LEWISTON – When St. Mary’s Church was turned into the Franco-American Heritage Center seven years ago, the hope was that the neighborhood would someday become the French Quarter of Maine.

There’d be French boutiques, cafes and bakeries. The Lincoln Street Grand Trunk Station, where in the late 1800s Canadians arrived by rail, would be renovated. And everyone would speak French.

None of that has happened.

The historic Bates Mill buildings are being restored into businesses and restaurants. One mill houses Museum L-A, featuring Franco exhibits. There’s a new French bistro downtown, but there are no boutiques or cafes in the neighborhood once known as Little Canada. In fact, most of the Francos have moved out.

“We used to see French names on storefronts and restaurants,” said Rita Dube, executive director of the Franco-American Heritage Center.

They’re mostly gone.

And throughout the community, fewer people speak French.

As the French-Canadian immigrants who began arriving more than 100 years ago to work in the textile mills became assimilated, less French was spoken. Like many of her generation, whose first language is French, Dube, 64, said she didn’t pass it on to her children. It’s one of her big regrets.

In the 1930s and ’40s, Franco children in Lewiston were forbidden to speak French in public schools. They were punished if they did. Parents who were ridiculed for it didn’t want their children to suffer the same mockery, so many raised them to speak only English, Dube said.

Reviving the language

She lamented that Lewiston-Auburn schools no longer teach French to young children. “That’s a big void in our curriculum. They really should start that very young,” Dube said. “It’s such an asset to have that second language.”

Lewiston schools used to teach French as early as fourth grade, said Curriculum Director Janice Plourde. But pressures to harness spending and boost learning in other areas prompted cuts. Now students can take French beginning in seventh grade if their English grades are good enough. At Lewiston High School, far more students take Spanish and Latin than French, according to the guidance department.

The Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s hopes to expand French-language studies by creating a learning center to teach it to all ages, Dube said. “There is a movement that’s trying to preserve the French and instill it in the youth.”

Interest in Franco heritage is “starting to rekindle,” she said.

For the past three years, beginning French classes at Lewiston Adult Education have been mostly full. The Franco-American Heritage Center is in the second year of its immersion exchange program, which matches local middle-school students with families in Quebec. And the center offers French reacquisition classes for people who used to hear the language spoken at home.

Roger Philippon, 51, a dean at Central Maine Community College, also sees a growing interest in Franco-American culture and history.

“You see evidence of that with the heritage center at St. Mary’s, the growth of the Franco-American collection at Lewiston-Auburn College, all the interest in Museum L-A.”

And people are no longer trying to run from their Franco-American heritage, Philippon said. “That was the case when I was growing up with ‘frog’ and Frenchmen jokes. We’ve really turned a corner in that regard.”

As for the diminishing use of the French language, that was inevitable, he said. It has happened to all immigrant groups in this country. “You see it with Italian-Americans, German-Americans, Polish-Americans.”

Considering that it’s been well over a century since Canadians came to work in the mills, French lasted longer than other languages, Philippon said. “It took over 100 years. And English is such a powerful force with television, music and the media.”