Educators bring Maine’s Acadian heritage to life

VAN BUREN, Maine — Van Buren’s Acadian Village brought guests back centuries in time on Saturday as a blacksmith worked in his shop while others sewed quilts and prepared traditional French food.

It is northern Aroostook’s first large-scale immersion event. It coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Acadian Village. The village has seventeen buildings, with the oldest dating back to the 1790s, all of which are connected to early French heritage. The village is the second-largest of its kind in the United States.

The Saturday festivities cap off a “Living Acadia” (or “Acadie Vivante”) workshop that brought educators throughout the entire state together to learn about Maine’s French settlers and heritage. The workshop began Tuesday and ends on Sunday. Activities took place throughout the St. John Valley and included history lessons at the University of Maine at Fort Kent’s Acadian Archives, lectures on Acadian identity, French language lessons and cooking in a traditional outdoor bread oven.

Most of the workshop was specifically for instructors, but the Saturday immersion event was open to the general public.

Fort Fairfield French teacher Jonna Boure led the workshop’s activities. The immersion event at the Acadian was inspired by King’s Landing in Fredericton, which includes people acting out several historical roles. Boure has also worked at the Acadian Village for several years.

Boure, dressed in period clothing, said on Saturday morning after showing guests around the Roy House, the village’s oldest building, that everything was going fantastically. She also commended the work of Cindy Matthews, a Waterboro French teacher who also serves as vice president of the American Association of Teachers of French’s Maine chapter.

While Boure instigated the event, Matthews brought her prior experience with organizing institutes focused on studying Acadian history.

Matthews worked with Boure on creating the workshop. She ran the village’s post office during the event. Even the post office was tailored to accurately represent the experience of sending letters during the early days of French settlers. Guests could use hand stamps on their own postcards, and they would later be sent through the actual mail.

Some participants acted out roles based on historical figures and their heritage. Diane Michaud greeted guests in French as Evangeline, the protagonist in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem about a woman separated from her husband following the expulsion of Acadians in the 1700s. Michaud’s husband, Ron, was dressed as his ancestor Pierre Michaud, one of the first Acadians to come off the boat and settle in the Canadian village of Kamouraska.

At the blacksmith shop, Matt Grandy demonstrated how metal items were made using tools from the 19th century.

“The blacksmith was a very important person in town,” he said. “At the period of time when the Acadian Village was starting, basically everything that was metal would have come from the blacksmith shop – your door hinges, latches, the both on the inside of the odor, nails, different things in the kitchen, some of the pots and pans, and the irons in the fireplace.

The blacksmith’s shop, since nearly everyone had to go there at some point, was also a central community hub where people often met and even gossiped about what was happening in town.

“It was a good place for the exchange of information as well as the exchange of goods,” Grandy said.

People have already approached organizers about holding another event in the future, Matthews said, adding that part of the focus is emphasizing that French people, and the French language, is still alive in Maine.

“We want more people to know that there’s living French in our state, not just a historical thing that happened, but that there are still real people who speak French and that this is a place coming to and learning about,” Matthews said. “So, in terms of that, this has definitely been a success.”