Accessing the historical experience of Franco-American women is not an instantly easy task, at least if we rely on written records. Many types of documents were, at their inception, purposefully gendered. The cult of domesticity, limited access to education, and entrenched barriers in the shaping of social narratives combined to conceal women’s lives. In addition, […]
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The Franco-American Pantheon
Last week’s blog post quoted Grégoire Chabot on a hypothetical Franco-American “hall of fame.” Chabot seemed to find few worthy models. Yet, surely, if Francos are to recognize the accomplishments of their community, they ought to find important and influential figures in their past. What famous individuals has the community produced? Who are its leading […]
Continue readingFinding Francos in Le Forum (1988)
Making Connections By the end of the 1980s, the Forum had broadened its horizons considerably by bringing in more voices and carrying items from other publications. (For background, see last week’s post.) It still included genealogical content and poetry—and in 1988 its pages captured new perspectives with short texts by Fort Kent high school students. […]
Continue readingFinding Francos in Le Forum (1980)
Stand Up and Be Counted In the 1970s, the Franco-American world was turned upside down. As old institutions declined, new ones that were better suited to the times took their place.[1] This was still the era of the National Materials Development Center, which contributed significantly to the dissemination of Franco-American research and writing. Assumption College’s […]
Continue readingFinding Francos in Le Forum (1975)
From Survivance to Fulfillment As promised last week, this post begins a month-long journey into the pages of Le Forum, a product of the FAROG and later the Franco-American Centre in Orono, Maine. Again, a word of caution is in order: this is only one of many sources for the period at hand. We cannot […]
Continue readingFranco-Americans Since 1945: An Overview
“With a little more education and a forty-hour week and some time on our hands—and we’ve become mobile—we looked around,” he said recently. The world of quiet beaches and summer cottages and golf courses no longer seemed so remote. “We see all these things and, we say, ‘Hey, we’d like to have an ice-cream cone, […]
Continue readingWomen’s History Month: La Femme Franco-Américaine
For three years my great-grandmother, a Gagnon by birth, was a Lowell mill girl. She was not one of those off-the-farm Yankee mill girls of the 1830s—I’m not that old. But she was just off of a farm, only farther north. The Gagnon family moved from the Drummondville area of Quebec to Lowell in 1908. […]
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