Le Club Francais is the best kept secret in the Valley, The County, the state and the Milky Way.
But Le Club Francais is real. It is here. It is very active and very proud.
We proudly support students who excel in French with scholarships, students who go on class trips to French areas like France, Caraquet, New Brunswick, Quebec, and more.
We proudly sponsor French classes for adults in Frenchville, Van Buren and Fort Fairfield.
We offer French pre-K for 3- to 5-year-olds and bilingual after-school playgroups for students from kindergarten to fourth grade.
We also sponsor a high school spelling bee in local high schools and provide thousands of dollars in prizes to those who excel.
We completely fund Jeux Entre Amis, games between friends, in Valley towns, where a meal is served followed by card games, checkers, dominoes — whatever people want to play. The meal is free and we supply all the games.
I want to invite people who at least understand some basic French to join Le Club Francais for only $20 a year. We meet every third Monday of the month for one hour in Madawaska. I set the timer on my phone! Boom! That’s it. Let’s go home.
We have many projects ongoing, but we always need to do more to stem the rising tide against French. In other words, we need your ideas and your enthusiasm.
Once French disappears from The County, it is never ever coming back, and we and generations to come will be left without anchors to the heart, soul and life of our heritage.
Don’t keep Le Club Francais secret any longer. Let’s proudly proclaim from the rooftops that we speak French, are proud of it, and want to help as many of you as possible to become bilingual.
For information call or text Sharon at 299-4551.
Vive le club français, vive la langue française, et longue vie a tous ceux qui nous supporte.
Don Levesque is a Grand Isle native who worked in community journalism for almost 35 years. He was the publisher and editor of the St. John Valley Times for 15 years prior to retiring in 2010. He wrote a weekly newspaper column, called Mon 5¢, in the Valley Times for more than 20 years. He has been inducted into the Maine Journalism Hall of Fame and the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame.
