French ascent | Jason Parent, president, Maine delegation to the organizing body of the 2014 World Acadian Congress, Madawaska; director of development and college relations, Northern Maine Community College, Presque Isle
Photo/Becky Shea
Jason Parent is helping to organize the World Acadian Congress, which is expected to bring 50,000 people and $50 million to northern Maine and Canada in 2014
In four years, the St. John Valley area of northern Maine will play host to one of the biggest events ever held there, estimated to draw in as many as 50,000 people over two-and-a-half weeks and generate up to $50 million in economic impact across northern Maine, northwestern New Brunswick and southeastern Quebec.
But it’s not just the economic benefit that excites Jason Parent, president of the Maine delegation organizing the 2014 World Acadian Congress, an event held every five years that celebrates Acadian culture, the descendants of French settlers in the Canadian Maritimes and northern Maine. The Van Buren native spoke French before English, grew up eating traditional buckwheat pancakes called ployes, and, as an adult, served as president of the Maine Acadian Heritage Council, which organizes an annual festival in June. “It’s my culture, the people I grew up with in the St. John Valley,” says the 36-year-old. “I feel fortunate and blessed to be raised in such a tight-knit community.”
Parent, who works as director of development and college relations at Northern Maine Community College in Presque Isle, is volunteering his time to head the Maine delegation, a commitment he equates to a second full-time job. He played a major role in the yearlong application process to host the congress, which included branding the region as a new tourist destination called Acadia of the Lands and Forests, which includes 50 U.S. and Canadian towns. It’s the first time an international region has hosted the congress since it began in 1994.
From Aug. 8-24, 2014, more than 300 activities will take place, including performances, sporting events and more than 100 family reunions. Maine has volunteered to host Acadian National Feast Day on Aug. 15 — “like the fourth of July for Acadians,” Parent says, which could draw 20,000 visitors alone. Maine also must contribute $1 million in federal funding, which has been approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and $900,000 in state funding to help pay for the $12 million event.
The challenges include developing an international budget, negotiating linguistic differences and working through competition that could arise as the three regions vie for certain activities. But the upbeat Parent is focusing more on the opportunities that cultural tourism holds for the St. John Valley region. “It’s an opportunity to catapult the economic development of the region, where tourism is concerned, to new heights we haven’t reached before, and hopefully to sustainable heights.”
And its impact won’t be isolated to northern Maine. “People talk about the trickle-down effect, but this is a trickle-up effect,” he says. “Every visitor who doesn’t fly in here or come from Canada will come up through the entire state.”
Parent is equally impassioned about his work at NMCC, which raised $2.5 million during its first-ever major gifts campaign, doubling its endowment, and increased enrollment 12% over the past two years. He attributes the college’s recent success to its receptivity to area businesses’ needs — like a nursing program launched to help Houlton Regional Hospital and New England’s first wind power technician program. The school caters to nontraditional students, like laid-off forest products workers looking for training in new industries, and its average student age is 28, Parent says.
Parent, who lives in Caribou with his wife and two children, has had experience at all four of northern Maine’s post-secondary institutions. He graduated from the University of Maine at Presque Isle, earned a master’s in business from Husson University’s Presque Isle campus and previously worked in communications at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. He hopes one day to be a state senator for Aroostook County’s District 35.
He deplores the area’s outmigration, and though he’s been offered positions “down state,” he’s stayed loyal to his roots, and hopes to convince others to do the same. “I’m heavily invested in making northern Maine the best it can be.”
Mindy Woerter
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