Maine

Resurgence of French in Maine gives francophones hope, but fears, challenges remain

Published

4 months ago

March 17, 2024

Resurgence of French in Maine gives francophones hope, but fears, challenges remain

From the left: Dr. Fern Desjardins, Cathie Pelletier, Richard L’Heureux, Cecile Thornton, Denis Ledoux, and Doris Bonneau attend a Francophonie Day event at the Maine State House in Augusta, Maine on March 12.Juliana L’Heureux/The Canadian Press

For decades, Cecile Thornton had little motivation to speak French. Born into the minority francophone community in Lewiston, Maine, she says she and her family were often the target of ridicule.

“I was ashamed of my francophone roots,” she recalled in a recent phone interview in French. “There were a lot of people who laughed at and mocked us.” Thornton, whose maiden name is Desjardins, married an anglophone and didn’t teach her children French. It eventually disappeared from her daily life, and she says she lost her ability to converse in the language as a result.

That changed in 2016, when she began attending French-language meet-ups led by local immigrants from West Africa. Thornton says those conversations inspired her to reconnect with her mother tongue. “The African community helped me feel proud to be Franco,” she said.

Now 68 years old, Thornton has become an advocate for French speakers in Maine, one of several members of the state’s francophone community striving to preserve their language and heritage. They hope a wave of recent African immigration and a growing recognition of the state’s Franco-American population will spark renewed interest in their cause. But the number of French speakers in Maine is dwindling, leading some to fear for their future.

Like Thornton, many francophone Mainers decided not to pass down their language in the 20th century. Children who did speak French faced further repression. A 1919 state law that banned education in French “had a long-term impact on how people perceived the value of their language,” said Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives, housed in the University of Maine at Fort Kent. Maine only repealed the rule in 1969.

U.S. Census Bureau data underline the francophone community’s growing vulnerability. The agency estimated that about 30,000 of the more than 1.3 million people in the state spoke French at home in 2022, down from 33,000 in 2018 and from more than 40,000 four years before that.

Don Lévesque, a 76-year-old member of the centuries-old Acadian population in northern Maine, says his outlook on local efforts to promote French changes daily. “Sometimes I’m optimistic, sometimes I’m not,” he confessed in an interview.

Lévesque is the president of Le Club Français in the town of Madawaska on the border with New Brunswick, where he now lives. Founded in the 1990s by a group of residents concerned about the survival of their language, Le Club Français now offers French pre-kindergarten and elementary after-school programs, as well as conversational French courses for adults, he said.

Next, the organization wants to create more opportunity for Maine Acadians to develop social lives in French, through such things as community suppers or movie nights. Le Club Français is also planning cultural excursions into New Brunswick, Lévesque said.

But engaging younger residents is a challenge, he admitted. “Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur,” he said. “The French speaking dinosaur in an English world.”

A second French-speaking population, in Southern Maine, descends from Canadian immigrants who worked in the area’s many mills in the 19th and 20th centuries. Jan Sullivan, a native francophone who leads a French conversation group at the Franco Center of performing arts in Lewiston, says African newcomers have “reawakened” the language in the community.

Though immigration has fuelled a welcome boost to French, it might not be enough to save the language, Sullivan warned. “I think it’ll survive for a few more years, several more years,” she lamented. “But eventually, I’m afraid it’s dying.”

Others are resisting the narrative of a culture in inevitable decline. Among them is Susan Pinette, a University of Maine professor and director of its Franco-American Center in the town of Orono, one of several institutions in the state working to publicize the community’s history. In an interview, she said the centre aims to counter portrayals of language and cultural loss by highlighting ongoing Franco-American activism.

“The community is changing and that’s a good thing,” she said. “We don’t want (to be) a museum piece of something that’s stuck in the past.”

Lacroix agreed that what he called the “doom and gloom” narrative often ignores the grassroots efforts that have helped enhance the visibility of Maine’s Acadian community and organizations like his that foreground Franco-American heritage. “I think increasingly we are getting the attention of people in the state, which is really the first step even before we can start asking for greater support,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Maine legislature hosted a small ceremony to celebrate the state’s Francophonie Day. In its resolution proclaiming the holiday, the body cited a “resurgence in the use of the French language and a heightened appreciation of Franco-American heritage throughout the state.”

Despite the challenges facing French in Maine, Thornton said she remains hopeful for its future. She also encouraged Quebecers to cherish their connection to the language.

“If people in Quebec, they hold on to their French, they teach their children French, it’s going to be a very good thing for the language,” she said.

Source link

Related Topics:community Featured French language lewiston Maine New Brunswick People state thornton university of maine

Click to comment

Maine

Maine state police bomb team at a home in Penobscot County

Published

2 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

Maine state police bomb team at a home in Penobscot County

MILFORD, Maine – The Maine’s State Police Bomb Team is at a residence on Call Road in Milford processing a scene for potential hazardous devices.

Officials say there is no danger to the public.

This is a developing story.

Source link

Maine

Charleston man found dead in Maine plane crash

Published

9 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

Charleston man found dead in Maine plane crash

TRENTON, MAINE — A Charleston pilot was found dead on July 25 in the wreckage of a plane crash at a small coastal airport in Maine.

Maine State Police responded to reports of a plane crash at Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton around 12:25 p.m., according to a news release. The aircraft, a single-engine Cirrus SR22, crashed on approach to the airport, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA said the plane had taken off from Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey.

The victims were later identified as 71-year-old Michael Leibowitz of Charleston and 57-year-old Christina Chung of Livingston, N.J. Police said that Leibowitz was piloting the plane before it crashed.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are leading the investigation into the crash, and the NTSB will provide any updates.

Leibowitz was the founder of Call Experts, a family-owned and operated call center based in West Ashley that provides telecommunications and other office services to companies and professionals.

Source link

Maine

In Maine, murdering trees for a killer view is apparently not a crime – The Boston Globe

Published

16 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

In Maine, murdering trees for a killer view is apparently not a crime – The Boston Globe

It galled him and other town officials so much, in fact, that they decided the $1.7 million assessed against the Bonds in a legal settlement and fines and other penalties wasn’t punishment enough. They have now asked Knox District Attorney Natasha Irving and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey to pursue criminal charges.

It remains unclear if the attorney general will intervene, but this week Irving notified Hedstrom she would not seek charges and told the Globe she didn’t believe she could prove a violation of any Maine criminal statutes. So far, Frey’s office is not talking. But the drive for criminal penalties is yet another sign of the acrimony unleashed by a case that generated international headlines and has left lingering resentment about wealthy landowners who might feel they can buy their way out of trouble.

“I am afraid it will not be the last if those of us with the responsibility of protecting the public and the environment do not enforce all applicable laws to the greatest extent possible,” Camden’s town manager, Audra Caler, wrote in her request to Frey’s office.

Indeed, emotions run so hot that the town’s planning director and enforcement officer, Jeremy Martin, says he is routinely fielding angry calls from strangers near and far.

“I check my voice mail and there’s somebody from Florida saying, ‘You gotta nail those people.’ A nice elderly lady from Kennebunkport said, ‘Oh, I can’t believe it. Go after them!’ I get why people here care so much,” Martin said. “But I don’t understand why I’m getting calls from all over.”

Most agree the notoriety of the case is driven at least in part by the wealth of those involved; Gorman is the widow of L.L. Bean chairman Leon Gorman, who when he died in 2015 was described as Maine’s wealthiest resident. The Bonds are a wealthy, politically connected couple from Missouri. Amelia Bond was CEO of a St. Louis foundation that manages money for various charities. Arthur Bond is a prominent architect, and nephew of Christopher “Kit” Bond, who served as Missouri’s governor and a US senator.

Like other wealthy summer residents who have been building or buying big houses here for more than a century, the Gormans were attracted to Camden’s serene beauty and proximity to both the sea and mountains. They bought their waterfront home in 2002. The Bonds paid $1.8 million for theirs in 2018. It has four bedrooms, five bathrooms, and more than 4,000 square feet of living space, located right next to the town’s small beach and park. If there was a drawback, it was that their views of the picturesque harbor were obstructed by Gorman’s house, which is directly in front of and below theirs on a sloping hill, and especially by tall oak trees on Gorman’s property.

Gorman noticed her trees looked sick in the spring of 2022, according to documents and correspondence filed with the town, as well as interviews with town officials. Around that time, Gorman’s landscapers caught tree cutters hired by the Bonds cutting the tops off trees on Gorman’s property and told them to stop.

Then, Amelia Bond approached Gorman in June 2022 and said Gorman’s oak trees looked sick and offered to split the cost of cutting them down, an offer Gorman did not accept.

Instead, Gorman asked her arborist to find out what was wrong with them. The arborist took samples of the trees, which came back positive for Tebuthiuron, a powerful herbicide commonly used on cattle ranches in the Midwest but not in Maine.

The town got involved and the state did its own testing, confirming that Tebuthiuron was present in the trees, the soil, and more worrying, that it had potentially leached down onto the beach, the park, and the harbor.

Exit the arborists, enter the lawyers.

Attorneys representing Gorman and the Bonds, and eventually the town and state, began a series of painstaking negotiations in which the Bonds accepted responsibility for poisoning Gorman’s trees and town land.

A lawyer for the Bonds wrote to the town, acknowledging that Amelia Bond had brought the herbicide from Missouri and used it on the trees, but said she was trying to treat a browntail moth infestation.

In a letter to the town, Daniel Nuzzi, a lawyer for Gorman, hotly disputed the suggestion that the use of the herbicide was anything less than malicious.

“It is my client’s position that the cutting the tops off numerous trees and applying a strong herbicide on her property was admitted to have been done by the Bonds to improve their view of Camden Harbor,” Nuzzi wrote. “There should be no misperception concerning a browntail moth problem with Mrs. Gorman’s property, as none existed.”

Nuzzi said neither he nor his client would comment on whether Gorman supported the town’s push for criminal charges, nor any other aspect of the case.

Through their attorney, Joseph Mendes, the Bonds declined to be interviewed, but Mendes said his clients have been open and cooperative, first with Gorman, and then with the town and state.

“The Bonds sincerely regret these circumstances and the unintended consequences that were created,” Mendes said. “They have expressed remorse and have consistently taken steps to address this situation, and they will continue to cooperate with the parties given the seriousness of the allegations.”

There have been no reported sightings of the Bonds in town this year. No one answered the door at their home here.

Some residents claim the Bonds had to quit the Camden Yacht Club. In an interview, the club’s commodore, Colleen Duggan, said the Bonds are not members, but declined to say whether they once were.

“The only thing I can confirm is that they are currently not members,” she said.

As for criminal penalties, Irving, the Knox County DA, said any admissions the Bonds made in civil settlement agreements with Gorman, the town, and state would not be admissible in a criminal case. She said she concluded the only charge she might feasibly pursue was criminal mischief, a misdemeanor that carries a $250 fine, “which pales in comparison to action already taken.”

Danna Hayes, special assistant to Attorney General Frey, declined to comment about the status of its review.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe reporter and columnist who roams New England. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.

Source link