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BY PAUL CARRIER
Blethen Maine Newspapers 05/11/2008

Blethen Maine Newspapers

To Rita Dube of Lewiston, the director of the Franco-American Heritage Center there, the 400th birthday bash under way this year in Quebec City, Canada, is "a big deal."

Dube's ancestors migrated from France to what was then New France in the 17th century, making Quebec City's anniversary, as she put it, "an occasion to celebrate our heritage, my heritage."

But Dube's 36-year-old daughter, Katie Morin, of South Portland, has a far different perspective.

"To be honest, I wasn't even aware of it," Morin said of the festivities being held to commemorate the birth of New France's capital 12 years before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Mass.

French explorer and cartographer Samuel de Champlain, known in Quebec as "the father of New France," founded the city on July 3, 1608.

Such conflicting reactions underscore a generational gap among Maine's Franco-Americans. While some older folks have at least a passing interest in the events playing out north of the border, younger Mainers with the same roots appear to be more ambivalent about their ties to Quebec.

Despite their ancestry and Maine's proximity to Canada, Quebec City's quadricentennial barely seems to register on the radar screens of many Franco-Americans in Maine, who say they have no plans to visit the city this year.

More than 350,000 of Maine's 1.3 million people claim French or French Canadian ancestry, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, exceeding the 316,000 who list English ancestry.

In addition to the obvious cultural ties between Maine and Quebec, there are strong economic ties as well.

Mainers made 254,000 overnight trips to Canada in 2006 and Canadians recorded 746,000 overnight Maine stays that year, according to Statistics Canada, a Canadian government agency.

In 2007, Maine's exports to Quebec totaled $374 million -- more than those to any other Canadian province, according to Janine Bissailon-Cary at the Maine International Trade Center.

The state's imports from Quebec totaled $569 million.

Older Franco-Americans, who have a stronger attachment to Canada than their children and grandchildren do, sometimes become animated about Quebec City's year of merrymaking.

That's especially true if they have traced their family trees or studied Canadian history in parochial schools.

"Four hundred years is fantastic," said Ray Fecteau, 64, of Augusta, who proudly notes one of his ancestors sailed from France to New France in 1663.

Patrick Boucher of Farmingdale, 54, president of Le Club Calumet in Augusta, said Quebec is more likely to tug at the heartstrings of those who are older than he is.

"It's just really not a relevant factor for our generation," said Chris Dube, 40, of Lewiston, Rita Dube's son. "I don't think we have that same awareness that our parents did. We're just Americans."

While assimilation helps to explain the tenuous link many Franco-Americans have with their roots, experts say other factors are at work too.

Franco-Americans in Maine "don't know our history," said Yvon Labbe of the Franco-American Centre at the University of Maine, making them less likely to appreciate anniversaries such as this one.

Over the years, "the richness and diversity of French life in Maine and in North America has largely been forgotten and ignored by everyone" in Maine, said Barry Rodrigue, a Franco-American expert at Lewiston-Auburn College.

"It was undervalued by the dominant Yankee culture," Rodrigue said, and many Franco-Americans have internalized the misguided notion that their history was "trivial and unimportant."

Yet some Franco-Americans view Quebec City's 400th anniversary as significant enough to warrant a foray north, including District Court Judge Michael Cantara of Biddeford.

"I enjoy the city and I enjoy being immersed in the culture and the language," Cantara said.

For Mainers, he said, the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City is a reminder that the tapestry of Maine has many threads, "and one of those threads has a distinct French origin."

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