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Cultural tourism draws Francos to St. John Valley

July 23, 2008 - It's a beautiful six-hour drive north from southern Maine to the pristine St. John Valley. There's little traffic to speak of north of Bangor on Interstate 95, until it ends in Houlton. Route 1 north then leads to the St. John Valley, the region located on both sides of the international boundary where Maine shares a border with New Brunswick, Canada.

Even by rural standards, the St. John Valley appears sparsely populated, and 83.4 percent of the population speaks French at home. It's a special place because of the colonial French history and heritage shared among the families who live there. They're descendants from Quebecois and Acadian French settlers who migrated to the region many generations ago before 1842, when the St. John River helped define the Maine-Canadian border. Generations of families were accustomed to skipping back and forth over the friendly border with Canada.

Today, many St. John Valley residents routinely travel over the Edmundston--Madawaska Bridge to live and work on both sides of the river. This is still the case, even though security measures now cause the common border crossings to be slightly more complicated than in the past.

For cultural tourists with an interest in French history, the St. John Valley is like a quaint time capsule, filled with Franco-American heritage dating to the mid-18th century.

One reason for my recent journey to the valley was to accept the invitation of Francoise Paradise to participate in the community read of "Evangeline." Paradise organized a reading of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem describing "le grand derangement" (the Acadian expulsion of 1755), to be held during Madawaska's Acadian Heritage Festival. A team of readers met on June 28 in the former Mont Carmel Church, now restored and converted into a museum located on Route 1, in the tiny St. John Valley town of Lille. More than a dozen people were assigned parts of Longfellow's poem to read aloud.

"It was truly a memorable experience to read and hear the words of the beautiful and moving poem 'Evangeline' in one of Maine's most outstanding restored churches," said Sheila Jans, a reader and cultural development consultant in Madawaska.

During our visit, we toured the Acadian Village museum on Route 1 in Van Buren. More than a museum, the Acadian Village is a miniature walking tour of the St. John Valley as it once was. On the grounds, each house, the chapel, a post office and barber shop in the Acadian Village represents a particular period in the area's history.

Moreover, all the houses and structures on the site were moved from their original locations to the museum's grounds where they are now restored.

Recently, Paradis accomplished an amazing feat by moving two impressive 1-ton statues to the museum's grounds. They were donated by the Archdiocese of Boston, where they once adorned a Roman Catholic Church in Chelsea, Mass.

One is a pensive statue of Evangeline and the other is Our Lady of the Ascension, the patron saint of the Acadians. Each impressive figurine is carved from Italian marble.

Cultural tourism in the valley notwithstanding, my husband and I spent the evening in Edmundston on New Brunswick's side of the river. We were impressed by the modern accommodations in the city's downtown hotels. Likewise, the restaurants located near the border crossing bridge were absolutely excellent.

More information about the history of Maine's St. John Valley is found on the National Park Web site http://www.nps.gov/maac/historyculture/index.htm.

By JULIANA L'HEUREUX, July 17, 2008, Portland Press Herald


Lakes:
Regions: Houlton, Presque Isle


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