Alan Caron’s grandfather came to Waterville from Quebec in a horse-drawn carriage. He had five children who all ended up living within a block from each other, so when Caron was a child, on his walk to school he passed his aunt’s and uncle’s houses, the house where his mother first lived when she was married, and the house where his grandmother was born. Caron grew up in a Franco-American community in the south end of Waterville surrounded by family, and though he went on to experience much more of the world than this community, it would never cease to influence him.
Caron left high school in the ninth grade and began to work a variety of jobs—he worked in the mills, construction, briefly for the state, and did “a lot of work in rebuilding communities and affordable housing.” Eventually he ended up at Harvard, the first person to ever be admitted to the Kennedy School of Government without a college education, where he received his Master’s. After getting his degree he returned to Maine, where he is now a columnist for the Maine Sunday Telegram. Caron has also created a number of statewide organizations in the hopes of rebuilding, preserving, and improving on Maine’s communities and economy.
One such organization is Envision Maine, an organization “all about mobilizing the doers in Maine who are growing the next economy.” Envision Maine sponsors gatherings that work to improve the state. Previous gatherings have included, for example, conversations on education, Maine’s next rural economy, and “the only major gathering in the country that had the state’s largest chambers of commerce and largest environmental and energy organizations all working together to have a conversation about climate change.” The organization focuses not on a few people doing big things, but on many, many people “building small things.”
Envision Maine is an organization founded in positivity. It works to improve the state not by focusing on what’s going wrong, not by focusing on the past, but by focusing on what’s going well, and what has the potential to become even better in the future. Caron believes that Maine is “a special place.” Through Envision Maine, he works to expand on by focusing on “what’s strong and powerful in Maine” and using that to “create new opportunities.” Caron says that this is “what I’ve devoted my life’s work to, and it’s because of where I came from.”
Though Caron no longer lives in Waterville, its effect on him is evident. He speaks of the town with love and nostalgia and pride. He recalls sneaking through the Colby science labs in the summers, in awe of the experiments. He speaks to the mix of different cultures in Waterville, of the richness that this diversity provides. He speaks especially highly of the individuals of Waterville, deeply impressed by the “wonderful array of talent that’s come out of this little tiny town along the river.” Alan Caron’s love for Waterville has remained strong, and it has also grown into a love for Maine, which has in turn grown into years of dedication to improving the state through open conversation and compromise and positivity.