On February 7, 1925, Lewiston welcomed more than eight hundred French-Canadians to the First International Convention of the Canadian Snowshoe Union for a weekend of ice palace attacks, snowshoe races, and total debauchery. Spearheaded by Louis-Philippe Gagne, the founder of Lewiston’s snowshoe club Les Montagnards, this inaugural event — attended by thousands of spectators, including Governor Owen Brewster — began with a mock attack on City Hall followed by races that ranged from one hundred yard sprints to three-mile runs.

After the competition and another faux-attack (this time upon the two-story ice palace erected in City Park that served as the centerpiece of the event), Lewiston became the sight of what the Lewiston Sun Daily called “scenes characteristic of a Mardi Gras celebration.” According to the paper, the French-Canadian men made it a night filled with colorful parades, impromptu singing, gaudy costumes, lingerie purchases, streetcars lifted off their rails, women being “seized and kissed as they walked along the streets,” and fire alarms pulled as pranks. “For unrestrained, unadulterated, spontaneous fun-making, and barrels of it, the Canadian snowshoers left nothing undone,” said the paper.

The city hosted several more conventions over the years, including races as recently as 2009, although never again did Lewiston so resemble the New Orleans of the Northeast.
—Will Bleakley


Photo courtesy of Collections of Androscoggin Historical Society/ Maine Memory Network. 
Special thanks to James Myall, coordinator of Franco-American Collection at USM LAC.