French Heritage Trail proposed at museum meeting
Forum discusses proposal to create online tour map of French-Canadian cultural sites
WOONSOCKET – The city’s French-Canadian heritage was center stage at the Museum of Work & Culture as Francophile representatives of three New England cities with similar connections to Canada met on a joint tourism effort last week between their communities.
The idea was for the representatives to hear planners from Province of Quebec and the Museum air the possibility of creating a mapped route linking the communities in a French Heritage Trail running from Woonsocket to Quebec City.
The trail information would be maintained in an online database that travelers could access for driving directions to significant historical and cultural sites along the route, consider the area’s history, and also learn about places to stay overnight or go out for dinner. The defined route could be followed by individual travelers or even groups originating in Quebec or the United States, and making stops at the participating communities along the way.
Museum of Work & Culture Director Anne Conway, a native of Quebec, hosted the forum in the Museum’s ITU Hall meeting space on Thursday and was assisted by Aurelie Mejahdi, a French intern working with the museum, and Laurence Gagnon, communications and Francophone Affairs attache with the Quebec Government Office in Boston. Marie-Claude Francoeur, delegate of Quebec in New England and formerly of the Centre de la Franchophonie des Ameriques with the Quebec government, also participated through a telephone connection with the group.
The community representatives traveled from Manchester, N.H., Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, and Biddeford, Maine, and local participants included, Bill Beaudoin of the American-French Genealogical Society on Pond Street, Gertrude Damadalen of Club Richelieu, Bob Billington of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, local General Assembly Representatives Stephen Casey and Robert Phillips, and Linda Plays representing Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt.
Although the trail is just a discussion concept at this point, Conway said it could one day serve as a important
resource in spreading the story of the past French-Canadian migration into the New England states where Canadians came to work in the textile and other operating mills of the times.
It is also in keeping with the goals of the Francophone and Francophile Cities Network founded by Québec City, Québec; Moncton, New Brunswick; and Lafayette, Louisiana, in 2015 to informally support and promote the French culture, tourism and economies of its member communities.
Woonsocket sent representatives to the initial meetings of the network in Quebec and the Museum of Work & Culture has maintained ties to the network and even benefited from Mejahdi’s internship arranged with help of Quebec Government Office.
As the meeting got under way Thursday morning, Conway thanked all of the out-of-town visitors for coming to Woonsocket and representing the interests of some of the 25 communities with French Canadian ties in New England.
“I know our connections go way beyond being part of the network,” she said. “Our connections come with the fact we share very much the same mission, the same history in the 25 cities,” she said.
“I’m not sure something like this has been done before, where we can have a conversation and say “hey let’s connect the dots. Let’s look at telling the broader story of immigration in New England and really bring people into each of our cities and then get into our own stories. I’m sure we all have stories to tell that are different but we all still have that common big story that we need to share,” Conway said.
Conway herself did not know much about the immigration of French-Canadian residents to New England for jobs while she was growing up and going to school in Quebec City.
“I was a good student and yet never heard of the immigration of the French-Canadians in New England, it wasn’t talked about,” she said. “And to this day, a lot of people in Quebec don’t really know that they had an exodus,” she said.
A family might know about it if they had relatives who left to take jobs in New England’s mills, but many people may still have never heard about it, Conway said, while explaining the departures were more common from small agriculture-based villages than from the larger cities.
“So it is time to talk about it. I think we are ready to bring tourists to our cities and this is what we want to talk about today,” she said.
Francoeur said one of the network’s missions is to make sure “that the French-Canadians, the Francophones,” are not isolated. “And I think that an activity like today and the project you are going to be putting together is a tribute to that, so we are very happy to be able to help to be a part of it,” she said. “I want to congratulate you on the initiative. It had not been done before and I think it is just a tremendous feat that you have managed to have everyone around the table or mostly everyone around the table and to finally connect the dots so that the story can be told and we can all benefit from it,” Francoeur said.
“Some people have been saying you go faster alone but you go further together. And I think this is what is driving this group and I really, really want to thank you,” she said.
During the group’s discussion of what the next step in forming the trail might be, it was clear that Woonsocket, at least, is far ahead in that effort with its already long-established Museum of Work & Culture, a city owned and Rhode Island Historical Society operated museum telling of the arrival of French-Canadians and other immigrants in the city from the mid-1800s and into the 20th century and the impact they had on the economy and social institutions here.
The local museum has already celebrated its 20th anniversary, Billington pointed out, and has helped draw many outside visitor’s to the Blackstone Valley over the years.
By contrast Jack Cabral, the director of the McArthur Public Library in Biddeford, Maine, said his community has a relatively new non-profit group known as the Biddeford Mills Museum, but to date it does not have a physical location that it operates from. Rather it volunteers take people on tours of the mills in the community and tell the story of Biddeford’s French-Canadian arrivals as a part of that presentation.
Cabral said is it possible that French speakers in Biddeford’s volunteer group could possibly add a French script to their presentations down the road but he also maintained that more planning would be needed and also advance notice for any trip to the area so that the visitors could be accommodated.
“This is exciting for Biddeford and we would like to be a lot more ready than we are now,” he said.
Mitch Thomas, director of the Gendron Franco-American Center in Lewiston, said he believes there are enough potential visitor sites in the Lewiston and Auburn for a stop in that area and a goal of including two stops in Maine between Biddeford and Lewiston-Auburn might work.
John Tousignant, director of the Franco-American Center in Manchester, said he also sees his organization, which promotes French-Canadian events through New Hampshire as being able to put together a stay for visitors whether they were from Canada or the United States.
“If we have a bus tour coming in, I think we could get that organized,” he said. Tousignant was impressed by the local museum suggested it was the type of educational offering he would love to see in his own community.
The participants in the discussion also suggested more planning will be needed before an inaugural trip along the route could be scheduled, and Conway and Billington responded that a study trip, a reconnaissance tour of sorts, might be held first so the trail’s planners could see first hand what is available along the route.
It may be that specific hotels in along the way could serve as visitor centers for the travelers, whether in groups or individually, and that arrangement would promote the community’s French-Canadian heritage while also drawing new customers to the business, according to Conway.
Tousignant shared that view and noted that hotels are “24-7” businesses that would be open and available when visitors came into town looking to explore an area’s French-Canadian connections.
The trail could also offer its travelers a passport to take along that would include special discounts from participating businesses as another way to promote the local areas.
The meeting broke for a lunch and the participants were later going to work on coming up with an official name for the trail, Conway noted.
Mary Rice-DeFosse, a professor of French and Francophone studies at Bate College and representing the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine at the conference, said she was impressed by the plan presented during the meeting.
“I think this will be really fun if they can pull it off,” she said. “I think it will be attractive to someone following the route of the migration and who wants to tour these parts of New England,” she said.
“There is plenty to see in our area and if they came to spend a day or two, I think they would definitely enjoy it,” she said.
Plays said she believes bringing in more outside visitors to the city would only help showcase what is available in the area.
“I think it shows that Woonsocket is definitely on the map not only with Francophones from the local area but also from Quebec and the other states in New England,” she said.