Emma Bouthillette — a member of the Biddeford Gazette’s Community Advisory Council — shares her passion for her hometown and its history with Cy Cyr from Brick + Tides
Note: This story was originally published as a feature in Brick + Tides, a digital magazine that highlights people from York County. It is republished here with permission.
STORY & PHOTOS by CY CYR | Brick + Tides
The fog was so thick at Fortunes Rocks Beach Tuesday evening that the Atlantic Ocean seemed to disappear just beyond the breaking waves. Emma Bouthillette walked barefoot across the wet sand with Savvy (11) and Glinda (6), her two corgis, as we settled in for a conversation about Biddeford, writing, history, family, yoga and a life spent telling stories.
Over the next hour, several dogs—and their people—would wander over to say hello, occasionally interrupting our conversation and providing a pretty accurate glimpse into an evening at the beach with Emma Bouthillette.
Emma grew up in Biddeford. She studied here, reported on the city, wrote a book about it, teaches yoga here and can trace branches of her family back to generations that arrived from Quebec.
“It’s just in my blood,” Bouthillette said. “I love to tell stories.”
Growing Up at Fortunes Rocks in Biddeford
Fortunes Rocks isn’t simply a beautiful beach to Bouthillette. When she was five, her parents, Peter and Diane Bouthillette, purchased property beside the familiar water tower, a landmark her father had known since childhood because his own family had a cottage nearby. As a little girl, Emma had one pressing question: Could that enormous water tower fall on their house? Her father offered the kind of reassurance only a dad could provide, “It might.”
Both sides of Bouthillette’s family had homes near the beach, and with grandparents helping care for her while her parents worked, much of her childhood unfolded along this stretch of Biddeford coastline.
Her mother’s parents, Madeleine and Lionel “Friday” Croteau, lived at the end of Bridge Road. Friday was a meat cutter, while Madeline worked in the city’s finance department. Her father’s family had a little cottage at Fortunes Rocks, just over 700 square feet. It was typical of what many coastal Maine cottages once were, simple seasonal places owned by local families fortunate enough to have a summer camp near the ocean.
Bouthillette’s family eventually inherited the cottage, but by 2021, rising property taxes and the cost of keeping it had become increasingly difficult. They were renting the cottage just to afford owning it and eventually made the painful decision to sell.
“It’s still hard to have said goodbye,” she said.
The goodbye wasn’t complete. On Bouthillette’s right forearm are the geographic coordinates of the cottage, incorporated into a tattoo featuring her grandfather’s handwriting. The cottage may belong to somebody else now, but Emma found a way to carry it with her.
Writing A Brief History of Biddeford.
Bouthillette grew up listening to her grandparents describe a Biddeford that didn’t resemble the downtown she knew as a child. They remembered Main Street as the center of daily life, where people bought groceries and clothes, walked from store to store and picked up an outfit before heading to Old Orchard Beach to dance on The Pier.
“They didn’t need to go anywhere else,” she said.
The Biddeford of Bouthillette’s childhood was different. “There was not really much on Main Street to be had,” she remembered, naming Reilly’s Bakery, George’s, Pizza by Alex and McArthur Library among the places she recalls.
By the time she began researching A Brief History of Biddeford in 2015, the city was changing again. The resurgence sometimes called the “Biddesaince” was underway, giving Bouthillette an unusual opportunity to research the city’s past while watching another chapter unfold around her.
The book was published in 2017 and nearly a decade later can still be found on local bookshelves, including at Elements: Books Coffee Beer in downtown Biddeford. Bouthillette doesn’t know how many copies have sold in total, although she personally sold about 200 during the first year.
People still recognize her because of it. She said, “I continue to hear people meet me and realize, ‘Oh, you’re the one that wrote that book.’”
Bouthillette graduated from Biddeford High School in 2004 and the University of New England in 2008 with a degree in English literature and minors in history and fine art. In 2012, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction writing through the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program.
The Biddeford of Bouthillette’s childhood was different. “There was not really much on Main Street to be had,” she recalled.
At UNE, Professor Elizabeth DeWolfe transformed Bouthillette’s interest in history. DeWolfe taught history through literature, and Bouthillette became so interested that she added the history minor largely so she could take more classes with her. One project introduced her to the young women who left family farms to work in Biddeford’s textile mills before the large waves of Franco-American immigration. They arrived with skills in sewing and weaving, lived in boarding houses near the mills, earned money for their families and experienced a degree of independence they hadn’t previously known. “That’s really where my love for history developed,” Bouthillette said.
That curiosity followed her into A Brief History of Biddeford, where she investigated stories she’d heard since childhood, including the supposed “curse” of the Saco River. Her research led instead to a darker account involving British colonizers and the death of an Indigenous child, with no evidence that the chief actually cursed the river.
Bouthillette has another theory about why versions of the legend survived, particularly during years when the river’s water quality was far worse. “I feel like this is a made-up story that parents thought, ‘This is how we keep our kids out of the river,'” she said, laughing.
What Writing Obituaries Taught Emma Bouthillette
After college, Bouthillette worked for a weekly newspaper covering the Kennebunks before joining the Portland Press Herald. One of her first jobs there was writing feature obituaries. She was 24 years old.
Day after day, Bouthillette called people who had recently lost someone and asked them to talk about that person’s life. The conversations could be difficult, but they gave families an opportunity amid their grief to remember a mother, grandfather, spouse or friend.
“It taught me that everybody has a story to tell,” she said.
The people she wrote about didn’t need to be famous or have accomplished something extraordinary. Their legacy might have been teaching someone how to cook a particular dish, passing along a love of books or simply being the person another human being could depend on.
“Everybody has an impact on somebody’s life,” Bouthillette said. “You may not know what that is. You may not ever know what that is.”
There was something bittersweet about gathering all those memories after someone was gone.
“It’s unfortunate that the person I was writing about never got to read all those amazing things,” she said.
A Writer’s Life: News, Bars, Dogs and Engineers
Bouthillette eventually returned to news reporting, including covering Biddeford and York County. Journalism gave her some remarkable experiences—interviewing a Tuskegee Airman, climbing into a lighthouse and covering Portland’s Pride parade—but a plane crash on Hill Street in Biddeford helped convince her that breaking news wasn’t where she wanted to spend her career.
She reached the scene before reporters coming from Portland, interviewed people and filed what she’d gathered. When she returned home, she recalled, “Three showers later, I still smelled like fire.”
Bouthillette eventually stepped away from full-time journalism and spent about a year and a half reviewing bars for the newspaper.
“You went from obituaries to bars,” I told her.
“Which I feel like is a good summation of a writer’s life,” she replied. Her first assignment was Mulligan’s in Biddeford: “I could write this one with my eyes closed. I spent a lot of time there.”
She also spent about a year writing for the Journal Tribune, including a children’s-style column called Adventures of a Dog Named Worm. Worm, her corgi-beagle mix, inspired the corgi obsession that eventually brought Savvy and Glinda into her life.
“They’re big dogs in a small body,” Bouthillette said. “They’re wicked smart, wicked loyal and also stubborn as hell.”
She even started Corgis in Maine, organizing meetups that have attracted as many as 25 corgis. Watching unsuspecting beachgoers encounter a pack of them is part of the fun.
“Instant happiness,” she said. “Instant smiles.”
.
.
BIDDEFORD GAZETTE
“Keeping You Connected to Biddeford”
Editorial Standards & Policies
© 2026 Biddeford Gazette, Inc. All Rights Reserved
BIDDEFORD GAZETTE 