Antonine Maillet, Canadian writer and speaker of international fame and chancellor of the University of Moncton in New Brunswick, gave the commencement address Saturday at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, while State Sen. Stephen Bost, D-Orono, told graduating students at Beal College in Bangor that they must use their long-term commitment to higher education to help their communities grow and flourish.

A good part of Maillet’s talk was in French and she told her audience that individual uniqueness is a bright star in everyone’s lives and it should be utilized.

Maillet plied her audience with humor in developing her theme of uniqueness, especially those whose heritage happened to be Acadian, French, and especially those who were bilingual and bicultural.

Maillet is a native of Bouctouche, New Brunswick, in the heart of Acadia. Education took her to Memramcook and Moncton in New Brunswick to Montreal and Quebec City. She holds degrees from many institutions including College Notre-Dame d’Acadie in Moncton, Moncton University, and Laval University in Quebec City.

Sixteen Universities, prior to the UMFK Saturday have bestowed honorary degrees on Maillet. Those included the University of Alberta at Edmonton, Windsor University, Toronto University, McGill University and Acadia University. She received the Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa, at UMFK.

She was the recipient of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award and is the only person outside of France to receive the Prix Goncourt, that country’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize.

She told graduates that it was an advantage to be bilingual, especially in a bilingual milieu.

“It is great to be an American, but it is so much better to have a little bit more… , ” she said.

She told her audience that French culture is not only in books. “It is in your face, your way of being … I don’t walk like others and I don’t smile and laugh like others. I am different.”

Maillet said, “It is important for people like you to tell the country you have the right to be great. Be the peripheral of the world, push it back and let others in. Open yourselves, enrich yourselves by adding to your culture. The addition of something will not take anything away from your culture.”

She told graduates to remember that we were put here to do more than plant potatoes and cabbage.

“We come from the time of Louis XIV. Our heritage enriches us. We have French roots, Anglo lineage and it enriches us. They are two cultures to compliment each other.”

“Everyone here today has an obligation to contribute to the larger community,” Bost told the Beal graduates during the Saturday afternoon ceremony held in Peakes Auditorium at Bangor High School.

Bost said he was “impressed with the caliber of people this college sends out into the work force,” and that the graduates should devote their educational resources and talents to help preserve the U.S. tradition of liberty and success.

“As graduates, the task will be yours,” said Bost, an educator who is seeking re-election this year.

“Nice words, you might say, but how do you do it? The answer is education,” he said. “We must invest and reinvest in education.”

Bost pointed out that the post-World War II attempt to provide all Americans with higher education recently has begun to be reversed, and that currently 25 percent of high school students will drop out before earning their diploma.

“Nowhere are open doors more important than in our schools,” Bost said.

To remain competitive, he said, the United States must once again reaffirm its long-term commitment to higher education.

“It is not like filling a pot hole, it is rather like building a new road,” Bost said. “How far you go is up to you.”

During the student farewell address, Lester H. Norton told his fellow graduates that they had “learned something each and every day,” during their collegiate career, namely that those entering today’s work force need a college degree, that they must adapt to changing times, that they must set goals, and that “We have what it takes not to just survive, but to succeed.”

“Don’t spend the next five years trying to prove to someone that you’re irreplaceable, because you always were,” he said.