A Personal Recap of Le Rassemblement 2024

What a great weekend at Le Annual Rassemblement with the Franco-American Programs in Orono, Maine, on April 5 – 7th, 2024. It was my first in-person Rassemblement, and the long drive was definitely worth it to connect with familiar faces and finally meet others whom I had only spoken to through our online groups. 

Of course, this recap will be from my perspective and will go into a personal essay that I didn’t intend to write for this article, but once I began typing, the words couldn’t stop flowing.

Friday, April 5th: Arrival to Le Centre Franco-Américain d’Orono

On Friday, the first day, I intended to arrive just in time to catch the 4pm panel discussing the Franco-American Centre’s over 50-year legacy in Orono. The panel featured Josée Vachon, Jim Bishop, and Paul Paré, with Jacob Albert of the Franco American Digital Archives/Portail franco-américain (FADA/PFA) moderating.  

But I got caught in the rain during the drive up from New Hampshire, so I was held up by traffic in some spots (probably also due to the incoming solar eclipse). Eventually, I arrived at the Centre around 5:30pm, happy to greet people and await the exciting weekend ahead. 

After the potluck dinner provided by the Franco-American Programs, a screening of the 1980 film Bien des mots ont changé took place. Featuring interviews with Yvon Labbé, Claire Bolduc, Paul Paré, and Robert Perreault, it sounded like everyone watching really soaked in a lot of great stories and perspectives. I missed the movie because I hadn’t had dinner yet, but I was glad I caught up on some of the discussion afterward. 

I felt the excitement among everyone in that packed room as they shared their thoughts on the film and made connections through their own experiences. As I tuned in, I thought about how this was my kind of weekend. 

Even at 30 years old, acquaintances or complete strangers often tell me that I need to “have fun” in the conventional ways they expect: go out to bars, party, or get into some lighthearted drunk trouble. What they don’t know is that my 20s were full of those activities and outings, and now I find my fun through writing, researching, and imagining new creative ways to tell the Franco-American story. 

Alongside my regular writings, I have similar projects that have remained secret, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever publish any of them. At the very least, once in a while, I get an idea that I have to share on my blog, Moderne Francos, and that gives me the thrill that some people claim I never experience. Whether I keep my writings to myself or share them with others, the Franco-American story inspires me to create. 

That’s a big reason why I feel like a part of this community: we have unconventional fun in that we’re thrilled to drive hours away to connect with each other through creative work, personal stories, and research projects. Other people who love talking about ancestry, culture, and history? People who know the feeling of finding a specific piece of research you were on the hunt for? Other Franco-Americans with their own creative process and work, channeling their experiences into works of art from visuals to poetry to written stories to theatre? I’m in! 

We’re often told that there is no future for Franco-American culture due to the lack of interest among younger people, but I believe this year’s Rassemblement attendance proved otherwise. The older generations are typically more represented at these kinds of events, but there is a growing number of younger people wanting to (re)discover their heritage, learn French, or connect with other people who also have stories of mémère and pépère, tourtière, gorton/cretons, and a family connection to Québec, Acadie, or French Canada as a whole. 

But we’ll get into that later, as there was more unconventional fun on the way! 

On Friday and Saturday night, a group of us staying at the same hotel gathered in one of the lounge rooms to hang out. I always love these moments where we connect on a more personal level and talk about our lives in general before something about Franco-Americans is somehow brought up again, but we don’t mind diving into more discussion.

Now, onto Saturday’s activities!

Saturday, April 6th: Presentations Galore!

Saturday was Le Rassemblement’s full day of engaging presentations and exciting announcements. I regret that I can’t recall the details of every presentation, but I enjoyed listening to other people’s perspectives, written works, and research. However, I will briefly cover a few of them. 

I was instantly drawn into “Coming Home,” a presentation by author Paula Grandpre Wood about the ceinture fléchée passed down in her family for over 100 years. She detailed her research and Franco-American story in her book, The Long Walk Home with the Ceinture Fléchée: The Arrow Sash.

As many of you may already know, I’m fascinated by the history of textiles. So, I was immersed in Paula’s presentation about her ancestors and the significance of the ceinture fléchée not only to her family history but also as a symbol of Franco-American culture. 

Another presenter, Tom Pinette, presented a talk titled “How can St. John Valley French Survive?” Tom shared his research and insights into the efforts to preserve and teach the unique French Acadian dialect in the St. John Valley of northern Maine. 

Speaking of Maine, Tim Beaulieu and Marcelle Murray announced a massive project they’ve been working on: Maine PoutineFest! The fries, curds, and gravy will hit Thompson’s Point in Portland on September 14, 2024. 

Abigail Worthing spoke about her role in Franco-American festivities with her presentation, “La Kermesse Franco American Heritage Festival: History and Moving Forward.” An annual festival in June with Franco-American roots, La Kermesse has transformed over the years into a celebration of all cultures in Biddeford, Maine.

During her presentation, Abigail shared her personal experience with the festival, including heartwarming childhood memories of attending La Kermesse with her family. Today, it’s come full circle for her as a member of the festival’s Board of Directors and Marketing Coordinator. This year’s La Kermesse is taking place from June 20 – 23. 

Another presentation I enjoyed watching was “Cloth: Art, Lumber and Textiles in 2024” by artist Tanja Kunz, where she utilized different textiles and textures to create unique pieces of art. It was interesting to see her creative interpretations of how these materials could be placed together and shaped into something one-of-a-kind that can also call back to the history of Franco-Americans working with textiles at home, in the mills, or both. 

Of course, I wish I could recap everyone’s presentations in a neat little package, but this article would have to be much longer than it already is! So, please check out the table below with the whole presentation list.

After presentations and lunch, everyone could join different groups to talk, explore the campus trails, play games, craft, or continue to mingle. Although not in the official presentation lineup, there was another presentation with the dedicated team behind the Franco-American Digital Archives.

There’s nothing cozier on a chilly, windy day than staying in and learning, so I was excited to watch the presentation about an announcement outlining updates on their site. 

The Franco American Digital Archives/Portail franco-américain (FADA/PFA) offers keyword search through archival collections from about two dozen repositories in the U.S. and Canada, in both English and French.

The portal provides access to these materials through the institutions that share them and through standard vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, genre terms, dates, names of people who created the archival materials, and more.

It also provides access to these collections through lists of terms recognizable to the Franco-American community, such as family names, parishes and neighborhoods, occupations, and community-created topics and themes that are important to the culture.

UMaine has contracted with Daniel Berthereau, a France-based developer who has built similar web-based projects to display historical materials for the Louvre, Université PSL, and other organizations. 

In the coming months, FADA/PFA will migrate to a new software, Omeka S, which will offer new features, such as a visual map that will enable them to display archival collections geographically. The migration will also allow the creation of linked websites for institutions that cannot display their own digital collections.

The new site is expected to launch this summer, so get ready to research. Merci, Jacob Albert of FADA/PFA, for the detailed explanation!

Among the other great activities and presentations, a few of us in our 20s to 40s had the opportunity to discuss topics and answer questions on our panel, “Franco America Today and Going Forward,” with myself, Tom Pinette, Joey Leblanc, Camden Martin, Timothy Beaulieu, and Patrick Lacroix as the moderator.

Prompted with questions from our moderator, Patrick Lacroix of the UMFK Acadian Archives, we each responded with our thoughts about taking Franco-American culture into the future with new generations. For instance, what exactly is a Millennial or Gen. Z Franco-American? What does it mean to be a Franco-American today? 

Like every generation, we must realize that trends, values, and culture change over time. No particular time in our culture’s history will ever be completely preserved; instead, it adapts and takes on new forms as it lives on. This shift is fantastic news for our heritage and culture! 

Adapting is the way to survive, not clinging onto a decades-old checklist of requirements that become expectations that cause the younger generations to walk away. At this point, we’ve heard it all. If we weren’t born and raised speaking French, the culture is already dead; if we try to learn French, we’re not learning it correctly; if we’re more interested in the culture itself without the language, we’re not qualified enough to call ourselves Franco-American.

During this panel, I spoke about how my mémère and pépère found their Franco-American heritage in their family history and ancestry, being Catholic, and speaking French. Although I can only relate to the first point, I don’t see this as a total defeat: the culture lived on in me through things that most people around me could never relate to. 

I was raised like a true red, white, and blue American. I never had a traditional French-Canadian meal during the holidays or a French class at school to retreat into and find myself. I had so little to go on, but I knew I had some kind of French heritage from the time I was about six years old. 

All of that led me to where I am now and where I was, at my first in-person Rassemblement, in that packed room of people who understood and related to me as I related to them. Throughout the weekend, I kept hearing that this year’s crowd was the biggest yet and the most young people at any of these annual gatherings ever. I’d call that a victory: we’re on the brink of younger people discovering or rediscovering their Franco-American heritage and culture! 

Yes, we’ve been Americanized, but that was once the dream of the people who came before us. Most, if not all, of our families wanted to blend in the best they could, whether by anglicizing their surnames or shifting to speaking English over French. Now that we fortunately live in a much different time, we’re able to bring back what was buried long ago and allow it to breathe again.

The concept of feeling like you’re returning home, wherever that may be and in the most unlikely places, got brought up. During this discussion, I had a realization: could it be that the reason New Hampshire felt like my true home my whole life was that it was the one place I could go to find answers about my maternal side’s Franco-American background? I didn’t have that kind of community where I grew up, in a small town in the Midwest that was never home in my heart, where my cultural knowledge was never understood by others. 

During family road trips to New Hampshire, I heard jokes with punchlines in French and play-on-words that I didn’t ‘get’ without an explanation, but that felt more at home to me than any number of times I tried to relate to my peers back in the place I had to call home. I wanted to know about every ancestor my relatives had information on; I had to learn about their stories and what that meant for me in carrying on the Franco-American culture.

Near the end of our long-winded panel discussion, which nobody wanted to end, author David Vermette of A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans asked us an interesting question.

“What is the Franco-American spirit?”

I had to think about that, and thinking on my feet is not my strong suit. But I thought back to all of those family gatherings in New Hampshire during my formative years and how they differed from the paternal side of my family, where get-togethers were more like walking on eggshells and being told not to bring up specific topics to avoid tension and potential conflict.

I remembered the room full of relatives with French surnames and how there was always a lightheartedness in the air. The jokes, the laughing, and the family stories were funny and a little self-deprecating, but all in good fun while expressing a love for everything that made us Franco-American. 

So, to answer the question, I concluded that we’re quiet and reserved with a good sense of humor about ourselves. When we get together, we become loud and can’t stop talking to each other about our experiences, stories, and families. Our panel discussion went over time, and everyone in that room still had more to say. That kind of passion, dedication, and endurance among us is what will keep our culture alive. 

It isn’t about dwindling numbers or pitting our culture’s “failures” against another culture’s “successes.” It’s us competing against ourselves to celebrate our heritage and spread our culture in our own ways. I’ve been told before that because we’re smaller in population compared to other cultural groups in the U.S., our heritage language is threatened by this alone. But it doesn’t matter if we’re the smallest group on earth; there are cultures much smaller in numbers than us who still live on today and work hard to preserve their language and culture. 

They’re surviving, and so will we.

A part of that preservation is giving younger generations a space to discuss the role that Franco-American, French-Canadian, Acadian, Québécois, and Francophone heritage and culture play in our lives. We can do this through the Young Franco-American Summit (YFAS), founded at the Franco-American Programs with Lisa Desjardins Michaud, Susan Pinette, and Daniel Moreau. 

As a group, we held the first YFAS in October 2021 at the Franco-American Centre in Orono, ME, and have since held it at the Millyard Museum in Manchester, NH, in October 2022 and at Rivier University in Nashua, NH, with Le Club Richelieu de Nashua in October 2023. 

Daniel hosted the first two years before I had the honor of hosting the YFAS event in October 2023. I’m hosting YFAS again this year and decided to extend the original age limit to anyone aged 18 to 39 in an effort to get more young people to feel “young enough” to attend. It’s funny how some of them think their 30s are “old.” As I said at Le Rassemblement, 30 is the new 20, and 40 is the new 30! 

Okay, and I’ve received several messages from those over 35 (the original age limit) but younger than 40 asking if they could attend YFAS. I told them I would be happy to make an exception, but I thought being more upfront with allowing those in that age range would garner more attention and interest among them.

YFAS gives younger generations a chance to give presentations, meet new people, and hold meaningful conversations about who we are as Franco-Americans today. 

The event is primarily for Franco-Americans, which typically includes people of French-Canadian, Québécois, and Acadian heritage and culture. However, everyone is welcome to contribute to this discussion and present or attend, no matter their language, heritage, or culture.

The event is held in English, but French is obviously welcome! In fact, we had a presenter last year who gave a speech entirely in French. Further, YFAS records were broken with ten attendees fluent in French and only two (myself included) who didn’t speak French. 

So, if you’re 18 to 39 years old and interested in attending or presenting at YFAS, please contact me at melody@modernefrancos.com. 

After the panel, it was a great time to continue mingling before dinner. The excitement of Maine PoutineFest continued with the official belt making the rounds for photos. That’s when the Desjardins line got our group photo, consisting of Lisa Desjardins Michaud, Cecile Thornton, and me, a Desjardins by the pen and maternal family line.

Sunday, April 7th: Coffee and the Weekend Wrap-Up

Sunday, the last day of Le Rassemblement, is a morning debrief and wrap-up of the weekend over coffee and breakfast. Everyone usually gets to the Centre sometime in the morning and stays until about noontime, chatting and saying their goodbyes.

We discussed what we liked about the weekend, what we thought of the extra break time, and more. This led to a lot of great discussion, and we were all able to voice our opinions and give helpful feedback to the Franco-American Programs.

Special thanks to Susan Pinette and Lisa Desjardins Michaud of the Franco-American Programs! They were running this entire weekend, literally and figuratively: scheduling the whole weekend in advance, setting things up, getting food out for lunch and dinner, staying up late into the night cooking, returning to the Centre bright and early, and accommodating everyone. 

After my goodbyes, it was time for the long drive back home to New Hampshire amid the incoming solar eclipse traffic. Overall, I enjoyed my time at Le Rassemblement, and I look forward to attending it next year!