State of Maine book entitled, A Distinct Alien Race, David Vermette writes that French Canadian mi- U.S.A. and Their grants were generally poor when they came to New England and, at least in the first few Achievements generations, remained poor when compared to other working-class ethnics. Michael Guignard During the course of my research on Alexandria, VA Franco-Americans, I slowly shifted the fo- He is a member of Union St. Jean Baptiste, For many years, I have had in my cus of my study to learn more about Franco C.O.F. (Catholic Order of Foresters) and possession a book I bought from a private American businessmen and professionals in Artisans.” (p. 77) collector entitled Franco-Americans of the my home town of Biddeford and elsewhere So in 23 years of marriage, Mr. State of Maine U.S.A. and Their Achieve- in Maine. The Franco Americans of the Hélie fathered 12 children but only three ments. It was published in 1915 by the State of Maine provided me with a new survived infancy or adolescence. Almost Royal Press in Lewiston, Maine with J.H. source of information. all the biographies mention the number of Burgess listed as the editor. It is seldom In a nutshell, the biographies in the children born to the individual described cited in books about Franco-American his- book invariably mention that the subjects and the number who survived. The infant tory and is not in any holdings of libraries are hard-working, honest and “held in high mortality rate was depressing to read, and that I frequent in Maine. The editor states esteem” in their community. The short bi- Mr. Hélie arrived in Brunswick 7 years after in a preface that “the work seeks to make ography of Joseph Hélie is representative of the diphtheria epidemic that hit Brunswick in familiar to English reading people the status the story of many of the other 203 subjects 1886 as described by David Vermette. (pp. of those French-Canadian birth or parentage of the book. 131-142) I find it curious that the authors in the professions, business, religious and “Among the most prosperous Fran- of The Franco-Americans of Maine would social affairs of our State.” It reads like a co-American businessmen of Cumberland have included such an alarming statistic in publication that would have been produced County, Maine must be included Joseph a book aimed at showing the successes of by the Chamber of Commerce. Hélie, the well-known baker of Brunswick. those migrants they were describing. Child The book contains 204 short biog- Moreover, he is one of the most representa- mortality was so common, I guess, that the raphies of notable Franco-Americans in tive of his race considered from an industrial authors did not give it a second thought. In the state of Maine. Eighty-seven are from standpoint, achieving pronounced success Brunswick, even Francis Cabot and his wife Lewiston which, according to Mr. Burgess by his own exertions, enterprise and pro- Mary Louisa, who owned the overcrowded, boasted 10,841 Franco-Americans out of gressive methods. Mr. Hélie was born in mill company tenements without proper a population of 26,247 in 1910. Trailing St. Can. P.Q., Canada , in April 1870……… sanitation that housed Franco-American far behind Lewiston in second place was (on) June 1, 1892, the family removed to workers, “buried two of their ten children.” Biddeford where there were 19 Francos Augusta, Maine , and then to Brunswick in (Vermette, p. 141) listed out of a Franco population of 8,697. November, 1893. Mr. Hélie’s bio contains the phrase Biddeford’s population was 17,079 in 1910. Mr. Hélie was first employed at farm- “one of the most representative of his race.” The other 98 Francos listed are scattered ing and then, at the age of 19, he commenced (p. 77) The term “race” is found throughout throughout the state. to learn the trade of baker. He continued the book. “Possessing the various traits of Editor Burgess adds that “fully two- in this employment for Saint Maria for 20 his race that have gained so much for it in thirds of all of the personal property tax in months and then on April 1, 1897 established the State of Maine” is how Lanio Bérubé Lewiston was paid by Francos.” Lewiston his present prosperous baking business. of Lisbon is described (p. 81) “No citizen was also featured in the photographs at the Four skilled assistants are employed on av- probably is a better representative of the race beginning of the book including two of its erage, and the products stand unsurpassed than F.X. Marcotte of Lewiston.” (p. 84) priests, St. Mary’s General Hospital with in high-grade excellence with the demand Joseph Leblanc, President of the Lewiston a photo of one of its founders, Dr. Louis steadily increasing. ……………Mr. Hélie Steam Dye House “has been practically an Martel, the Dominican monastery, the old was married in Augusta, October 16, 1892, eyewitness to the great increase and impor- St. Peter’s Church, the Dominican block, the to Miss Marie Lepage and 12 children tance of his race” (p. 98) George Simpson, a New St. Peter’s Church, the Healy Asylum have been born to them. Three of whom clothier from Waterville, is “considered one and the Association St. Dominique’s Club are living. Mr. Hélie has not only met with of the most influential of his race:” (p. 87) House. There are no photographs of any financial success, paying as he does $100 in There are only five non-francophone sur- Franco institution in York County with only real estate taxes and doing a large annual names in the book and all of them had both two francos listed for Sanford and none for volume of business, but he is esteemed uni- parents born in Canada and had French-Ca- Saco. It is interesting to speculate what such versally in Brunswick for his commercial nadian mothers. Parents were always listed vignette of biographies would have featured integrity and good qualities of citizenship. (Continued on page 42) 41 SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (Franco-Americans of the State of Maine in 1901, he and his wife had five children, pen…….. in the interests of his race” in U.S.A. and Their Achievements continued “three of whom are living.” Lewiston (p. 190) while Alfred Bonneau from page 42) Biddeford’s other counterpart to Dr. is also recognized as “wielding a trenchant in these biographical sketches as were the Wiseman would have been Dr. George pen………among those of his own race.” number of brothers and sisters and the num- Précourt who having graduated from Saco’s (p. 153) Both are cited as great business- ber surviving. The infant mortality among Thornton Academy in 1904 matriculated to men though and for their civic-mindedness. the children of the subjects of this book was “the Bowdoin Medical School, graduating There is no mention of them having been in- lower than among their brothers and sisters. with the degree of M.D. in 1908.” From terdicted by the Bishop of Portland for their Eugenicists and nativists at the time high school graduate to M.D. in four years! role in the Corporation Sole controversy, an that The Franco-Americans of Maine was “Always deeply interested in all measures intra-ethnic, public conflict that no doubt did published referred to Franco-Americans as a and movements that may be of benefit to his nothing to endear French Canadian migrants “race” – an inferior race and “a distinct alien race” Dr. Précourt organized La Cause Na- among the WASPs of Maine. race.” I find it curious that editor Burgess tional. (page 201) Burgess does not mention Unfortunately, there was not one uses the term “race” throughout his book that La Cause National was the organization woman featured among the 204 biographies. simply as a synonym for ethnic group or which opposed the Bishop of Portland No nuns are mentioned, even those who nationality when describing very favorably during the Corporation Sole Controversy or were school principals. No women who the 204 subjects he writes about. But there that he was interdicted for his efforts. He were teachers, journalists or millinery and was never a negative word attributed to any was subsequently elected mayor of Bidd- other shop owners that catered to women’s of Burgess’ subjects. Like with Mr. Hélie, eford but after The Franco-Americans of clothes and shoes are listed. Two of the when one of those described paid property Maine was published. 204 subjects are featured with a photo of tax in the three figures, Burgess made sure While doing research on the Fran- their wives and children: Henri Brosseau, to highlight the achievement. co-American community in Biddeford, I a pharmacist in Rumford and wife Eve and The occupations of these 204 promi- read the Pepperell Sheet, an internal textile Philippe Roy, a grocer in Fort Kent with nent Franco-Americans were varied. They company newsletter. Employees with many wife Lina. (p. 110 and p. 142) Except for were grocers, furniture dealers, clothiers, years of service were regularly recognized the priests, all subjects who provided photos actors, musicians, priests, public servants, for their service. There was no place where wore coats and ties for those photos. pharmacists, shoemakers and shoe repair- one could read about employees who had Having worked in the immigration men, jewelers, bakers, candy makers, watch used the mills as a stepping-stone to more field and still doing pro bono work now, I repairmen, lawyers, doctors, undertakers, remunerative, less physically taxing and get a chance to meet many foreign nationals journalists, traveling salesmen, sales clerks, higher status employment. who have recently immigrated to the U.S. photographers, insurance agents, real estate Most of the 204 featured migrated Recent immigrants I know generally do well agents, retail clerks, tailors, bookkeepers, from Canada. Their first stop often was in the U.S. economy. They open start-up policemen, firefighters, politicians and ac- not the city that they eventually settled in. companies at a greater rate than those born countants. Fourteen doctors were listed, One bio that caught my eye was Nacisse in the U.S. although the effects of this pan- as well as 4 lawyers and 4 dentists. Most Renouf who had married the daughter of a demic could easily wipe out some of the of these professionals had been educated prominent band leader in Biddeford, Pierre gains made by those who have immigrated in Canada. An exception was Dr. Robert Painchaud, who is not listed in the book. recently. But immigrants are generally Wiseman, Lewiston’s first Franco mayor Born in Trois Pistoles in 1865, Renouf went the more ambitious, risk-taking and hard and Maine’s second behind Albert Marcille to Troy, New York at the age of 17. “At the working segments of their populations of Biddeford. “Dr. Wiseman is largely age of 20 in 1886, Mr. Renouf shipped on a back home. Our ancestors were once those a self-made man” (p.46) After a career in whaler from Boston to the West Indies and immigrants. Of the 204 subjects of The business, he entered Bowdoin College’s the coast of Africa. From here he shipped to Franco-Americans of Maine, almost 90% medical school and also studied at the Post the Azores, at Port Horta, where he remained were born in Canada. Graduate Hospital in New York City. The two years and made himself familiar with the In summary, the authors of The other famous Franco-American doctor in Portuguese language spoken there and he Franco-Americans of Maine write: Lewiston, Louis Martel, who was instru- speaks several languages fluently.” He then “Many……………have noted the fact that mental in founding “Ste. Marie’s Hospital” went to England and Ireland and to several numerous young men seeking employment was educated at Montreal’s College of European countries. Upon his return to the in the industrial centres of Maine have Physicians and and Surgeons. He is the U.S., he worked in the mills in Lewiston for gained final business success from a very only subject among the 204 who received 3 years and then settled in Biddeford where humble beginning. This shows, better than recognition posthumously, having passed he worked as a photographer. “In 1893 he by any other means, the sterling traits of away in 1897. (p. 46) Marcille is described became established in the real estate and the race as applied to enterprise, ambition as “Biddeford’s highly esteemed ex-may- insurance business……The business today to advance, thrift, and earnest endeavor.” or………….he is one of two of his race to is one of the most successful of its kind in (p. 103) I trust that the continued flow of thus serve” (p. 147) After graduating from entire York County (p. 184-85). Renouf legal immigrants which until very recently Biddeford High School, Marcille worked married in 1891 and “five children have numbered over one million a year in the as a stone cutter in a quarry for 8 years been born two of whom are living.” (p. 185) past decade will not render socio-economic followed by three years as a grocery store The editors of both Le Messager and mobility a thing of the past in America, clerk. Before being elected mayor in 1910, La Justice are featured. Jean Baptiste Cou- although such mobility may have to wait he served as city clerk for 3 years. Married ture is described as “wielding a trenchant until the second generation. 43

Le Forum BOOKS/LIVRES BOOKS/LIVRES Cormier Genealogy: Generations 1-7 by Michael B. Melanson

In the spring of 1644, Robert Cormier, a master ship carpenter, his wife, Marie Péraud, and their two young sons, Thomas and Jean, sailed on the Le Petit Saint-Pierre from La Rochelle, France, to Cape Breton (Nova Scotia). Robert was among the tradesmen hired to work at Fort St-Pierre (today, St. Peters). His three-year contract was the longest among the men and his salary of 120 livres a year was the second highest. He was also the only one to take his family with him. In the 1670s, Thomas Cormier, his wife, Marie-Madeleine Girouard, and their young family were among the pioneers who founded the colony of Beaubassin, Acadia. They settled in the village of Ouescoque (Amherst Point, Nova Sco- tia), a place the Cormier family called home for 80 years. In 1755, the forced deportation of the Acadian people tore families apart. While some Cormiers were deported and held prisoner in South Carolina and Georgia, others escaped into the woods only to experience the horrors of refugee camps. Cormier Genealogy: Generations 1 – 7 tells the story of these remarkable and resilient people from their first arrival in Acadia to their post-deportation resettlement in New Brunswick, Québec, Cape Breton, Louisiana, St-Pierre et Miquelon, and St-Domingue (Haiti). This well-documented, 643-page paperback includes a 5,900-person index, complete endnotes, and a full bibliography.Michael B. Melanson is also the author of Melanson-Melançon: The Genealogy of an Acadian and Cajun Family; The Melansons of Southeastern New Brunswick ~ A Genealogy; Journey: An Irish-American Odyssey; and Journey Genealogies: Hart, Cunningham, Hanney, Feeney, Mackey & Mahoney.

https://www.amazon.com/Cormier-Genealogy-Generations-Michael-Melanson/dp/0975260944/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&key- words=Cormier+Genealogy&qid=1616442289&s=books&sr=1-1

Leduc to LaDuke: Ancestral Journey from Canada to America

by Russell Larson

Nearly 400 years of family history covering the Leduc family name. From their beginnings in France to the arrival in New France, and finally America, their history and stories tell the pioneering spirit of this family.

https://www.amazon.com/Leduc-LaDuke-Family-History-America/dp/B08XGSTQ2V/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=L educ+to+LaDuke&qid=1616442158&s=books&sr=1-1 43 Le Forum MUSIC/MUSIQUE POETRY/POÉSIE-BOOKS/LIVRES

NEW!I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy

An extensive collection of personal interviews, oral histories, home recordings, collected books and hand-written manuscripts reflecting the rich French-American fid- dle tradition that flourished around New England urban and metro areas in the mid-20th century. The principal players in this collection include Tommy Doucet, Emil Melanson, Oliver Tremblay, Alcide Aucoin, Romeo Lemay and Gerry Robichaud, all of whom played together, shared tunes and accompanied one another.

Includes 2-CD set of original home-recordings from the 1940’s and ’50’s $24.95 + $4 S&H to all U.S. states.

About Frank Ferrel Frank Ferrel is widely regarded as a leading authority on North Amer- ican traditional fiddle music. Along with his collecting, publishing, and music research, he is considered to be one of the leading American fiddlers performing today. Frank begin his fiddling career at age 8, being first influenced by his grandfather, a traditional musician and native of Ohio and West Virginia. In the early 1970’s, while teaching in New England, He rekindled his interest in traditional fiddling under the influence of local Irish, French-Acadian, and Canadian Maritimes fiddlers. Mr. Ferrel has kept active musically over the years playing for major festivals as well as local music sessions and dances. Frank has made numerous appearances on the nationally broadcast American radio series, A Prairie Home Companion, and is included on their anthology recording, “PHC Tourists.” He has performed with the legendary Celtic group, The Boys of the Lough, both as guest artist on their Scottish Highlands and Islands tours, as well as being a featured performer in numerous festival and concert performances throughout North America. His major label CD release, Yankee Dreams, was chosen by the Library of Congress for inclusion in their Select List of 25 Recordings of American Folk Music. Most recently he was featured in the fall, 2016 issue of Fiddler Magazine. In 2017 Frank was inducted into the North American Fiddler’s Hall of Fame.

http://frankferrel.com 44 POETRY/POÉSIE-BOOKS/LIVRES SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 POETRY/POÉSIE... BOOKS/LIVRES

Habi

by Meghan Murphy

Habi he, Habi who, Rien et tous qui nous sépares, Mais j’ai besoin, seulement, de vous.

Je manque les mots pour m’exprimer, La langue de mes ancêtres, La langue qui reste dans ma bouche, Sont inutiles quand j'essaye de communiquer ce que j'ai au fond de ce cœur.

Habi he, Habi who, Rien et tous qui nous sépares, Kerouac & Presley Mais j’ai besoin, seulement, de vous. André Pronovost Fred A. Reed Mais mon chéri, si tu as le temps, Je vais prendre chaque minute qui reste, Kerouac & Presley takes you on the Pour essayer de prouver ce que je sens, road, guitar slung over your shoulder. Begin- Pour je suis pour toi, comme tu es pour moi. ning in the Montreal neighbourhood where a teenage girl was brutally murdered in Habi he, Habi who, 1975, the International Year of the Woman, Rien et tous qui nous sépares, the story travels to an Abbey in Connecticut Mais j’ai besoin, seulement, de vous. where a former starlet and Elvis co-star fled Hollywood to become a nun. This is La distance est faible contre l’amour et passion, the memoir of a wanderer who sets out to Les deux aux fin, ils nous manques pas rewrite “the blank and flawless page” that C’est claire dans ce que nous lèves chaque jours contre nos tristesses, is America. Inspired by the history of Que- Je te remercie pour d’être ma bouclié contre les temps durs. bec and America, Kerouac & Presley is an American prayer in prose and paragraphs. Habi he, Habi who, Rien et tous qui nous sépares, Originally from Laval, Quebec, André Mais j’ai besoin, seulement, de vous. Pronovost has a Master's degree in Animal Psychology. In 1978 he hiked the Appala- chian Trail from one end to the other. The Comme un cadeau de Dieu lui même, original French version of his seventh book, Je vais garder nos histoire précieux, Kerouac & Presley, won the 2018 Quebec Pour inspirer les possibilités qui vient Arts Council (CALQ) literary prize. He lives J'espère cette offre des mots c’est assez. in Montreal. A three-time winner of the Gover- Habi he, Habi who, nor General’s Award for translation, Fred Rien et tous qui nous sépares, A. Reed has translated works by many of Mais j’ai besoin, seulement, de vous. Quebec’s leading authors, as well as works by modern Greek writers. His most recent Donc, avec ce temp et ce cadeau parfaits work, with David Homel, includes Philippe On y va pour la meilleure chose de nos petites vies Arsenault’s Zora and Martine Desjardins’ Ici vers la, je reste fidèle et forte The Green Chamber. His latest book is Then Je ferai de mon mieux pour toi, moi, et nous. We Were One: Fragments of Two Lives, an autobiographical essay, published in French Habi he, Habi who, by Fides Éditeur. He lives in Morocco. Rien et tous qui nous sépares, Mais j’ai besoin, seulement, de vous. https://www.lindaleith.com/eng/ http://frankferrel.com Pages/bookDetail/Kerouac_Presley 45 Le Forum POETRY/POÉSIE ANNOUNCEMENT POETRY/POÉSIE... FRANCO-AMÉRICAINS -- POURQUOI, POURQUOI PAS? Would the Woods Par Ronald G. Héroux (© Février 2021) Quand même that I know POURQUOI avons-nous Il ne faut pas oublier Les Franco-Américains Notre héritage by Paul Marin Pour la plupart Nos ancêtres. Perdu notre langue natale Would the woods that I know Oublié notre histoire? bare all POURQUOI PAS se réunir encore Comme en dix neuf cents and tell who’s been here Disparu pour beaucoup Soixante seize and when and why? Entre nous Le grand colloque Sont nos liens “Les Franco-Américains Would I learn that others, too, Avec nos cousins La Promesse Du Passé have dialogues with your leafy limbs? Nord de la frontière. or Les Réalités Du Présent”? Were they just thinking board feet? Il me semble aussi Aussi, c’est le temps Que la plupart De renouveler nos liens Did they see you as so many cords? Des Québecois Avec nos cousins or Des Canadiens français Du Nord Were you but pulp and paper Nous ont oublié Pour assurer ENSEMBLE down-river to pay envelope? Comme la France La survivance Did they think of you A laissé tomber De notre langue française as solid fuel La Nouvelle France Au moins notre héritage. meant to spit and crackle Le Canada Français till spent into mounds of gray? Sauf de Gaulle J’ai un peu de chagrin Avec son cri Mais aussi un peu d’espoir Maybe someone had fine pieces in mind “Vive le Québec Libre”. on which to slap polish. Que demain De façon ou d’autre Oui, nous avons été Nous commencerons Were you greeted with a civil tongue, Assimilés, acculturés Une nouvelle histoire by the way, Dans la multitude or was it with but a grunt? D’anglophones Américains. De la Franco-Américanie. Was there no “May I”? or “Sorry big fella”?

Tell me, mighty pine, Were you logged and yarded Was your grandfather felled by an ax, one by one, one keenly edged next to your kin, and made sharper one on the other with the cutter’s spit, and the other made brown on the other with a plug cut fresh until all the others at mid-morn’s break were on top of you for that most telling cut? to please the scaler’s eye?

Was each blow a whack Were you logged and yarded surgically executed and calculated rhythmically? by someone answering to the name Or was it but a series of mindless thuds of Nellie,

followed by the silent sylvan seconds Jake

measuring your last proud stand? or Ned?

4545 46 POETRY/POÉSIE ANNOUNCEMENT POETRY/POÉSIE SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 Franco-Americans of Grandi a Grand Isle Maine, Then and Now (au nord du Maine en 1960) –– par Don Levesque Home J’ai pêché au bôrd su’ Primme Where We Were En arriére d’su’ Leaudivine. The story of Franco-American immi- J’ai marché su’ l’île de Lille gration to Maine is complex and fascinat- Ecouté d’la musique avec ti-Gill, ing—but not a short story to tell. Where We Joué d’la guitar avec Jim pi Jim, Were is a compendium of interactive maps Allé a Van Buren pour voir les filles, and visualizations that investigate the his- Manger des bines l’samedi soir tory and genealogy of the Franco-American Des hot dogs rouge routis b’en noir. community in Maine. Assis su’l’bôrd d’la riviére Saint-Jean Life Along the Rails — Armand Pêcher pour d’la truite, poigner des p’tit blancs, Vachon on Love & Work Between Manger des ployes pi des cortons, Quebec & Maine Jouer au file avec un vieux bouton. Ont allais patiner su’ Guy Beaupré Pi ont allais au movies l’samedi après midi. Jouer d’la basketball au côté d’su’ Neil, Rider jusqu’a Lille avec nos vieux bicycles

Jouer d'la pool s'Octave Caron, Jouer au cartes assis su' l'perron. Aller s'beigner a l'éclûge a Pierre Cyr. Manger des crêpes avec d’la tire. Rider en skateboard dans route a 'Lexis. Voir mon oncle Denis bouére son Pepsi. Manger des groisselles pi d'la rhubarbe sûre, Tying In — Antoinette Therrien Des p'tites pommettes pi des confitures Remembers Lewiston Soigner 'es poules su' pepére Ouellette, Couper du bois su' un vieux joualette. R'garder l' tv su' Guy Beaupré Pendant qu' mon pére prenais une p'tite biére. Rider en chars dans l’chemin des concessions, Ecouter ma mére jouer son accordéon. Sonner ‘a cloche d’école avec un gros clou. Ramasser des noissettes pi des fraises itou

J’ai grandi a Grand Isle au nord du Maine J’ai grandi a Grand Isle au nord du Maine

Don Levesque was born in Grand Isle, went to high school in Van Buren, university Notre 5¢ / Our 5¢: 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 A Farm & Family — The Lives of Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame, neither of which has an actual physical presence Women in Lower Canada anywhere,

Check these stories out and more....

https://francomainestories.net

47 Le Forum COIN DES JEUNES Un Noël pandémique et les Prières

par Virginie Sand-Roy (© 10 Janvier, 2021)

Chez Albert, le Noël 2020 venait sans Maman: Oui, Bev. mémé et pépé. <> maman a dit ses trois filles (Tina, petit bol d’eau bénite à l’autel, maman? Beverly et Ginny), <> d’eau bénite dans un petit bol et apporte-le Tina: Maman, ça veut dire que mémé à l’autel! Ginny: Merci Dieu pour toutes nos n’apportera pas de la tarte à la tourtière? Ginny: Maman, en récitant nos bénédictions, nos conforts et notre abon- Chaque veille de Noël elle nous apporte sa prières, je voudrais jouer de ma flûte et dance. Merci pour tout l’amour, la paix et tarte à la tourtière délicieuse. chanter la chanson <<Ô venez tous, fidèles>> la joie dans nos vies et pour les chansons. Beverly: Et maman, ça veut dire pour que je puisse envoyer nos prières Tina: Merci mon Dieu pour cette que pépé ne nous apportera pas un sac de encore plus haut dans les cieux. Je veux saison magique de Noël et de l’Avent. cadeaux pour sous le sapin de Noël cette m’assurer que Dieu entend nos prières. Beverly: Dieu, merci pour mémé et veille de Noël? Maman: Dieu entendra sûrement nos pépé et pour leurs merveilleux tartes à la Ginny: Maman, quel désastre! Que prières sur les ailes des notes de musique, tourtière et leurs cadeaux. pouvons-nous faire? Il doit y avoir quelque Ginny. Permets-moi d’imprimer quatre (Maman ne pouvait pas arrêter de chose. copies de <<Ô venez tous, fidèles>> pour que sourire et de rire en entendant la démonstra- Maman: Souvenez-vous, mes petites, nous pouvons tous chanter, pendant que tu tion de gratitude de Beverly.) les moments difficiles nous rapprochent de vas trouver ta flûte. Enfin, les quatre membres de la fa- Dieu. Cependant, il y a quelque chose que (Maman a également ajouté sa pierre mille ont prié pour mettre fin à la pandémie nous pouvons faire au milieu de l’adversité. gemme d’amour en quartz rose à l’autel à la et pour garder la famille en bonne santé et Tina, Beverly et Ginny (à l’unisson): dernière minute. Dès que Tina l’a remarqué, heureuse pendant la saison de la grippe. Quoi, maman??? elle a posé une autre question à sa mère:) Elles ont commencé à réciter le <> et <> sur leurs aussi rendre grâce à Dieu pour toutes nos plume de dinde à l’autel pour aider à donner chapelets. bénédictions. grâce à Dieu? Tout à coup, Ginny commença à jouer Ginny: Maman, comment pou- Maman: Pourquoi pas, Tina? La de sa flûte tandis que les autres continuaient vons-nous rendre nos prières plus fortes et dinde symbolise les remerciements. Va à prier le chapelet. À la fin du chapelet, plus puissantes? chercher ta plume de dinde et pose-la près Ginny a distribué les feuilles de chansons et Tina: Oui, maman, comment pou- de la pierre de guérison rose si tu veux. a amené la famille à chanter <<Ô venez tous, vons-nous nous assurer que nos prières sont Eh bien, l’autel Albert était enfin prêt fidèles.>> Sur l’autel, les bougies se mirent entendues par Dieu? pour la cérémonie et la prière avec une plante à scintiller comme par magie. Beverly: Je sais. Depuis les églises poinsettia animée, quatre bougies, quatre Le lendemain a apporté la veille de sont fermées pendant la pandémie, faisons chapelets, un petit bol d’eau bénite, une Noël avec une surprise très inattendue. un autel ici chez nous. pierre précieuse de quartz rose, une plume Mémé et pépé ont appelé les enfants au Maman: Excellente idée, Beverly! de dinde, la flûte de Ginny et quatre copies téléphone et leur ont dit de regarder dans Utilisons la petite table où nous mettons la de la chanson <<Ô venez tous, fidèles.>> leur garage. Tina se précipita à travers la plante poinsettia de Noël. C’était la veille de la veille de Noël. cuisine pour ouvrir la porte du garage. Les Ginny: Parfait, maman! Nous allons Avant le souper, maman et ses trois filles se trois enfants ont alors atteint un sommet dans avoir une vrai fleur Poinsettia sur l’autel sont rassemblées devant l’autel sur quatre le garage et leurs yeux se sont grands ouverts juste comme à l’église. Pouvons-nous cha- chaises. Elles allèrent chacun à l’autel pour de joie et de surprise. Là, assis au centre du cun ajouter une bougie à l’autel? allumer une bougie, faire le signe de la croix garage, elles ont vu un grand traîneau rouge Maman: C’est une merveilleuse idée, avec l’eau bénite et ramasser et embrasser comme celui du Père Noël, tout illuminé de Ginny! Tu sais où sont les bougies votives. leurs chapelets. Puis elles ont chacun jeté lumières scintillantes rouges et claires. Le Apporte quatre bougies à l’autel! les mains devant leurs coeurs et ont com- côté du traîneau indiquait <> Tina: Nos chapelets aussi, maman! mencé à prier: en caractères blancs gras. Sur le siège du Ne devrions-nous pas également apporter Beverly: Je suis tellement reconnais- traîneau elles trouvaient quatre des célèbres nos chapelets à l’autel? sante pour cet autel fait maison qui nous tartes de mémé (deux tartes à la tourtière et Maman: Absolument, Tina. Allez aidera à envoyer nos prières à Dieu. deux tartes à la crème de biscuits graham.) chercher nos chapelets et posez-les sur Maman: Je rends grâce au Créateur Mémé a affiché un signe fantaisiste juste l’autel! pour nos vies, notre bonne santé et pour derrière les tartes, qui disait <> Beverly: Maman, avons-nous de garder notre petite famille en sécurité et bien Pourtant, il y avait plus. Alors que les en- l’eau bénite de l’église? soignée en tout temps. (Suite page 49) 4747 48 COIN DES JEUNES SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021

(Un Noël pandémique et les Prières suite Noël dans son atelier de bois cette année. Tu des tranches de tarte à la tourtière de mémé de page 48) trouveras même la longue corde électrique avec salade, puis pour les tartes aux biscuits dans le traîneau pour connecter les lumières. graham de mémé avec du cidre chaud et fants se rapprochaient du traîneau de pépé, Ton père allumera le traîneau de pépé sur la du chocolat chaud. Après le repas, tout le elles pouvaient voir un énorme sac en tissu pelouse dès que tu m’aideras à apporter les monde a ouvert un seul cadeau pour la veille rouge posé sur le plancher du grand traîneau. tartes et le sac de cadeaux dans la maison. de Noël et puis a regardé la messe de minuit Les enfants sont allés au sac et ont atteint un Ginny: Eh bien, Beverly et Tina, met- à la télévision. Le lendemain, qui était Noël, sommet à l’intérieur: tons-nous au travail en apportant les tartes et la famille a ouvert le reste de ses cadeaux de Tina: Maman, le sac rouge est rempli en plaçant ces jolis cadeaux emballés sous Noël près de l’arbre de Noël. de cadeaux emballés de toutes tailles avec le sapin de Noël. Il s’était avéré que ce Noël pan- des noeuds brillants et un joli papier d’em- Une fois le traîneau vide, le père des démique n’était pas si décevant après tout. ballage de Noël. Pouvons-nous mettre tous enfants a poussé le traîneau sur la pelouse Les prières des enfants ont été entendues et les cadeaux sous notre sapin de Noël? avant puis a branché les lumières. Selon les exaucées. Tina, Beverly et Ginny se sont Maman: C’est ce que pépé veut que enfants, cela semblait ajouter la touche finale senties si reconnaissantes pour toutes leurs vous fassiez. à leurs décorations de Noël en plein air, bénédictions ce Noël et ont remercié Dieu Ginny: Maman, après avoir apporté grâce à pépé Albert. Les enfants se tenaient pendant leurs prières au coucher la veille les tartes et les cadeaux dans la maison, pou- devant la fenêtre du salon et regardaient de Noël et la nuit de Noël. Ce serait une vons-nous exposer le traîneau dans la cour le traîneau de Noël de leur pépé avec une semaine de Noël très mémorable pour la d’entrée avec toutes ses lumières allumées? grande fierté. Les trois filles rayonnaient famille Albert; Noël 2020, un Noël pan- Maman: Oui, ma chère. C’est pour- de joie. Comme c’était la veille de Noël, démique. quoi ton pépé t’a fabriqué le traîneau du Père maman a invité tout le monde à la table pour 49 Le Forum COIN DES JEUNES

A Pandemic Christmas and Prayers By Virginia L. Sand-Roy (© January 10, 2021) At the Albert Family’s home, Christ- The small bottle of Holy Water is on my mas 2020 was coming without Grandma desk. Go ahead and add some of the Holy and Grandpa. “The flu had come this year,” Water to a small bowl and bring it to the Mama told her three girls (Tina, Beverly & altar! Ginny), “and it would be safer for Grandma Ginny: Mama, while reciting our and Grandpa to stay home this Christmas. prayers, I would like to play my flute and This flu is everywhere in the world and many sing the song “O Come All Ye Faithful” so people are dying from it.” I can send our prayers even higher into the and Grandpa and for their wonderful meat heavens. I want to make sure that God hears pies and presents. Tina: Mama, does that mean Grand- our prayers. (Mama could not stop smiling and ma won’t bring over any meat pie? Every Mama: God will surely hear our chuckling upon hearing Beverly’s display Christmas Eve she brings us her delicious prayers on the wings of musical notes, Gin- of gratitude.) meat pie. ny. Let me go print off four copies of “O Finally, all four family members Beverly: And Mama, does that mean Come All Ye Faithful” for all of us to sing, prayed for an end to the Pandemic and to Grandpa won’t be bringing us a sack of gifts while you go find your flute. keep the family healthy and happy during for under the Christmas Tree this Christmas (Mama also added her rose quartz flu season. They began reciting the “Our Eve? gem-stone of love to the altar at the last Father” and “Hail Mary” on their Rosary Ginny: Mama, what a disaster! What minute. As soon as Tina noticed that, she Beads. can we do? There must be something. asked her mother one more question.) All of a sudden, Ginny began playing Mama: Remember, my little ones, Tina: Mama, can I add my turkey her flute while the others continued to pray hard times bring us closer to God. However, feather to the altar to help give thanks to the Rosary. At the end of the Rosary, Ginny there is something we can do in the midst God? handed out the song sheets and led the family of adversity. Mama: Why not, Tina? The turkey into singing “O Come All Ye Faithful.” On Tina, Beverly & Ginny (in unison): symbolizes giving thanks. Go get your the altar, the candles began to flicker like What, Mama??? turkey feather and lay it by the rose healing magic. Mama: We can pray and also give stone if you would like. The next day brought Christmas Eve thanks to God for all of our blessings. Well, the Albert Altar was finally along with a very unexpected surprise. Ginny: Mama, how can we make our ready for ceremony and prayer with a lively Grandma and Grandpa called the children on prayers stronger and more powerful? Poinsettia plant, four candles, four Rosaries, the telephone and told them to look in their Tina: Yes, Mama, how can we make a small bowl of Holy Water, a rose quartz garage. Tina rushed across the kitchen to sure our prayers are heard by God? gemstone, a turkey feather, Ginny’s flute open the door to the garage. All three chil- Beverly: I know. Since the churches and four copies of the song, “O Come All dren then peaked into the garage and their are closed during the Pandemic, let’s make Ye Faithful.” eyes opened wide with delight and surprise. an altar here at home. It was the day before Christmas Eve. There, sitting in the center of the garage, they Mama: Great idea, Bev! Let’s use Before supper, Mama and her three girls saw a large red sleigh like Santa’s, all lit up the small table where we put the Poinsettia gathered in front of the altar on four chairs. with red and clear twinkle lights. The side of Christmas plant. They each went to the altar to light a candle, the sleigh read “Chez Albert” in bold white Ginny: Perfect, Mama! We’ll have to do the Sign of the Cross with the Holy Wa- letters. On the seat of the sleigh sat four of a real Poinsettia plant on the altar, just like ter and to pick up and embrace their Rosary Grandma’s famous pies (two meat pies and at church. Can we each add a candle to the Beads. Then they each clasped their hands two graham cracker cream pies). Grandma altar? in front of their hearts and began praying. displayed a whimsical sign just behind the Mama: That’s a wonderful idea, Beverly: I am so grateful for this pies, which read “Bon appétit/Good Appe- Ginny! You know where the votive candles homemade altar that will help send our tite.” Still, there was more. As the children are. Bring four candles to the altar! prayers to God. drew closer to Grandpa’s sleigh, they could Tina: Our Rosary Beads too, Mama! Mama: I give thanks to the Creator see a huge red fabric sack sitting on the floor Shouldn’t we also bring our Rosaries to the for our lives, our good health and for keeping of the large sleigh. The children went over altar? our little family safe and well cared for at to the sack and peaked inside: Mama: Absolutely, Tina. Go find our all times. Tina: Mama, the red sack is filled Rosaries and lay them on the altar! Ginny: Thank you God for all of with wrapped gifts of all sizes with shiny Beverly: Mama, do we have any Holy our blessings, our comforts and abundance. bows and pretty Christmas wrapping pa- Water left over from the church? Thank you for all the love, peace and joy in per. Can we put all the presents under our Mama: Yes, we do Bev. our lives and for the songs. Christmas Tree? Beverly: Can we add a small bowl of Tina: Thank you dear God for this Mama: That’s what Grandpa wants Holy Water to the altar, Mama? magical season of Christmas and Advent. you to do. Mama: Of course we can, Honey. Beverly: God, thank you for Grandma (Continued on page 51) 494949 50 COIN DES JEUNES SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2021 (A Pandemic Christmas and Prayers continued from page 50) Ginny: Mama, after we bring in the pies and gifts, can we display the sleigh in the front yard with all of it’s lights on? Mama: Yes, my dear. That’s why your Grandpa made you Santa’s sleigh in his wood shop this year. You’ll even find the outdoor extension cord in the sleigh for the lights. Your Dad will light up Grandpa’s sleigh on the front lawn as soon as you help me bring in the pies and the sack of gifts. Ginny: Okay Beverly and Tina, let’s get to work bringing in the pies and putting those pretty wrapped presents under the Christmas Tree. After the sleigh was empty, the chil- dren’s father pushed the sleigh onto the front lawn and then plugged in the lights. According to the children, that seemed to add the finishing touch to their outdoor Christmas decorations, thanks to Grandpa Albert. The children stood in front of the living room window looking out at their Grandpa’s Christmas sleigh with great pride. All three girls were beaming with joy. Since it was Christmas Eve, Mama invited every- one to the table for slices of Grandma’s meat pie with salad, then for Grandma’s graham cracker pies with hot cider and hot choco- late. After the meal, everyone opened just one gift for Christmas Eve and then stayed up to watch Mid-night Mass on television. On the following day, which was Christmas, the family opened the rest of their Christmas presents by the Christmas Tree. It had turned out that this Pandemic Christmas wasn’t so disappointing after all. The children’s prayers were heard and answered. Tina, Beverly and Ginny felt so grateful for all of their blessings this Christ- mas and thanked God during their bedtime DEDICATION prayers on Christmas Eve and Christmas Night. This would be a very memorable Christmas Week for the Albert family; This story is dedicated in loving Christmas 2020, a Pandemic Christmas. memory to my mother, Albertine (Tina) Albert-Pimperal. Mom was born and raised in Waterville Maine, she transitioned into heaven at 92 years old on March 1, 2019. Thank you, Maman, for the French language that is at the heart of my life. –– Ginny Albertine (Tina) Albert-Pimperal

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.