LEWISTON – When Martine Gagne agreed to take charge of the Festival FrancoFun’s food, she had a ready work force.

“I didn’t ask them to help,” she said of her extended family. “I told them.”

Of the 48 volunteers working at this weekend’s restaurant, about three-quarters are her relatives: sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews.

“Even my mother’s here,” Gagne said. “She’s 87 years old.”

The reason is simple, Gagne said. Franco culture, including the food, ought to be preserved.

Folks like her, who grew up in Franco households, have a sentimental attachment to the crepes, creton, blood sausage, buckwheat pancakes and meat pies on the menu. And for the area’s young folks – many of whom are the grandchildren of immigrants – the foods are sadly foreign.

“If we let our heritage go, who are we?” asked Gagne.

It’s something the Lewiston mother never let slip from her own home.

Insistent that their children learn French, she and her husband named their Pekinese pooch “Finette.” Then, they set one rule for the dog. When addressing him, they would speak only in French.

As a result, Gagne’s children, now grown, speak enough French to talk to anybody in Quebec.

“They go to Canada, and people understand them,” she said.

The language skills may come in handy this weekend.

On Friday morning, as the first customers entered the restaurant, Gagne’s daughter took snapshots. Others prepared crepes on the grill or took orders.

Sister-in-law Lise Doyon carried buckets of ice, a job she and her husband, Norman, traveled 1,500 miles to do for free. The couple even moved their vacation from St. Petersburg, Fla. so they could lend a hand.

“I am a gopher, as in ‘Lise, go-for this,'” Doyon said without a hint of bitterness. Gagne had asked her and Norman to help before, at last year’s festival and at the former Festival de Joie, which ended its 13-year run in 2005.

“We wanted to come every year,” said Doyon, who grew up in Sherbrooke, Quebec. “Martine always makes you feel like you’re doing the best job that can be done.”

For the past 10 years of the Festival de Joie, Gagne had run one of several canteens. Her mother volunteered, too.

Some of the Joie came with them.

At 7:30 a.m., while the same clusters of men and women gathered with their coffee, Lionel “Pepsi” Bergeron sang a buoyant version of “Alouette.”

“You meet so many people here that you never see anywhere else,” said Bert Dutil, who was first in line when the place opened.

After breakfast, he planned to go home, pull on a red polo and return as a volunteer.

He also planned to return for dinner, eager for a piece of meat pie.

There ought to be plenty.

If anything, Gagne bought too much food to feed the hundreds expected for each meal.

For breakfast, she had 20 boxes of eggs – each containing a dozen, for the scrambled eggs. There was uncounted bacon, bread and milk.

The supplier planned to take back any unopened food containers, said Gagne, who’d rather have too much than too little.

Last year’s bean supper – run by the Colisee rather than the festival – ran out of beans shortly after it began.

“That was embarrassing,” Gagne said.

This year, sixteen cooks planned to bake a massive quantity of beans, weighing 175 pounds before they were soaked.

“We plan to feed 500 or 600 people,” she said. “Maybe more. Hopefully, more.”