Marc Chassé Oral History Collection
View of the St. John Valley. Photo: Maine Tourism Association.
In 1983, Fort Kent chiropractor Marc Chassé started recording his father and aunts on video. At first, the recordings of his Franco-American family members were just to preserve his family members’ stories, mannerisms, and voices, but soon the middle-aged doctor was bringing his video recording equipment to the Cam Am sled dog race, the World Cup Biathlon, local parades and softball games, father/daughter dances and jamborees. Pretty much anywhere in Saint John Valley no one had objections to his filming, Chassé was there. He even recorded fires and extreme weather events like floods and tornados.
He also interviewed people one on one. Switching seamlessly between French and English, these farmers, loggers, schoolteachers, veterans, and businesspeople talked about family and community traditions, sang songs and fiddled, and shared memories of working log drives and farm life.
For over a quarter of a century, Chassé recorded the ordinary life and people of the Saint John Valley on VHS, but he did not keep those recordings to himself. The local access channel wasn’t known as the Marc Chassé Channel for nothing. Today, hundreds of his recordings (some converted to DVD!) and documents are preserved as the Marc Chassé Oral Histories Collection of the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine–Fort Kent.
