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Micheline's Blog

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Daily Archives: January 24, 2012

Évangéline & the “literary homeland” (cont’d)

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Antonine Maillet, Évangéline, Jean-Mandé Sigogne, Pélagie-la-Charette, Prix Goncourt, Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Une Acadie heureuse

So we were discussing the manner in which a dispersed nation can find a mythic yet very real past that allows resistance. Yes the deportation of Acadians did take place. It’s a fact. But it did not destroy Acadie. Although he could not have anticipated the fate of his heroine, Longfellow had given Acadians a redeeming symbol. Acadie was Évangéline, both a saint and a martyr!

There were twelve-thousand Acadians who lived more or less amicably with Amerindians. They were farmers.

Most of the Acadians who were deported did not come back. But among those who were finally allowed to leave the ships in Georgia, US, some started travelling towards Louisiana which was still a French colony. However, many decided to return home. Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie-la-Charette tells the story of Acadians travelling back home. Madame Maillet was awarded the 1979 prestigious Prix Goncourt for this truly fine novel.

Antonine Maillet

If fact, I analyzed Pélagie-la-Charette, and my publication is online, in French. If you click on Patrie Littéraire, my article will appear. Bourbeau is my mother’s name.

Le Père Sigogne

We are now returning to Acadie where we will meet one of the French Catholic priests who fled to England, but whom England sent to its French-speaking colony where some became missionaries to Acadians who were settling back.

Father Sigogne [i] was born on April 6, 1763, in Beaulieu-lès-Loches, France, and died in Ste Marie (Church Point or Pointe-de-l’Église) on November 9, 1844. He had spent forty-five years in what is now Nova Scotia, and he is the best known of the French missionaries sent to the Maritime Provinces.

Sigogne’s story is quite the story. According to l’abbé Casgrain, our Father Sigogne had his head under the about-to-fall blade of the guillotine when he was saved: [ii]

Father Sigogne & the guillotine

(please click one page to read text) 

Yet, although he had escaped the guillotine, father Sigogne decided to join several other priests who had fled to England. This was the same England that had been a refuge to Huguenots, French Calvinist Protestants. And this was the England who having deported thousands of Acadians would make its French-speaking Canadian subjects into full-fledged British subjects, under the terms of the Quebec Act of 1774.  History is so convoluted.

* * * 

The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between Napoléon and Pope Pius VII, signed on July 15, 1801. Priests could return to France safely, but Father Sigogne and other priests were already in Canada. Sigogne stayed in the current Nova Scotia, and some stayed in Quebec, then Lower Canada. When studying Canadian Music, I was able to detect the presence of French priests in Quebec. Between 1800 and 1802, three chant and hymn books, “modelled on the traditional French service,” were published in Quebec: Le Graduel romain, published in 1800, Le Processional romain, published in 1801, and Le Vespéral romain. [iii] There can be no doubt that these hymn and chant books are the product of fresh information from France.

As for the Maritimes, the Acadians who were settling back needed the institutions they had had: parishes, schools, colleges. This is how Father Sigogne and other French priests could help them. Moreover, as well educated and refined a gentleman as Father Sigogne befriended the authorities. In his article on Thomas Chandler Haliburton, (December 17, 1796 at Windsor, N.S — August 27, 1865 at Isleworth, Middlesex, England), Fred Cogswell writes that Haliburton was a “friend of the celebrated Abbé Jean-Mandé Sigogne.” [iv]  As for Bernard Pothier, in his entry on Jean-Mandé Sigogne he writes that Haliburton, the creator of Sam Slick, found him, i.e. Sigogne, “a man of strong natural understanding, well informed.”

* * *

So, the fictional Pélagie, who travels back to Acadie, and Father Sigogne, who creates parishes, schools, etc., resemble our voyageurs. They gave themselves a purpose and they were happy to have a job. In England, there was very little for l’abbé Sigogne to do, but in Acadia, everything had to be rebuilt. For Sigogne, this was a real opportunity. People stumble and rise up again.

As for l’abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain, during his pilgrimage, he was looking at what a priest would consider a miracle: an Acadie rising from its ashes with priests leading the way. Times have changed. 

Charette

 Grieg: Ave Maris Stella,* St. John’s College Choir

(please click on title to hear music)
* The Ave Maris Stella is the national anthem of Acadians. 
 
 
_________________________
[i] Bernard Pothier, “Jean-Mandé Sigogne,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Vol VII) <http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=3662>
 
 
[ii] Henri-Raymond Casgrain, Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline, p. 426. 
<http://www.archive.org/stream/cihm_00528#page/425/mode/2up>
 
 
[iii] Timothy J. McGee, The Music of Canada (New York & London: Norton & Company, 1985), p. 42.
 
 
[iv] Freg Cogswell, “Thomas Chandler Haliburton,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Vol VII) <http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=4475>
 
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Évangéline & the “literary homeland”

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canadian History, French-Canadian Literature

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Deportation of Acadians, Expulsion of Acadians, French priests, French Revolution, Henri-Raymond Casgrain, La Patrie littéraire, Longfellow, Un Pèlerinage au pays d'Évangéline

Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie

A few years ago, I published a paper in which I told about French priests who fled to England to escape the guillotine and were then sent to Canada where many became missionaries in Atlantic Canada. 

I gathered my information from l’abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain’s Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline (1855) and Une Seconde Acadie (1894). These books are now available online, but I had to read them under the supervision of a librarian. 

First, let me point to the title of l’abbé Casgrain’s first book: Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, Évangéline is a fictional character created by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882).  She is the heroine of a long poem published in 1847. Longfellow heard the story of an Évangéline while he was having dinner with Nathaniel Hawthorne (4 July 1804 – 19 May 1864), the author of the famous Scarlet Letter (1850).

The Deportation of the Acadians by Charles Jefferys

The Deportation of the Acadians, 1755

There may have been an Évangéline separated from a Gabriel during the deportation of Acadians. The soldiers who put these victims into boats separated members of the same family. But Longfellow’s Évangéline is a fictional character whom Acadians have mythified, thereby giving themselves a symbol that bestows selfhood, an identity. Longfellow’s poem was a great success, but he could not possibly have expected that his poem would be successful not only as a literary work but as resistance. The literary homeland is resistance.

As for l’abbé Casgrain, he corralled the fictional Évangéline into the giants that gave French-speaking Canadians both a past and mythology.  In fact, he gave her a homeland: un pays and he called his trip to Atlantic Canada a pilgrimage.  The title tells the story: Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline (A Pilgrimage to the Country of Évangéline).

However, Évangéline is a metaphor. When Acadians were deported, couples were separated.  Évangéline, therefore, represents all the women who were separated from their fiancés and, for that matter, her Gabriel represents all the young men who were separated from their betrothed. 

But what makes this book particularly fascinating is the presence in Atlantic Canada of French priests: aristocrats. Many Acadians had found their way back to their former land and even though their farms had been given new owners, they started to build a second Acadie… 

(I will stop here because I lost most of this blog, by clicking on the publish button.  I have rewritten two-thirds of my blog, but I am now tired.  So I will finish it in the morning and will also send you the words and music of a second voyageur song.)

Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, 1842 
Un Canadien errant
Alan Mills
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie (1847)
 
Love to everyone  ♥

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© Micheline Walker
24 January 2012
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