The Story My Grandfather Almost Didn’t Tell Me

In the early 2000s my grandfather started telling me stories about the French side of our family. Until then I barely knew it existed.

He had grown up in a small Franco-American neighborhood in Beverly, Massachusetts.

My grandfather came from a large French-Canadian family that did not have much money. The house was full of siblings, and like many Franco families in New England at the time, everyone worked hard just to keep things moving.

My great-grandparents spoke French. But they made a decision that many Franco-American families made during that era. They did not pass the language down to their children. They wanted their kids to sound more American and avoid some of the prejudice that French-Canadians often faced in New England.

So my grandfather grew up surrounded by a Franco culture that was already beginning to soften. The names were still French, the food was French and I would say the extended family was still very much Franco. But the language had already started to fade.

As a child, he would travel with his family to St-Clément, Québec, where relatives still lived. Those trips connected him to traditions that were stronger north of the border. The language was spoken freely there, and the customs that had started to fade in New England were still part of everyday life.

Those visits stayed with him.

When my grandfather was just seventeen years old, he joined the United States Navy. His family struggled financially, and even at that age he felt responsible for helping them. While he was serving, he sent most of his Navy checks back home so his parents and siblings could get by. Family came first.

After the war his life took another turn. He married my grandmother, who came from an Italian family. They were good people, but the Franco culture he grew up in was not something they cared much about. They looked down on it.

Over time my grandfather did something that many Franco-Americans quietly did during the twentieth century. He buried it.

The stories stopped being told. The Franco side of the family faded into the background. The culture that shaped his childhood became something he mostly kept to himself.

Then, decades later, he started telling me about it.

It felt like discovering a hidden chapter of our own history. That moment stayed with me. It is also why I have always had a complicated relationship with my Italian side of the family. I respect it and it is part of who I am, but I have always felt the weight of what was lost when my grandfather felt he had to push his Franco identity aside.

That tension is part of the reason PoutineFest exists. People often think the event is just about fries, gravy, and cheese curds. For me it is about something deeper. It is about bringing a culture back into the light that many families were once told to leave behind.

Every time thousands of people gather at PoutineFest across New England, it feels like a small revival of the world my grandfather grew up in.

The language shows up again. The traditions return. The story gets told out loud.

And this year, when people gather at PoutineFest, we will also be celebrating what would have been my grandfather’s 100th birthday.

Tim is the founder of PoutineFest USA, which hosts events throughout New England. For more visit poutinefest.com