LEADING THE CHARGE
Beauparlant wants to celebrate Woonsocket’s heritage with block party for St. Jean Baptiste
WOONSOCKET – The news about Woonsocket has been less than positive on several fronts of late, and that got Albert Beauparlant thinking about what he could do about it.
His answer is a look back to the city’s past, when the community took pride in itself and honored its heritage by gathering to celebrate religious and cultural events.
And so on June 28, 2018, Woonsocket’s impresario of the big event will be bringing the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste back to Main Street as a citywide multi-ethnic heritage event co-sponsored by the Woonsocket Pothier Foundation and the Heritage Harbor Foundation.
Beauparlant is executive director of the Pothier organization and a board of directors member of the Heritage Harbor Foundation, which awards grants to support and promote Rhode Island’s local communities.
Despite recent headlines that have noted ongoing issues such as child neglect and substance abuse in the city, Beauparlant said Woonsocket still retains great strengths of great ethnic diversity, history, heritage, religious faith and culture “unequaled for any city of our size.”
All of those positive attributes will be showcased during the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste, along with eight notable historical figures who made a mark with visits to the city: such as Abraham Lincoln, in March of 1860, or World War I Supreme Allied Military Leader Marshal Ferdinand Foch, in 1921.
The historical figures will be represented by costumed volunteers who will tour the feast and tell their stories to attendees.
“It is in the spirit of St. Jean Baptiste that we will reach out to community and give a lesson in city pride and kindness and show local children the best of our city,” Beauparlant said. More information on the historic figures to be honored during the feast will be made available as leading events and fundraisers are held in the coming weeks, Beauparlant said.
The Feast of St. Jean Baptiste was a major event for French Canadian residents of the city in the late 1800s, right up until 1946, when the last major city celebration was held, according to Beauparlant’s research.
The festival was supported in part by L’Union St. Jean Baptiste d’Amerique, the French Canadian Catholic fraternal organization offering financial and insurance services throughout the United States, which main- tained its headquarters in the city. Noted city architect Walter F. Fontaine designed the organization’s circa 1926 headquarters at 1 Social St. in Monument Square, and today the building hosts the RISE Prep Mayoral Academy. The union’s genealogical library also remains in the city with the French-American Genealogical Society on Pond Street.
St. Jean Baptiste was deemed the patron saint of French Quebecois by Pope Pius in 1802, and the tradition of celebrating him was brought to Woonsocket as the textile manufacturing center on the Blackstone River came to be known as the most French-speaking city in America. The festival planned for June 28 for the section of Main Street from Monument Square and the Stadium Theatre to the parking lot across from Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining, will include a religious start with both an open-air French Mass, and simultaneous all-faith service where participants will be encouraged to “pray together for Woonsocket and her children,” Beauparlant said. A plea for guidance will also be made to Marie “Little Rose” Ferron, the city’s well-known late stigmatic who once drew many French Canadian faithful to her city home and shrine.
After the religious ceremonies, the feast will follow, with a free cookout for local children, amusement rides for the kids and a wide variety of booths offering educational information for children, family life, city pride, economic opportunities and much more.
Beauparlant has plenty of experience putting on citywide events, given his role orchestrating the city’s 100th anniversary and 125th anniversary Main Street celebrations in 1988 and 2013.
He also worked on Jazz on the Blackstone and three First Night celebrations in the city.
He does have help from a group of always-ready volunteers like Mike Dubois who worked Beauparlant’s Arc de Triomphe project for the 125th Woonsocket Anniversary party on Main Street, and others like Tony Makalinaw, who produced artworks
for the 100th, Kim Deacon, who will be gathering volunteers Thursday evening at the Broaster House on Pond Street, and of course Beauparlant’s wife, Robin.
Makalinaw, a former city resident who now runs a barbecue cooking business out of Warwick, will be managing a cookout for what Beauparlant is estimating will be at least 2,500 local children and their families.
The event will be offered free to the public and that’s why there will be fundraising events scheduled in the weeks leading up to June 28 to help with its costs, Beauparlant said.
While he has put on big crowd events in past, Beauparlant is looking for the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste to be a more intimate event on
Main Street, running from 4 to 9:30 p.m. with an atmosphere geared toward city pride and family fun.
Woonsocket was always a place for families in the past, Dubois noted, even big ones like his, a family with eight children living on Cass Avenue.
It was how families lived in Woonsocket in the days of his youth that Dubois would like recalled by the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste.
“I was the second oldest of eight kids and we would take off as a family on Saturday at say 9 a.m. in the morning and never lock our door,” he said. “That is the way life was in Woonsocket back in the 1960s,” Dubois said.
“During the summer, we would go to Cass Park at 7 in the morning and stay until
supper time and our parents wouldn’t worry,” he said.
Today, “no one would want to let a 7- or even a 9-year-old go somewhere unsupervised,” Dubois said.
Beauparlant said there are a lot of people in the city who still have Woonsocket pride and they are already coming forward to help with June’s festival.
“It’s the power of this community,” Beauparlant said. “I’ve just been working on this the last several months and I can’t tell you how many people have already reached out and volunteered their help,” he said. “This whole thing is already in motion and on its way,” Beauparlant observed.