ExploringMaine.com

Your Scribe was motoring through Biddeford recently, and while in Biddeford Pool I saw a sign for Gilbert Avenue that ran from the Pool Road toward the sandy beach.

Could this be named after the late mayor Gilbert Boucher? It was. Here is a picture of the facility and the plaque in honor of Mayor Boucher. Below is a photo of the facility named for the mayor who wanted a seaside retreat for the families of the mill workers that had made Biddeford.

Boucher was the blue-collar mayor of the York County community from 1969-73 when he announced the city was taking by eminent domain a portion of beachfront for a public beach. He said that city residents should have a place to relax and enjoy the ocean, just as the (very) wealthy out-of-state tourists did.

I remember the meeting at which he made the surprise announcement. I was a reporter for the Portland Press Herald covering a routine city council meeting. It was almost over when Boucher went to “new business” and dropped the bombshell.

He had been doing the paperwork for a couple months, says Ray Gaudette, a friend of Boucher at the time and now a leader in the Biddeford Historical Society. But Boucher evidently didn’t want to tip his hand, because he knew the existing beach association would try to block the move.

The association did mount a legal battle but Boucher and the city argued that generations of Franco-Americans had worked in the mills and their families should get to enjoy a small piece of the beach.

The city won, and of course paid the beach association for the land.

Mayor Boucher was a political anomaly. Not many local politicians have made such a bold move against the established order of wealthy out-of-staters. But Gil Boucher, a no-nonsense contractor whose parents had worked in the mills, was committed to developing a public beach.

He died years ago but this park is a monument to his daring, his vision and his ultimate good intentions.