The old Grand Trunk Railway station is much quieter these days. It was remodeled in recent months into an upscale restaurant that still evokes memories of a time when the building greeted newcomers to the Twin Cities.

A hundred or more years ago, the brick building on Lincoln Street was filled with Canadians who would soon make Lewiston their new home. It was on the first weekend of February in the early 1950s when crowds of visitors from Canada again passed through that train station. They were here to celebrate winter in a manner that newspapers were calling “a New England Mardi Gras.”

The front page of the Lewiston Evening Journal declared, “Banners flying, trumpets blaring, cannon booming, thousands cheered a band of gaily dressed marchers as they swung from the Grand Trunk Station into Lincoln Street.”

That February in 1952 marked the first time members of the International Snowshoe Clubs had visited here. They paraded through the city’s streets in colorful uniforms that were to be seen many times in later years during similar winter celebrations.

The proud “raquetteur” tradition came to Lewiston when a former sports editor for a Quebec City daily newspaper moved here.

Louis-Philippe Gagné was a small man, standing just 5 feet 1 inch and weighing only 110 pounds, but he was a giant in the history of snowshoe clubs and Franco-American culture in this city.

As editor of “Le Messager,” Lewiston’s French-language newspaper, he wrote political commentary that was read throughout New England and Canada.

Gagné was twice elected mayor of Lewiston. In the early days of radio, he hosted live broadcasts called “L’Oeil” (The Eye) on WCOU, and was responsible for bringing notable Canadian performers to Lewiston.

Two years after his arrival in 1922, Gagné had founded Le Montagnard, which was the first organized snowshoe social club in the United States. It was named after Le Montagnard Club of Montreal, the first Canadian Club, formed in 1895.

Lewiston’s Le Montagnard Club adopted the original club’s gray and scarlet uniforms, as well as the club’s motto, “Toujours joyeaux,” meaning “always happy.”

A newspaper account of the snowshoe club festivities declared, “No more brilliant spectacle has been seen in this city in years than that of the sportily costumed, jauntily marching band.”

The story described crowds of cheering spectators to welcome the Canadian visitors.

‘Their singing, for they did sing, was cheered, and the music of their drum corps set the feet of all who watched the parade a-tingling with the desire to get out onto the road and take a hand in the march,” the reporter said.

There were races in the park next to City Hall, and the Lewiston Evening Journal ran a photo of the ice palace nearly two stories high that had been constructed there. It was built from hundreds of blocks of ice cut from No Name Pond and brought to the park.

“Movie men cranked their cameras and the operators of still cameras were shooting their Graflexes as fast as their fingers could work them,” the article said.

That 1925 event featured a visit by Maine Gov. Ralph O. Brewster, who had traveled by trolley to Lewiston from Augusta. City Hall was the convention headquarters and the governor watched as the Canadian visitors trooped in.

“Can such a scene as this ever be put down in black and white?” Brewster asked.

Maine’s snowshoe clubs are still active, but the community activities in Lewiston, Rumford and Biddeford no longer approach the scale of those conventions of several decades ago.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by email at [email protected].