FRENCHVILLE, Maine — Sparks erupted as welding student Drew Levesque ground the point of a steel star at the St. John Valley Technology Center.
He and other students at the Frenchville facility have started piecing together one of their most ambitious projects yet: a 20-foot Acadian star that will welcome visitors to Madawaska, just in time for the town’s Acadian Festival this summer.
Crafted from pieces of the former international bridge that once joined Madawaska and Edmundston, New Brunswick, the sculpture will blend the region’s past and future. The star represents the Acadian people’s unique culture and their connection to France, just as the old bridge linked the United States and Canada for more than a century.
“The star is an open-armed object from the United States, welcoming the Acadians to the United States,” said Dan Cayer, the Grand Isle artist who’s behind the sculpture’s design.
The Acadian star has held an important place in the culture since 1884, when a French flag with a star was displayed at the second Acadian National Convention in Prince Edward Island.
Cayer designed and presented the sculpture idea last year, and the tech center came on board to make the design a reality.
The star’s five points symbolize a figure with open arms, with the head at the top, the middle two being arms, and the bottom two being legs, Cayer said. The final version will depict a smaller star within the larger outline, which represents the Acadians living within the United States.
Cayer feels a personal tie with the project. Born in Edmundston in the 1940s, he was just one or two days old when his parents carried him across the bridge into the United States. Since then he has crossed it thousands of times.
“I’ve walked across, biked across, and there are a lot of marriages between people in Canada and the United States,” he said.
Kevin Lavoie, technology center director, said the five points of the star are now complete, and most of the remaining work involves welding those parts together. The star itself, not including the base or columns it will sit on, weighs 3,300 pounds. The complete project will weigh close to three tons, he said.
“I feel confident that we’re going to successfully give Madawaska what they’re intending to receive,” he said. “And the students have been working well on it.”
Levesque, a senior at the tech center, has enjoyed working with his classmates, instructor, Cayer and the town to make the massive project a reality.
The beams from the bridge were all straight, and students cut them diagonally to create the points of the star. Once the points were cut, they fitted them together.
“There’s gaps, so we took plates to fill the gaps, and then welded the plates to the star,” Levesque said. “We have all the points set, and now we’ve just got to make the pentagon for the middle, and then put it together.”
This is his first time being part of such a large project, he said. Besides learning to assemble a large structure, the effort has helped him and other students learn how to work together.
Tony Paradis, the school’s welding instructor, was instrumental in ensuring the project went well, Lavoie said.
In addition to providing useful skills students can use in their future careers, the project is instilling a sense of unity by allowing them to craft something that is figuratively and literally bigger than themselves, he said.
“It shows that they can take on a project and work for a bigger entity, for the schools or the communities, or the Acadian Council, and make something really tangible to look forward to,” Lavoie said.
The project poses the same challenges as a professional job. There are only so many pieces of the old bridge, for example, so the students had to learn to work carefully with limited materials.
They used analytical thinking while working with a real client and designer, which when combined with the Acadian Festival deadline gave them a real-world professional experience, Lavoie said. After it’s complete, the students will see it every day.
“They’re going to pass by that site and say, ‘I did a lot of work on that. That’s part of my creation,’” Lavoie said.
Levesque, who is from Madawaska, said he’ll be proud whenever he drives by.
“I can’t wait to see it in my hometown,” he said.
