By Erik Elmer
Anne Roy lives in Van Buren, Maine. It is a small town bordered to the north by the Saint John River in the Saint John Valley. The Saint John Valley straddles the border of the United States and Canada. The winters are bitter cold, and the growing season is short. It is home to a resilient French culture whose bearers migrated to the valley. They are the descendants of a people whom the British brutally forced from the land they had called home for more than a century. These people are called the Acadians. Anne has been working to preserve their cultural heritage for the past 40 years.
Anne is energetic and enthusiastic when she talks about Acadian culture. She is always ready to offer information and help in any way. Her longtime friend Alyre Levesque described her as “a firecracker.”
Anne’s story begins in Van Buren in December 1942 after the United States entered World War II. She spent her childhood until the age of 15 in the small town of Hamlin, Maine, in the Saint John Valley.
Anne’s connection to Acadian culture runs deep. She can rattle off a genealogy stretching back to the original Acadian settlement in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Anne comes from a traditional Catholic Acadian family. She said, “We are Catholics. Catholicism was the most important religion in the Valley during the time when we were growing up.”
Anne’s father was a farmer, and her mother was a housekeeper. Her mother later became a schoolteacher. She said, “I have a brother and a sister, living, and a brother and a sister deceased in childhood–really as babies.”
Anne, like so many other Acadian children, spoke French as her first language. “We spoke French all the time when I was growing up. My parents picked up English to do business for my father’s potato farm. And, of course, my mother was a schoolteacher,” she said.
Anne’s grade school was small. It had only two rooms. Hamlin didn’t have a high school, so she had to take the bus to Van Buren. She attended college at For Kent Normal School, a college for training teachers. Later, Fort Kent Normal School would become the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
After college, Anne became an elementary schoolteacher. She was following in the footsteps of both of her grandmothers and her mother. She taught in Fort Fairfield, Van Buren and Loring Airforce Base, where she retired in 2002.
Education wasn’t just a vocation for Anne. She saw the need to educate the public about the unique Acadian culture.
Anne said, “In between all that, I started running the Acadian Village, which was in its very, very young age in 1982. And I stayed with it until 2018. I became the president, and I became the president of the historical society called Notre Heritage Vivant in French or Our Living Heritage in English. They own the village. Then I was the store manager and the manager for the maintenance of the village.” Anne listed her accomplishments as if they were merely interesting facts about her life rather than important work done for the preservation of a unique Franco-American culture.
Anne oversaw the preservation of the Acadian Village for most of four decades. According to the National Park Service, the Acadian Village is an historically accurate village in Van Buren, Maine, with 17 buildings. Some were built onsite using the unique building techniques of the Acadians. Others are original Acadian structures that were taken apart, moved from their original location and rebuilt at the Acadian Village site.
Alyre Levesque has known Anne for decades. He described her as a friend of the family. They both live in Van Buren. Alyre painted a more complete picture of Anne’s involvement in the movement to preserve Acadian culture. “Anne has been huge in that movement for decades. She’s been very influential to the French immersion program, bringing French back into schools. She was highly involved with a lot of that,” he said.
Anne has moved on and let a younger group of people take over. She said, “Some are about 20 years younger than me. Some are a bit closer to my age.” She jokes, “The Village is still standing, so that’s a good sign.”
Anne Roy has been preserving Acadian culture for several decades. Her dedication and enthusiasm to that cause reaches beyond her work at the Acadian Village. She’s still eager to share her knowledge and offer assistance to those who ask about Acadian culture. She is a natural educator, but she is more than that. She is a torch bearer.
A new generation is teaching the public about Acadian culture at the Acadian Village now. Anne Roy hasn’t passed the torch. She has given a bit of her fire to them so that they can continue her work of shining light on Acadian culture
