For the past month, 17 people age 43 to 87 have gathered eagerly one evening a week in the lower hall of Lewiston’s Franco American Heritage Center. This site, located in the heart of Lewiston’s historic Little Canada neighborhood, couldn’t be more apt for the purpose of the weekly meetings – namely, to reclaim an important part of the attendees’ French Canadian heritage: their ancestral language.

Offered as part of the center’s primary mission to celebrate and preserve Franco-American cultural traditions, the four-week series of classes is being taught by Diane Pelletier-Perron, a native Lewistonian who recently returned to the community after living for 18 years in France, where she taught and tutored in both French and English.

Pelletier-Perron was excited to have been invited to lead the classes. While in Europe, she became aware of the value of having command of a second language, and upon her return here she realized that among her Franco-American peers (she is 50 years old) she was in the minority in being able to comfortably converse in the language of her ancestors.

“Now more than ever,” she said, “I have a desire to help others to remember their French heritage through reacquisition of the French language,” and, in doing so, she hopes to “rekindle general knowledge and pride of who we are as Franco-Americans.”

So what was it, exactly, that motivated these 17 individuals to enroll in this course? While many of them seem to agree with Paul Jalbert’s response that it would be “fun,” the larger consensus is that they felt a practical need to reacquaint themselves with the language that most of them grew up with at home.

Both Dolores Bergeron and her son Denis mentioned awkward moments when traveling in Quebec, where Dolores says she always feels “tongue-tied” when trying to communicate with the locals there. Denis, meanwhile, tells of hotel clerks who, upon seeing his French surname, immediately launch into sonic-speed French, which leaves him mildly panicked and stammering.

Another class member, Lois (Marcou) Kilroy, would like to be able to brush up on her mother tongue in order to participate more fully in the FAHC’s monthly La Rencontre lunch programs, where French conversation prevails.

Anita (Ouellette) van Oosten, too, had practicality in mind when signing up for the course, wanting to be more fluent with her Canadian cousins who live just over the border, but she was also motivated by nostalgia as she looked forward to reconnecting with her childhood language. The course has proven to be a socially engaging cultural experience as well, with participants sharing a wealth of memories of their own Franco family life.

Ray Miclon, one of the most enthusiastic members of the class, says that the more he listens to the language being spoken in class, the more the associated memories come flooding back to him. His parents, who were both born near Sherbrooke, Quebec, migrated to Rumford more than 80 years ago to work in the paper mill there. But they passed away some 40 years ago and he has spoken little French since then.

Yet, “It’s amazing to me,” he says, “how it all comes back,” just by being re-exposed to the language for such a short time. And he’s been having fun lately testing his power of recall as he tries to translate “everything in his environment” into French – gleefully naming his hat “le chapeau,” his car “la machine” (which is local Franco parlance, in lieu of the more traditional French term “la voiture”) and the road he’s driving it on “le chemin.”

The embarrassment factor

This desire to speak French wasn’t always present with these individuals. Though for most of them it was their first language, learned at their mother’s knee, they all drifted away from it. Early on, Dolores Bergeron and her husband were committed to instilling the French language in their five children. They set a house rule that nothing but French would be spoken at the dinner table. That worked with their oldest child, Denis, who spoke only French until age 2, when the family moved from Lewiston to a non-Franco neighborhood in Westbrook for a couple of years.

“Then that was it,” says Dolores. “Between that and television,” Denis was fully Anglicized by the time he was 4. Though she continued to speak French at meal times to try to pass the language on to Denis’ four siblings, she eventually gave up as she simply “got too tired of repeating and repeating things for the younger kids.”

In many instances, it was the school environment that initiated the flight from French. While the majority of the attendees in the reacquisition class were enrolled in French parochial schools during their elementary years — where for half of the day their classes were presented in French — the remaining subjects were typically taught in English.

And then nearly all of them went on to attend public high school, where, says Dolores Bergeron, “you definitely didn’t speak French, outside of French class, because it just got you a black mark back then.”

She remembers hearing students making fun of those they overheard speaking French, so she began to feel like she needed to “hide” her French background in order to fit in. She points out, “Teenagers don’t want to stand out.”

Linda Wagner, whose mother was a Deschaine from Fort Kent, agrees. “I definitely noticed when I went to public school that there was a stigma attached to speaking French.”

Ray Miclon recalls being embarrassed of his French accent when he arrived at public school, so he worked hard to perfect his English. “I used to practice reading in front of a mirror so I wouldn’t be so terrified when it was time to give a book report.”

Lois Kilroy, on the other hand, had no accent, so for many years, from her pre-teen days through high school, college and even beyond, she found it easy to hide her heritage, which she did, she admits, until she was in her 40s. “Now I’m aghast that people don’t teach their children (the language) or tell the stories about experiences with their Franco relatives.”

Denis Bergeron says “I lost my French twice.” He explains that while he was born into a French-speaking household, he remembers later on hearing French only when his parents were talking about something that they didn’t want him and his younger siblings to know about. Then, when he was in junior high school, he had a French class with a teacher who wasn’t Franco-American and who looked down on the local French, so he set out to “sanitize” his accent to avoid criticism from his teacher, as well as teasing from his classmates.

To add insult to injury, he then got grief at home when they heard him speaking French differently from what they were accustomed to.

Yet his Franco identity managed to escape relatively unscathed from these experiences. “I’ve always respected my heritage,” he says.

In fact, a quiet and sustaining pride with their ethnic roots seems to define many of the French class students. When asked outright “Did you ever feel embarrassed that you were French,” most said they have always been proud of their Franco identity. Paul Jalbert says he had a snappy comeback ready for anyone who teased him about his heritage: “Hey, can you speak two languages?” That usually shut them up, he says, smiling.

For those who mentioned times of discomfort about their French heritage, the feelings typically occurred when they were adolescents or teenagers, when – as Dolores Bergeron pointed out — they were feeling self-conscious about anything that made them feel different.

Fascinated with French

Debra Morin-Ouellette, the youngest member of the French class at age 43, recounts quite a different story. She grew up in Lewiston the daughter of a Franco-American father and a British-born mother who met when her dad was stationed in England while in the Army. Despite many memorable childhood trips to England to visit her mother’s family, it was the French language that for some reason always held a fascination for Morin-Ouellette.

“From the time that I could first follow along with some of the French words being spoken by my grandparents, I yearned to be able to fluently converse with them.” She fondly recalls getting a weekly lesson in French from “Madame Young” while in grammar school. “She was fabulous! She taught us songs ‘en francais’ that I still remember today.”

And she later took French in both 7th and 8th grade, as well as during three of her four years of high school. “I remember receiving good grades and enjoying the classes and teachers immensely, but I do not recall ever having the ability to speak in conversation to the point that I felt comfortable.”

Even Morin-Ouellette, as enamored as she was of the French language, remembers a time when she was a bit embarrassed about being Franco-American. “That was short-lived,” however, “due to the fact that as I matured, so did my appreciation for my Franco-American culture and upbringing.”

These days, frequent travels to Montreal, Quebec and Toronto for both business and pleasure have made her appreciate her French heritage even more, so she jumped at the chance to enroll in the French class offered by the Franco Center.

As did Ray Miclon, who is clearly getting a kick out of “blowing the dust off” his native language and relishing the reveries that are evoked. With a rueful smile, though, he points out one irony for “Franco-Americans like me:”

“We started out speaking English with a French accent, and now we’re speaking French with an English accent.”

More French lessons

The Franco-American Heritage Center has plans to offer more French reacquisition classes later this year. Those interested in enrolling are encouraged to contact the center at 783-1585 for more information.

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