By Laurie Meunier Graves

 Not long ago, my husband and I spent the weekend in Boston.  The weather was hot, but we took to the streets and followed the Freedom Trail.  We went past churches and meeting houses and old stone buildings crammed between tall skyscrapers.  We saw where Paul Revere and Samuel Adams were buried.  We saw the site of the very first public school in the country.
 The Freedom Trail led us to the North End of Boston, home of the Old North Church, (ìOne if by land, and two if by seaî). But we never made it to the church.  The North End, of course, is also the Italian-American section of Boston, and we were stopped on Hanover Street by the lovely smell of garlic coming from the long line of restaurants and cafes lining the narrow street.  When we paused by the bakeries and admired the cannoli and the tiramisu, we abandoned the Freedom Trail and gave in to the food.
 We were not sorry.  We blissfully sampled pizza, cannoli, cookies, and cinnamon knots.  We ate food we had never heard of and whose names I canít remember---creamy mashed potatoes mixed with mozzarella and deep-fried into a golden ball, as well as rice, meat, and vegetables cooked in similar way.
 As we ate, we sat on a bench outside one of the cafes and watched tourists as they strolled in and out of shops.  Dark-haired men gathered on the sidewalk and argued in Italian.  A woman clutching a lawn chair and a take-out bag hurried to a nearby park.  Watching all this, I realized that while the North End may be a tourist attraction, it is also more than a tourist attraction.  It is a vibrant community filled with wonderful smells and sounds.
 I recently learned that Franco-Americans are the second largest ethnic group in New England (Irish-Americans are the largest). Even though I am Franco-American, I was taken by surprise.  How can such a large ethnic group have such a small presence?
Where is the French section in the cities in New England?  Where are the narrow, cobbled streets with cafes and pastry shops?  Where are the tourtiere pies and the steaming bowls of pea soup?  Where are the dark-haired men arguing loudly in French?  Where are the women, hurrying from shop to shop?  
Thousands and thousands of people of French descent migrated from Canada to New England.  They came, they spoke French, they worked in the factories, and then poof!  Itís as though all traces of them vanished.  Of course, there are churches here and there, and phone books full of such names as Giguere and Poulin and Lemieux.  So we know that Franco-Americans did not vanish.  We know, in fact, they are here.
 In Louisiana, there is an active French presence.  There is music, a cuisine, and a culture that has blended with others, but is still distinctly French, and is known throughout the country.  Calvin Trillin, a writer for The New Yorker, fairly salivates when he writes about the food in Louisiana.
 What happened to us?  Why are we so invisible in New England?  I do not have any answers.  Only questions.
What is especially ironic is that in the food section of The New York Times, the writers rave about the food of Montreal and Quebec.  And guess which dish they rave about most?  Tourtiere pies, of course.