Two groups archiving L-A’s Franco-American heritage
L-A College scholars are challenging the Franco-American center’s collection
of artifacts.
LEWISTON – The treasures of families sit beside the remnants of garage sales.
Books and blankets lie in piles beside long-playing records and a 1940s softball covered with signatures.
Here, too, is an ornate communion set decorated in gold leaf. Boxes hold sheet music and memoirs. Snowshoes lean against a wall.
The materials fill the spare corners of Lionel Guay’s accounting office. Someday, these treasures and odd artifacts will be part of a new archive inside the Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s.
“So much has been lost forever,” said Guay, the center’s president. “We have to save what we can.”
However, the city already has one archive for artifacts of the region’s Franco-American heritage.
Its operators wonder if another is needed.
“Our concern is: Why duplicate what already exists?” said Barry Rodrigue, an assistant professor of Franco-American Studies at L-A College.
Rodrigue sits on the staff of the school’s Franco-American Heritage Collection, which he called “a true archive.”
Housed at the school, the collection includes thousands of pages of diaries, sheet music, photographs, books, maps and assorted items.
The collection began in 1972 as a history project at St. Dominic Regional High School.
It grew into the Centre d’Heritage Franco-Americain, complete with trustees and its own separate space in downtown Lewiston. Then, in 1990, the collection came under the care of L-A College.
Virtually every piece in the collection, including a stuffed sheep once used in downtown parades, is now catalogued in a computer database and stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled area.
The materials are easily accessible to the public, said Donat Boisvert, the collection’s coordinator. And they’re preserved.
Rodrigue and Boisvert fear materials will be damaged in the care of the St. Mary’s group, and they are annoyed by confusion between the collections.
After all, the school collection was once called Centre d’Heritage Franco-Americain, which translates to Franco-American Heritage Center.
Naturally, people mix up the two, Rodrigue said.
“I’m very sympathetic to a lot of what they are doing,” said Rodrigue. “But they do not have an archive.”
Guay agrees that the Franco-American Heritage Center doesn’t have an archive – not yet.
The former Catholic Church is in the middle of a multimillion-dollar renovation. Money supplied by a statewide bond has helped the group fix crumbling stonework on the outside of the building. Work has also begun in the main hall, where a performing arts center is planned.
But work is proceeding slowly, only as fast as donations come in, Guay said.
The archive would be part of the downstairs portion of the building, where plans are still fuzzy. Details for museum spaces and a reading room, as well as an archive, will likely be worked out in the fall, Guay said.
“We have not sat down and defined the specific plans,” Guay said.
Until then, he vows to keep collecting whatever materials come in. “We’re not out there soliciting,” he said.
People call him when they’re cleaning attics and basements or are gathering the leftovers of garage sales, he said.
A French class at Lewiston Middle School has spent several years collecting audio and video reminiscences from area elders among the Franco-American community. Their 200-plus interviews will go to the St. Mary’s collection. And some people have donated family possessions, hoping merely to share them with others,
“I am not going to turn people away,” Guay said. “It’s just an additional place where we can preserve artifacts.
Both Guay and Rodrigue hope to work together, they said.
Rodrigue would help St. Mary’s seek grant money, if only the two groups can decide on what kinds of things will go to their individual collections, he said.
Once the shape of the St. Mary’s archive is determined, Guay hopes people from both groups can work something out.
“There’s enough items out there for everybody to collect,” he said. “Besides, we’re willing to share.”
Comments are no longer available on this story