by Amy Bass
Her father, Oscar Rivard, worked as a weaver at the Libby Mill. Born in Lewiston in 1893, his parents, Octave Rivard and Marie Caron, ran a boardinghouse on Lisbon Street. Oscar married Lydia Galarneau on November 13, 1916. Born in Victoriaville, Quebec, in 1894, Lydia moved to Lewiston from New Hampshire, where her parents, Jeffrey and Cezarine, first settled.
Nestled in her understated home in the outskirts of the city, Florence McGraw likes to sit at her dining room table, the television droning in the background to keep her company. It is the brightest spot in the house because of the large window looking out at her lilacs. Her late husband, Gordon, loved the backyard. He grew up living off the land in nearby Sabattus, the son of Scottish immigrants who came to Maine via Quebec. Any outdoor space provided a respite from the long hours he worked on second shift at the Bates Mill.
Some thirty family albums, all in various states of completion, surround her, documenting a story typical of so many who came to Lewiston at the turn of the twentieth century. After working for fifty years in the purchasing department of Central Maine Hospital, Florence is now retired. At her farewell party, her coworkers gave her a Caribbean cruise, really the only time she and Gordon traveled anywhere together. She found the ship intimidating—“I’m not brave for water”—but her husband, who left high school for the Navy, “was in his glory.”
Florence started at the hospital when she was still in high school, hoping to avoid the family tradition of factory work.
“I refused,” she says, remembering how hot the mill was, pipes everywhere, when she brought her father lunch.
“My mother didn’t speak English until I brought Gordon home,” Florence continues, looking at her mother’s certificate of citizenship, dated July 18, 1957, more than ten years after Oscar died of cardiovascular disease at just fifty years old. Gordon McGraw only knew the French spoken at the mills, none of which fit polite conversation, and her kids struggled with it in their parochial school classrooms.
“Either I would laugh my head off or cry,” she says of helping them with their homework. “I went to St. Peter’s, so I had French and English all my life, but when you don’t speak it, it’s very hard to get it back. I can pull it out, but it would be hard for a conversation.”
The eldest of five, Mike McGraw helped care for his two youngest sisters while his parents balanced their work schedules—as well as their bowling leagues—with a stable of babysitters. Like so many in Lewiston, his family often moved, living on the same streets where so many of his soccer players live today. The family albums include photographs of downtown VJ Day celebrations, right near Abdi H.’s front door, and of an uncle who lived on Walnut, just a few doors down from Maulid. Then there was the house on Oak Street that Gordon rented without telling her.
“I didn’t even see the house,” she says of the day she came home to find that her husband had moved their stuff into a new place. “I had no decision in it at all.”
Seeing Lewiston through his mother’s eyes helped Mike McGraw understand the changes that occurred on his team. He knows that people rebuked his grandparents for speaking French and accused them of taking jobs not rightfully theirs. Backlash against Francos, already stereotyped as backwards and unpatriotic, intensified during World War I, a period marked by isolationist nationalism. Maine’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, the largest outside of the South, had a hateful focus on French-speaking Catholics. In 1919, Maine outlawed French in public schools. The language became a stigma, with teachers punishing children for uttering oui or non, and making them write “I will not speak French” repeatedly on the blackboard. When the mills began to close, sending its French-speaking workers to find other jobs, signs declaring “No French Need Apply” became a familiar sight.
“Things are different but the same,” McGraw says of the Somalis coming to Lewiston. It is an old story; there are just new people living it.
Despite facing animosity, the Québécois made their mark on the city. They transformed the neighborhood wedged between the industrial canals and the river, insular and isolated both ethnically and geographically. This “Petit Canada,” a French-speaking enclave composed of crowded, hastily built tenement housing, felt—and smelled—more like the Lower East Side of New York than south-central Maine. Money was scarce, winters were cold, and the work was hard. While conditions did not much improve, their roots into the city grew.
The average family size of the Catholic French-Canadian workers hovered around six or more children, which caused the so-called reformers of the era to issue eugenic cries of “race suicide.” But rather than worry about what reformers thought of them, French-speaking mill workers clashed more often with Lewiston’s Irish population.
Having a generation or more of a jump on the Québécois, as well as a good grasp of English, some of the Irish who helped build the mills moved into managerial positions when the French-speaking workforce showed up. Others lost their jobs to Québécois workers who were willing to do more for less. Territorial clashes between Irish and Québécois children broke out after school each day, mirroring the ethnic conflicts of far bigger cities.
Religion was one of few common denominators, although they did not necessarily worship together. St. Joseph’s, for example, held a basement mass in French to accommodate the new residents, but soon their numbers burst out of such temporary arrangements. With approximately ten thousand French-speaking worshippers by the end of the twentieth century, construction on a new church began, and parishioners prioritized its completion over their own homes. Finally finished in 1936 at the height of the Great Depression, Saints Peter and Paul stands today as one of the largest churches in New England, and one of the few designated the status of basilica.
Being able to hold mass regularly in French, as opposed to English or Latin, became a key ingredient to Franco-American identity in Lewiston, particularly when the city banned the language. The Québécois also founded French-speaking parochial schools to further preserve their culture, strongly believing that Qui perd sa langue, perd sa foi.
Whoever loses language, loses faith.
But as Lewiston’s Franco-American culture flourished, its mills began to decline. In the interwar era, New England’s textile industry took a hit as factories moved south, where everything from transportation to labor was cheaper. After World War II, mills began to close, igniting an economic downturn that hit downtown Lewiston hardest. Shuttered stores, such as Sears and Woolworth’s, dotted the once-thriving retail landscape.
Lewiston’s factories crumbled for decades, although unlike many New England mill towns, they did not fall down. In 1982, B. Peck & Co., Lewiston’s flagship department store for more than a century, gave in, closing its doors. Fewer factories meant fewer jobs, which meant fewer customers. With high rates of unemployment and a declining population, Lewiston hit bottom. But the core of its Franco-American community, which once endured hostility to their customs and their language, still called Petit Canada home.
They would not be the last wave of immigrants to do so.
Chapter 4
Many and One
On Lincoln Street across from the vast Bates Mill complex sits Labadie’s Bakery, a Lewiston institution since 1925.
“Old people come in,” says the girl behind a counter filled with an extraordinary arrangement of doughnuts, pastries, and whoopie pies. “‘I used to live over there,’ they’ll say.” She points to the multilevel parking garage that the bakery faces, where tenements constructed for factory workers once stood. The garage supports the urban renewal projects of the mill complex—the restaurants, brewery, and small businesses filling the massive redbrick buildings that once housed a significant portion of America’s textile industry.
Next door to the bakery, a shuttered halal grocery represents someone’s vanquished business dream, a “For Rent” sign in the dirty window. But a few blocks over on Lisbon Street, similar entrepreneurial endeavors thrive, indicative of the transformations in Maine’s second-largest city.
Once ghost-like with a few pawnshops sprinkled among vacant storefronts, Lisbon Street now reveals seeds planted by Lewiston’s newer residents. Lewiston used to be the largest downtown retail landscape in New England outside of Boston, but it fell hard and fast as the mills closed and retail shopping malls, like the one in Auburn, took over.
Today, the Somalis see themselves as very much a part of Lewiston’s recovering economy. “They want to stay,” one longtime Lewiston resident says. “Unlike a lot of people, they want to be here.” A storefront mosque discreetly occupies space beside stores selling Somali food and clothing, vibrant hijabs and chadors and khimars hanging in shop windows next to soccer jerseys. The Islamic Center, a nondescript three-story row house with entrances on both Lisbon and Canal Streets, is packed on Fridays for midday prayers. Women pray in the basement while men fill the upper levels. On weekends, there is dugsi—Koran study for children.
The greatest concentration of Somali businesses on Lisbon sits between Chestnut and Pine: Banadir Café, Dayah Store, Al Madina Variety and Halal Store, Maskali Café, and Al Fatah Variety. While clan identification lost much of its meaning in Lewiston, people often shop along clan lines, making for a crowded marketplace.
Most of the customers on Lisbon Street are Somali, although some hail from Congo, Sudan, Uganda, and Angola. All are welcome—as-salaam alaikum—that’s just good business. The stores offer a variety of goods and services, including wire transfers to send money to relatives still in Africa. Advertisements for phone cards and Boost mobile are everywhere—“Lycamobile $29/month 3 hours to Somalia!” Photographs of Somali delicacies like sambusa line store windows, while inside, spices, teas, and mixes for guava and mango juice sit on shelves next to boxes of Tropiway Plantain Fufu flour, bags of Maggi seasoning cubes, jars of Egusi, and bottles of Praise African Red Palm Oil, perfect for stewing goat. Forty-pound bags of rice are everywhere; some families go through two per month. Boxes of halal meat—camel, chicken, goat, beef—are stored in coolers or freezer cases, labeled in Arabic. Bananas, a staple of Somali cuisine, are offered on the green side, considered better to cook with meat and slice into rice.
One of the most successful stores on the street is the Mogadishu Store, owned and run by “Mama” Shukri Abasheikh. Her family lost its home and business when violence escalated in Somalia in the late 1980s. After almost a decade in Dadaab, she arrived in Atlanta in 1999, but hated big-city life. In 2002, she moved to Lewiston. Four years later, she opened the store, many of her eight children helping her. Her sign promises much—“Grocery Store, Restaurant, Money Transmitter, Seamstress, Tax Preparer, Halal Meat, Cleaning Services.” Inside the large space, divided by a row of locker freezers, there is little a customer can’t find, from colorful scarves hanging in the back to the hot food resting on small heating units. Out in front, women pile their plastic bags of goods together on spreads of colorful fabric, tying it together to loop around their heads and carry back home. Petit Canada is now Little Mogadishu.
For decades, Lewiston hoped for a revitalized downtown, a reawakening. But when it happened, it was not the way anyone envisioned. A small-town vibe permeates Lisbon Street. Somali women greet each other by name as they shop; men gather on the corner to share news. Alongside the Somali businesses, Forage Market offers organic sandwiches, frothy lattes, and what Saveur magazine has dubbed the country’s best bagel. A few doors down, a couple of wine bars bring in the hipster after-work crowd.
The Abdulle brothers, Abdulkarim and Zakariya, or Karim and Zak, spend a lot of time on Lisbon Street. Their family’s store, Bakaaraha Halal Market, is a quick walk from the apartment building they own just off Kennedy Park. The store is tucked under one of the green awnings that dot the block between Spruce and Chestnut, across from Paul’s Clothing and Shoe Store, which carries Carhartt clothing and Red Wing shoes—everything a construction worker might need. Karim and Zak’s father, Abdullahi Abdulle, came to Lewiston long before his sons did. Their teammates speak of him with a sense of awe. He was one of the first ones here, they say. Indeed, Abdulle was one of the first Somali interpreters in Lewiston, working with public health nurses. In 2011, he ran for school committee, wanting to bridge the disconnects of language and culture in Lewiston, but didn’t win.
Karim and Zak and their friends spend a lot of time in their father’s shop, where there is usually a soccer ball on one of the shelves. It is a simple space. A laptop sits on the small glass counter, a few folding chairs scattered about, while the obligatory bags of rice fill the floor. A few freezers offer a variety of meats, and women’s clothing is haphazardly displayed throughout. Abdulle runs his other business, Smart Interpreters, from here as well. In addition to translation services in Somali, Arabic, and Swahili, he is a certified enrolled agent, a go-to taxman for Somalis in Lewiston.
Born in Mogadishu, Karim and Zak came to Lewiston in February 2012 after living in Nairobi for several years. They remember the war in Somalia, but also a “normal” life where they played and went to school. Although Karim is older than Zak, the boys were placed in school together in Lewiston. Their English was okay. They practiced in Nairobi by watching American movies and television, but still found the transition scary. The shows they watched tended to be about California, but Maine was nothing like California.
Inseparable friends, the brothers are quite different from each other. Karim is tall, deeply religious, and very quiet. When he does speak, his deep voice has an African lilt. Conversely, Zak is quick and witty, his pencil-thin mustache in constant motion as he laughs, weaving stories, frequently talking over Karim with little accent.
“Yeahhhhhh,” Karim often intones, punctuating whatever Zak says.
They are regulars at the Safari Coffee Shop, which sits next to their father’s store. Zak likes to buy sodas and charge them to “his tab.” Every once in a while, his father comes in to pay, telling his prankster son never to buy anything again. When he leaves, Zak will grab another Coke.
Opened by Sharmarke Farah in 2008, the Safari is easy to miss, with only a small paper sign in the window; “ROBO’S VARIETY” still hangs over the entrance. A few photographs of Somali dishes and a list of international coffees are taped to the window, something the Chamber of Commerce requested Somali businesses do to quell rumors of terrorist activities.
The Abdulle brothers, like many of their teammates, watch soccer at the Safari alongside their neighbors, fathers, and uncles. The décor is simple; folding chairs and small tables, community notices and a clock on the wall. The window shades are usually drawn to make the screen images more vivid, although the Chamber has asked Somali business owners to rethink that, too. Karim is a Chelsea fan, something he is teased about, while Zak proclaims allegiance to Arsenal. But Zak is known to be fickle, rooting for any team that’s winning.
More than watching soccer, the brothers love playing soccer, including fanatical, competitive video game sessions of FIFA Football that seemingly never end, someone yelling “rematch” at the end of each game. But when the sun is up and the grass is green, they head outside to find a game.
“We don’t have enough soccer fields now,” assistant city administrator Phil Nadeau says, shaking his head. “These kids live, eat, and breathe soccer practically from birth, like other kids in Lewiston who live, eat, and drink hockey.”
Most often, the Abdulle brothers head a few blocks over to Simard-Payne Memorial Railroad Park, the site of the former Grand Trunk rail yard. Set alongside the Androscoggin, the peaceful park sits in the shadow of the Bates Mill smokestack, a marker of the city’s past. In recent years, a range of businesses, including the offices of Androscoggin Savings Bank, have moved into the renovated redbrick buildings, ending the stagnant vacancies of past decades. The city took over the compound, totaling seven buildings and 1.5 million square feet, in 1992, working it into strategies for economic rebirth that predated the Somali surge. According to Nadeau, the mill complex, along with Lisbon Street’s rejuvenation, diversified Lewiston’s economy enoug
h to survive the global economic recession of 2008 with little impact on unemployment rates.
Simard-Payne Park is another sign of Lewiston’s future, a grassy space that sits just behind Lewiston Pizza House, a veritable institution on busy Lincoln Avenue. A paved walking trail meanders along the river before crossing the old railroad bridge into Bonney Park in Auburn, which circles back to the Great Falls. A small stage hosts many community events, including Lewiston’s signature Great Falls Balloon Festival.
Karim and Zak call the park Sheikh Hassan Stadium; it is a place for pickup games and leagues of their own devising. The kids named it for an old man, Hassan (they don’t know his last name), who waits for them with a ball and some orange cones for goals. If he forgets the cones, they use their shoes, making piles of slides and sandals and sneakers. Hassan lives downtown in an apartment on Park Street overlooking the Kennedy Park basketball courts. In awe of his soccer skills and his devotion to the game, the kids call him “Sheikh” as a sign of respect. Outsiders call the park “Somali Stadium.”
Every evening, in the months without snow, a parade of players heads through the sloping triple-decker apartments, cleats in hand, toward the river. Hassan drives there, sometimes stuffing as many as ten kids into his old Toyota. The games, often two or three at a time, are loud and raucous, with no refs blowing whistles or coaches yelling strategy. This is where Maslah Hassan, skinny and tall, his goatee giving him a tough look, dribbles the ball through twenty others, weaving and dodging, rolling his feet inside and out with step overs, scissors, feints, and drags. He runs full-tilt, throwing other players off-balance as he steps over the ball in a counterclockwise fashion, winding up as if he’s going to release it. But it’s not real. A small smile on his face, he fakes a cross before cutting inside and continuing across the grass, leaving the others behind. When he hits another wall of defenders, he uses the inside of his foot to take the ball back through his legs, a Cruyff turn, changing directions and continuing his race to the orange cones. Once there, he gently taps the ball through, making it look like it was easy to get there. The thirty or so people chasing him collapse, laughing.
