UND hosted a conference titled Building Community-to-Community International Relationships on Wednesday and Thursday last week in the Memorial Union.

The focus was on Quebec with events connecting Quebec to the U.S. through language and education.

The conference began with Jean Desy, professor of literature at Laval University and physician of more than 30 years for the Inuit in the northern part of Quebec, giving the opening address Wednesday. The following day was filled with events from morning until night.

One such event was hosted by Eric Marquis, head of Quebec Government Office for the Middle West, and Ray Lagasse, UND director of international programs, and focused on studying abroad in Quebec.

Through this program, UND students are able to study abroad in Quebec with around 13 options for universities. While travelling up north can be expensive, students pay UND tuition and get the chance to experience things they might not experience here.

“You’re not going to see lighthouses or have opportunities to kayak here, and they have mountains,” Lagasse said. “You also have the opportunity to connect with various businesses in the largest city in Canada, Montreal.”

HEC Montreal, Canada’s first university business school, is even offering a business summer school program next year. While prior business knowledge isn’t a requirement, knowledge of French is.

“This is a nice addition to the programs that we offer,” said Virgil Benoit, UND French professor and conference organizer.

While UND’s relationship with Quebec universities is by no means new, it has recently been reaffirmed.

“Our program of reciprocity with Quebec universities started in 1982,” Benoit said.

Although it’s been long-lasting, troubles arose with the accreditation agency in recent years, but were solved last year when it was decided that French professors would evaluate work done by students studying abroad in Quebec.

Yves Frenette, history professor at the University of Saint-Boniface in Manitoba, gave a presentation on the names of French-Canadian cultural groups throughout history and how they’ve evolved throughout the years. He paid specific attention to Canadian immigrants in Louisiana, Creoles and Cajuns, who emigrated from Quebec.

The conference also served as an outlet for some of Benoit’s language capstone course students to give presentations in a session titled “Local knowledge with global connections.”

Senior Morgan Gruhot gave a presentation on prison culture after gathering information from an interview with an East Grand Forks police officer who has connections to Florence State Prison in Arizona. Juniors Jake McLean and James Boone presented their findings on the stave church in Moorhead, an exact replica of Hopperstad Stave Church in Norway.

The Moorhead stave church was built by Guy Paulson, a former construction worker with a doctorate in biochemistry, over the course of five and a half years. Six months were spent carving out around 24,000 shingles.

Most sessions of the conference were well attended with “between five and six hundred” people showing up, Benoit said.

While he was the one who organized it, he said other people took responsibilities and organized their part of the session.

Benoit said the Quebec conferences have been an annual event with another planned for next year. He also said that Dec. 1 will mark the first meeting of an organization that will be researching communities with extensive French-Canadian backgrounds.

“Next year, we’ll certainly have sessions on what we’re discovering on that topic,” Benoit said.

Jamie Hutchinson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].