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VAN BUREN, Maine – An Aroostook teacher will bring Acadian culture to life with a weeklong immersion experience next month.
“Living Acadia” (or “Acadie Vivante”) workshop will draw educators from across Maine to northern Maine’s St. John Valley, culminating in a public daylong reenactment of early Acadian life on June 27.
It’s the first large-scale immersion event of its kind in the St. John Valley, to which many of Maine’s French Acadian descendants can trace their roots. It will coincide with the upcoming 50th anniversary of Van Buren’s Acadian Village, the second-largest such settlement in the U.S.
Fort Fairfield French Teacher Jonna Boure will lead the week’s activities. A nearby New Brunswick attraction helped inspire the idea.
“I visited other Acadian villages. They have King’s Landing in Fredericton with people acting out different roles, and I thought that would be really cool to do here,” Boure said.
Boure has worked at Van Buren’s village for the past five years, and hopes the session will help bring history to life even more.
French and history teachers from throughout Maine will participate in the event, which runs from Tuesday, June 23, through Sunday, June 28.
Boure has arranged a week of engagements leading up to the June 27 reenactment that will take place throughout northern Maine’s St. John Valley region. Included will be history lessons at the Acadian Archives in Fort Kent, a lecture on Acadian identity, an Acadian French language lesson and cooking in a traditional outdoor bread oven in Grand Isle.
On the day before the reenactment, educators will meet with Penobscot Theater Director Jen Shephard to get into character for their roles. While most of the week is specifically for instructors, the village will be open to the public on June 27.
More than two dozen will be part of the living history day, including people from Maine, Canada and beyond, Boure said. One participant plans to travel from Florida.
The Acadian Village is on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, and will mark its 50th year with a celebration from June 12 to 14. A fundraiser to benefit site renovations exceeded its original $60,000 goal in April.
Boure hopes educators will gain a greater understanding of the unique experiences shared by early French settlers in Aroostook County and the struggles they had to overcome.
“They were pushed around and moved from place to place, and then they finally came to The County and thought everything was going to be great,” she said. “And then they weren’t allowed to speak French in schools.”
The festivities at the village will last nearly all day, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Crafters and artists will demonstrate and sell their work. A blacksmith will fire up his forge and local French musical group “Les Chanteurs Acadiens” will perform.
Later, attendees can enjoy a traditional meal of chicken and stew and ployes.
Participants will travel across the border Sunday, June 28, to take part in a reenactment of the Acadian Landing and visit Le Librarie Mathulu in Edmundston, New Brunswick. The library will open just for the group that day, Boure said.
Boure and co-organizer Cindy Matthews have been invited to the American Council for Quebec Studies conference in Montreal this fall to share their experiences with the Living Acadia event.
Boure spent about a year arranging the workshop and would consider doing it again, she said.
She has long been fascinated by the Acadian Village.
“The village really is my happy place,” she said. “I had to do some writing for a class last year, and I chose to write about the village and what it’s like walking through the village. It’s like opening up the past.”
