About Me

              With the French Frigate L'Hermione

                 Bastille Day, July 14, 2015

                 Castine, Maine

In the 1960s, I grew up in a largely Franco-American neighborhood in Sanford, Maine. My parents and most of their generation were bilingual and many in their parents’ generation still only spoke French. Yet, I never learned French beyond a few words and expressions that I heard at home and the little I retained from French courses in high school and college. Back then I just wasn’t interested in learning the language. But as I grew older it started to bother me that I had not learned French, and that I knew so little about the history of my family or of French Canada.

Despite my regret, I didn’t start seriously learning French until 2008. At first I dug out some old grammar books and studied online, and then for several years attended weekly evening classes. In 2013, I participated in a one-week immersion program at Trois-Pistoles in Québec, and after retiring in the fall of 2015, audited a French course at Bowdoin College. But most of the time I’ve learned from self-study, including the daily routine of reading French newspapers and books and listening to online radio and television programs. Over the past five years, I’ve also taken several trips to Québec and France where I’ve tried to speak - with increasing success - in French.

During the past three years and especially since my retirement, a large part of my self-study has been to read and transcribe the journals of Odélie and Télesphore Demers in their original handwritten French and to translate them into English. As I am also trying to place the journals in their historical context, I have been reading about the history of my family and about Québec in the two languages, including materials from the 19th and earlier centuries. All this has been an interesting way to improve my French language skills, including learning French-Canadian words and expressions.

The project has led to some research in Québec Province, including during a four-week stay in Québec City shortly after I retired and visits to the small village of Saint-Fortunat and surrounding towns in June 2016 and in November 2017. On these trips I had the pleasure of meeting numerous people, including newly discovered cousins, who have helped me tremendously. And I have also had the pleasure to reconnect with, or to meet for the first time, cousins on this side of the border who have also given me much encouragement and help.

With the start of the blog, I am looking forward to continuing my research, improving my French language skills, and meeting more people on both sides of the border that share my interests in family and Canadian history and in the French language.

Dennis M. Doiron, Gardiner, Maine. November 2017.