Franco American Day tres bon at State House

AUGUSTA — From the lively clogging, spoons-playing and singing on the third floor to the traditional French menu at the Cross Cafe, one didn’t have to look far to find signs that Wednesday was Franco-American Day in the Legislature.

The event, which drew hundreds of Franco-Americans from Fort Kent to Biddeford, was held to celebrate the French presence in Maine and to recognize the fact that fluent French speakers are an economic and cultural resource to a state that shares borders with New Brunswick and Quebec.

Among those attending were French classes from several schools in the Augusta area, members of numerous cultural and social groups, and representatives of organizations that promote the French language.

In honor of Franco-Americans in Maine and in Canada, House members departed from tradition and conducted part of their morning’s business in both English and French. The same occurred in the Senate afterward.

House Speaker Michael Saxl, D-Portland, opened the day’s proceedings in French, followed by an English translation, and the Rev. Michael Gendreau of Augusta delivered a brief invocation in the two languages. The Maine and U.S. flags were carried by a Franco-American veterans contingent from Lewiston.

Melanie Saucier, the 6-year-old daughter of Gary and Diane Saucier of Fort Kent, charmed the House and hundreds of onlookers with her rendition of the national anthem in French and she repeated the song in English. Saucier said Wednesday’s performance was her second at the Capitol. The first was on her sixth birthday last April.

Legislation — including a joint resolution recognizing Franco-American Day — and several special guests were introduced both in English and French by French-speaking legislators, among them Rep. Rosaire Paradis, D-Frenchville, Rep. William Smith, D-Van Buren, and Rep. Marc Michaud, D-Fort Kent.

Though he did not formally address either body, M. Stephane Chmelewsky, consul general of France in Boston, was a special guest of the Legislature and attended the morning’s proceedings in both the House and Senate.

Others who were singled out for special recognition were three St. John Valley journalists from both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border: Don Levesque of the St. John Valley Times, a Madawaska weekly; Jean Pedneault of Le Madawaska, a French-language weekly newspaper published in Edmundston, New Brunswick; and Beurmond Banville of the Bangor Daily News.

The three newsmen received individual legislative sentiments for their work, which spans decades, covering news and cultural issues of interest to people on both sides of the border.

“I’m very pleased, actually, to get this from the Legislature,” Banville said after the presentation. “It’s nice for once to have politicians say something good about journalists.”

French Day at the Legislature was the brainchild of the FrancoFun Caucus, a group of about 20 legislators of French descent who meet regularly in Augusta for breakfast, with a French menu.

The bipartisan group is headed by Paradis, president, and state Rep. David Madore, vice president, a Republican from Augusta. Former state Sen. Judy Paradis, Rosaire Paradis’ wife, started the movement when she was in the Legislature.

One-third of Maine’s population is of French descent and 7 percent speak French, one of the two national languages of Canada, the biggest trading partner of Maine and the United States. According to Paradis, 45 percent of the members of the Legislature are of French descent.

Wednesday’s bilingual proceedings show a dramatic shift in attitudes toward Maine’s native French-speaking people — and marked the first time in more than 30 years that French was spoken during official legislative proceedings.

To this day, many in Maine consider the speech the late Sen. Elmer Violette delivered in his native French on the floor of the Maine Senate in the late 1960s as the key to the return of French to the state’s public schools.

At that time, the state was grappling with a law banning the informal use of French in schools. The bilingual education movement just was getting under way. Under a state statute that had been on the books for half a century, French could be spoken only when it was taught as a foreign language, even though many children began school without having been exposed to English.

An effort to change that law sponsored by Emilien Levesque, a lawmaker at the time, was breezing through the Legislature. The measure had gained the full support of the Maine Department of Education and the rest of state government and was on the verge of becoming law when a state senator from the southern part of the state moved to “indefinitely postpone” the bill, effectively killing it.

Violette, who went on to become a justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, gave a spirited rebuttal on the floor of the Senate, delivering a portion of his remarks in French. He recalled later that he was so mad that he called for a roll-call vote, but the senator in question had left the room — and the vote for the return of French was unanimous.

As a future activity, the group hopes to conduct a summit on the Francophones of Maine (Le Sommet de la Francophonie du Maine) in 2004, the 400th anniversary celebration of the French explorer Samuel de Champlain’s landing on St. Croix Island in the St. Croix River, which marks the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. A colony was established there 16 years before the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

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