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Tag Archives: Clarence Gagnon

The Exodus: Canadiens leave Canada

01 Saturday May 2021

Posted by michelinewalker in Bilingualism, Canada, Canadian History

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Clarence Gagnon, l'abbé Lionel Groulx, le curé Labelle, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Seigneurial System, The Exodus

La Maison rouge par Clarence Gagnon

—ooo—

In earlier posts, I discussed Louis Hémon‘s Maria Chapdelaine (1913). Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913) was born in France but visited Quebec in 1912-1913. He went North to the small community of Péribonka. Having worked with French Canadians, he spent the winter of 1912-1913 writing Maria Chapdelaine and sent his manuscript to a publisher in France. He started walking west, but he was hit by a train.

In my discussion of Maria Chapdelaine, I also introduced the legendary Antoine Labelle (1834-1891). Antoine Labelle was a priest who encouraged Quebecers who had no land to go North, to the Lac-Saint-Jean FR or up the Ottawa River and “make land,”(faire de la terre). They were running out of land. Others, however, went to the United States.

Since the 1850s, or perhaps as early as the Rebellions or 1837-1838, Quebecers were moving to the United States.The thirty acres French colons (colonists) had farmed since the 17th century were a peau de chagrin.[1] They could no longer be divided among sons. Moreover, when the Seigneurial System was abolished in 1854, farmers could buy their ancestral land if they had money. The censitaires who could not buy their thirty acres had to pay “rente” for a lifetime.

Faire de la terre, making land, is the choice Maria’s father has made. Maria falls in love with François Paradis, but he dies in a storm, hoping to spend Christmas with Maria. An émigré to the United States, Lorenzo Surprenant, also wishes to marry Maria, but she will live and die as her mother lived and died. She marries Eutrope Gagnon who is “making land.”

My grandfather left Canada because he could not making a living in his native land. He went to the Canada d’en bas,[2] a down below Canada, or New England states. Traditionally, Quebecers had left for the pays d’en haut, north. They became voyageurs or worked as loggers (bûcherons) or river drivers (draveurs). Raftsmen drove the lumber down rivers, which was very dangerous.

Draveurs / Raftsmen (Bytown is Ottawa and the Ottawa River is l’Outaouais)

However, French Canadians left Québec for reasons other than unemployment. There were jobs in the United States, but French-speaking Canadians did not escape the spellbinding notion that, in order to be rich, one migrated to the United States. It was described as a land of plenty. My grandfather was unemployed, so he went to work in a New England factory. He saved his money and bought a large farm. Owning land was everything.

It remains true, however, that nearly one million[3] French-speaking Canadians left Canada mostly because they could not make a living in their country. Besides, although it did not happen the minute Confederation was signed, provinces legislated the exclusive, or nearly exclusive, use of French as a language of instruction. Sir Wilfrid Laurier could not accommodate immigrants and refugees. Needy French-speaking Canadians could not go west.

For instance, under Premier Sir James Whitney, Ontario was not prepared to have a dual system of education. In July 1912, Whitney’s government passed Regulation 17, which banned the teaching of French in schools beyond the first two or three years. This measure inflamed French-Canadian opinion across Canada, but more so in Quebec. French-speaking Quebecers wondered if they should accept conscription.

In 1922, Quebec nationalist, Lionel Groulx, a priest, published L’Appel de la race, (the call of…). Jules Lantagnac, a lawyer, has married Maud Fletcher, a Catholic Anglophone. They live in Ottawa. He is elected into office in Ontario, but wants his children to be educated in French. His wife opposes him and she threatens to leave him if he supports a motion by Kamouraska (Quebec) Member of Parliament, Ernest Lapointe. The marriage falls apart. A few years ago, Lionel Groulx, Quebec’s most prominent nationalist ever, was accused of racism. Although I would rather read Gabrielle Roy, I will say that race also means breed and that Lantagnac’s roots are a French and bilingual Canada. Sir James Whitney, was influenced by Ontario Orangemen. Sir John A. Macdonald, the main father of Confederation, was an Orangeman and the Orange Order was anti-French and anti-Catholic. (See James Whitney, Wikipedia.)

But French-speaking Canadians had friends.

They [French Canadians] have adopted our system, but there are two things they have clung to, their religion and their language. I believe that their national sentiment is even stronger than their religious sentiment—I really believe so. The national feeling among them is intensely strong, but I would ask you English, Irish and Scotch descendants born in this country, and brought up here, supposing a regulation similar to No. 17 were passed in the Province of Quebec, what do you think our duty towards it would be? Supposing Sir Lomer Gouin—I cannot imagine it—but supposing he did have the courage, or the nerve, so to speak, to pass a regulation of that kind. There would be a rebellion in this Province, I think. And here we have our French-Canadian brethren in the sister Province who by constitutional means are trying to obtain the repeal or the modification of the regulation, or some other settlement of the question which would be satisfactory to all concerned.)

Mr. JUSTICE McCORKILL, in Bilingualism by N. A. Belcourt speech given at the Canadian Club in 1916.
Gutenberg [EBook #25040]

George-Étienne Cartier (1814-1873), the Prime Minister of Canada East, signed Confederation. Quebec was part of a federated Canada. He was pleased that Quebecers would keep their language, their religion, and their Code Civil. He negotiated Manitoba’s entry into Confederation. But could he presume that a dual system of education would be opposed? He died in 1873, twelve years before Louis Riel was executed.

However, it remains difficult to say to what extent being confined to one province hurt French-speaking Canadians. Emigration to the United States was a loss. All I know is that the people living in Canada are compatible. So many French-speaking Canadians are federalists. They inherited a Constitutional Monarchy and liked that system. One could speak. As for Sir John A. Macdonald, he had a dream. Canada would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That vision was enibriating, but…

RELATED ARTICLES

  • La Question des écoles / The Schools System.2 (28 April 2021)
  • La Question des écoles / The Schools System (24 April 2021)
  • Le Vent du Nord’s “Confederation” (21 April 2021)
  • About the Seigneurial System, cont’d (23 August 2020)
  • About the Seigneurial System (21 August 2020)
  • Félix-Antoine Savard: Menaud Maître-Draveur: a Metaphysical Land (1937) (14 January 2014)
  • Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Ringuet’s Trente arpents (Part Two) (1938) (29 July 2012)
  • Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Ringuet’s Trente arpents (Part One) (1938) (27 July 2012)
  • Louis Hémon: Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine (1914; 1916) (7 June 2012)
  • Louis Hémon: Maria Chapdelaine (1914; 1916) (26 January 2012)
  • Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin (1846) DCB/DBC (5 June 2012)
  • Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle (1846) DCB (3 June 2012)
  • Canadiana.1 (page)
  • Canadiana.2 (page updated 2 May 2021)

Sources and Resources

  • Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, illustrated by Clarence Gagnon (1881-1942), is a beq.ebooksgratuits.com/.pdf FR
  • Maria Chapdelaine, W. H. Blake, transl. is Gutenberg [Ebook 4383] EN
  • [The Project Gutenberg eBook of Address Delivered Before The Quebec Canadian Club At Quebec, by The Honorable N. A. Belcourt, K.C., P.C..]

_________________________
[1] I am borrowing from Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) who wrote a novel entitled La Peau de chagrin. Shagreen shrinks. It may, therefore, represent life, love, and all paradis perdus (paradise lost)
[2] Pierre Anctil, « La Franco-Américanie ou le Québec d’en bas », in Maurice Poteet, responsable, Textes de l’Exode (Montréal : Guérin Littérature, collection Francophonie, 1987), pp. 91-111.
[3] Télesphore Saint-Pierre, « Les Canadiens des États-Unis : ce qu’on perd à émigrer », in Maurice Poteet, responsable, Textes de l’Exode (Montréal : Guérin Littérature, collection Francophonie, 1987), p. 47.

—ooo—

Love to everyone 💕

“Meeting of the Delegates of British North America to Settle the Terms of Confederation, Quebec, October 1864” by Robert Harris, 1883

© Micheline Walker
1st May 2021
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Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

≈ Comments Off on Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

Tags

1914, Clarence Gagnon, illustrations, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Quebec, Quebec seen by a Frenchman, Regionalism, roman de la terre, roman du terroir

Revised on 14 January 2014
Images by Clarence Gagnon

Péribonka

The next step in our examination of regionalism in Quebec literature is Maria Chapdelaine.  I have published a short post on Maria Chapdelaine, a novel written by Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913), a Frenchman born in Brest.  After studying law and oriental languages at the Sorbonne, Hémon moved to London and, in 1911, to Quebec, Canada.  In 1912, he spent several months working with cultivateurs, or farmers, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, up the beautiful Saguenay River.  He  lived in a community called Péribonka and spent the winter of 1912-1913 in that community, writing his novel.

Having completed his manuscript, Hémon sent it to France and started travelling west, probably to Edmonton, where French citizens had settled at that time.  Hémon was killed in a train accident on 8th July 1913, at Chapleau, Ontario.  He did not live to see Maria Chapdelaine become a bestseller.  It has been translated into more than 20 languages in 23 countries and it has been made into three movies.[i] 

The plot is simple. But, although Maria Chapdelaine is a roman du terroir, it differs substantially from Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle and from Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin. Louis Hémon did not feel dispossessed of his ancestral land and betrayed.  And he had not transformed the insurrections of 1837-1838 into an ethnic conflict, which they were not, at least initially.

pu-logo

The artwork featured in this post are illustrations for Maria Chapdelaine, executed by Clarence Gagnon and housed at the McMichael Museum, in Kleinburg, Ontario.

However, Hémon worked with men like Maria Chapdelaine’s father, Samuel Chapdelaine a name not coincidentally resembling that of the Father of New France, Samuel de Champlain.  These otherwise unemployed men were trying to transform rebellious soil into arable land.  They had gone north, as the colourful curé Labelle (24 November 1833 – 4 January 1891) advocated, and were “making land” (faire de la terre).[ii]  Father Labelle preached “colonisation.” That was the “patriotic” alternative to leaving for the New England states.

Maria’s ‘Choices:’  F. Paradis, L. Surprenant & E. Gagnon

As indicated in my post, Hémon gives Maria Chapdelaine three suitors: François Paradis, Lorenzo Surprenant and Eutrope Gagnon.  François dies in a snow storm, which was to be expected.  In traditional Quebec society, happiness was viewed not only as impossible, but as dangerous.  Lorenzo Surprenant has come north to find a wife and take her down to the United States, but Maria turns him down.  She will marry a neighbour, Eutrope  Gagnon, and live as her mother lived.  The names of the suitors are revealing: Paradis is paradise, Surprenant, surprizing, and Gagnon, close to the verb gagner: to win.  Hémon’s novel is somewhat stylised.

Maria Chapdelaine also differs from La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin in that, unlike Chauveau’s Charles Guérin, it does not feature an ‘ugly’ Englishman: Mr Wagnaër. As for La Terre paternelle, although the novel does not feature an explicit ‘ugly’ Englishman, Jean Chauvin fails where an Englishman would have succeeded.  I believe this is the reason why Lacombe views cities as unhealthy.  

 —ooo—

Our next regionalistic novel is Father Félix-Antoine Savard‘s (August 31, 1896 – August 24, 1982) Menaud maître-draveur, 1937 (translated as Boss of the River, or Master of the River by Alan Sullivan (1947).  It earned Savard a Medal from the French Academy.  

To view more illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté,
please click on the following link: http://www.archiv.umontreal.ca/exposition/louis_hemon/oeuvre/oeuvre_page2-3.html
 
_________________________  

[i]  1934: Maria Chapdelaine, directed by Jean Duvivier, starring Madeleine Renaud and Jean Gabin (France); 1950: The Naked Heart, directed by Marc Allégret, starring Michèle Morgan (France); 1984, Maria Chapdelaine, directed by Gilles Carle, starring Carole Laure (Québec).

[ii] Curé Labelle, a legendary figure, is featured in Claude-Henri Grignon’s (Sainte-Adèle, 8 July 1894 – Québec, 3 April 1976) novel Un homme et son péché (1933).  Grignon’s novel was transformed into a very popular serialized radio and television drama.   A film adaptation, entitled Séraphin: Un homme et son péché, Séraphin: Heart of Stone, was released in 2003, but it had been filmed in 1949.  Séraphin is a miser and he is cruel to his wife Donalda.

The White Horse, by Clarence Gagnon 
 
 
thedayafterthestorm300© Micheline Walker
7 June 2012
WordPress 
 
revised
14 January 2014
 
 
 
 
Related Posts:
  • Maria Chapdelaine
  • Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle (3 June 2012)
  • Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin (5 June 2012)

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Regionalism in Quebec’s Literature: Thirty Acres

12 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, French-Canadian Literature, Régionalisme

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Clarence Gagnon, cultivateur, habitant, Regionalism, roman du terroir, Trente arpents

 

Oxen Ploughing, by Clarence Gagnon, 1902 (National Gallery of Canada)

Oxen Ploughing by Clarence Gagnon, 1902 (National Gallery of Canada)

Clarence Gagnon (1881 – 1942)

“It was not the over-sensitivity of the misunderstood that made me move to Paris… Over there, I paint only Canadian subjects, I dream only of Canada. The motif remains fixed in my mind, and I don’t allow myself to be captivated by the charms of a new landscape. In Switzerland, Scandinavia-everywhere, I recall my French Canada.”  (Clarence Gagnon)

I am republishing two posts that describe regionalism and the period when Quebeckers were leaving for the United States looking for employment.

Ringuet, or Dr Philippe Panneton, is the writer I am featuring.  He is the author of Trente arpents (Thirty Acres).  The novel was published in 1938, when the habitant had become a “cultivateur.”  Colonisation had ennobled his work.

You will note a considerable degree of acceptance.  The protagonist’s wife, Alphonsine, gives birth year after year, but her husband, Euchariste Moisan, sees the birth of children as Alphonsine’s inescapable fate.  She has to have “son nombre,” her number. Therefore, Euchariste is somewhat indifferent.  Yearly pregnancies and the death of children do not seem to affect him.  Life goes by as inexorably as the seasons.  Euchariste does not welcome changes: machines.

Euchariste also accepts the curé‘s, or parish priest, request.  He will contribute a son to the Church.  This was normal.  Whenever a child showed intellectual promise, he was chosen by the parish priest and eventually entered the Grand Séminaire.  Oguinase’s destiny is to become a priest.

Another son, Éphrem, is somewhat rebellious and is influenced by a relative who has left Canada for a more comfortable life in the United States.  This relative has even changed his name.

I have chosen this particular post as it documents the rise and fall of the habitant turned cultivateur.

So good morning to all or you.

The Lake, Séminaire Saint-Sulpice, Montreal Clarence Gagnon 1917

The Lake, Séminaire Saint-Sulpice, Montréal by Clarence Gagnon, 1917 (National Gallery of Canada)

© Micheline Walker
12 January 2014 
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Séminaire Saint-Sulpice

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Colonization & The Revenge of the Cradles

11 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Canadian History, French-Canadian Literature

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alexis de Tocqueville, Clarence Gagnon, colonization, cultivateur, Curé Labelle, demographics, L'Exode, le curé Labelle, Revanche des berceaux, Revenge of the Cradles

Barns, by Clarence Gagnon, 1926

Barns by Clarence Gagnon, 1926 (National Gallery of Canada)

Demographic Growth in Québec

During the one week  (1805 – 16 April 1859) Alexis de Tocqueville spent in Bas-Canada (Lower Canada),[i] he marveled at the fact that there was still a French nation in North America. In particular, he “noticed the demographic growth of the French Canadians, their numbers almost ten times what it was when the colony was handed over to Great Britain.”[ii] There were about 70,000 Francophone Roman Catholics in 1763, the year New France became a British colony. In 1831, the population of Lower Canada was 550,000 (See Canada under British Rule, Wikipedia). However, 8,000 United Empire Loyalists, including 300 slaves, had settled in the Eastern Townships.[iii]

Tocqueville feared for the future. French-Canadians were mainly habitants and quite prosperous but, on 1st September 1831, Tocqueville confirmed in his notes that “the English have control of all foreign trade and run domestic trade without any opposition.” (Note 7)[iv] In other words, what would happen to the French nation he was so pleased to have visited? They were habitants, lawyers, doctors, priests, and teachers who were members of a religious order). Until the 1960s, Nuns also administered hospitals.

So although there were shops, general stores, and several small businesses in Lower Canada, large businesses and factories belonged to the anglophone population. However, la revanche des berceaux, the revenge of the cradles, a very high birthrate, played a significant role in the survival of the francophone population of Canada and North America. The men “colonized” and women gave birth to a large number of children who reached adulthood. But Tocqueville also commented on the motherland’s neglect of its subjects in New France.

The Abandonment of New France

The Lower Canada visited by Alexis de Tocqueville had grown into a small nation due, to a large extent, to a very high birthrate. However, given the manner in which they greeted Tocqueville and Beaumont, I would suspect the small nation he visited had chosen to view itself as “conquered” rather than abandoned, thus “resisting” its fate. Yet, as Tocqueville stated, they had been abandoned, which constituted “one of the greatest ignominies of Louis XV’s shameful reign.”       

Dans une lettre du 26 novembre 1831, commentant la politique française du XVIIIe siècle concernant la Nouvelle-France, il écrit de l’« abandon » de ces sujets français qu’il est « une des plus grandes ignominies du honteux règne de Louis XV ».[iv] (Corbo)

In a letter dated 26th November 1831, he criticizes France’s dealings with its North American colony during the 18th century, referring to the “abandonment” of loyal subjects of the French Empire. Then he adds that it was “one of the greatest ignominies of Louis XV’s shameful reign.” (Corbo)

Louis XV by Hyacinthe Rigaud in 1730

Louis XV by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1730 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conquest or Abandonment

It is not uncommon for Québécois to speak of “la conquête” and to look upon the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, fought on 13 September 1759, as the British military victory that undid New France.  In fact, in his account of his visit to Lower Canada, Alexis de Tocqueville himself used both the words: “conquis” (conquered) and “abandon,” (abandonment) referring to France’s lost colony.

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham was decisive. At the conclusion of a war, battles are tallied up. However, I would suspect that the Battle of the Plains of Abraham did not carry much weight in the mind of persons drafting the Traité de Paris (1763). When the Traité de Paris was negotiated, France lost the Seven Years’ War (1756 – 1763), or French and Indian War (1754 – 1763). Moreover, the Seven Years’ War had been an international conflict.

Consequently, having lost the war, France had to cede some of its colonies and it ceded New France, “quelques arpents de neige” (a few acres of snow) (Voltaire‘s Candide 1759, chapter 23), as well as the eastern part of French Louisiana to Britain, keeping its sugar-rich Caribbean colonies (Guadeloupe and Martinique) and two small islands, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, off the coast of the current Newfoundland, a pied-à-terre for its fishermen in the North Atlantic.

It follows that Tocqueville’s description of the cession of New France is, to a large extent, as he stated: “one of the greatest ignominies of Louis XV’s shameful reign.” New France was abandoned. However, I should think that it was in the best interest of the abandoned nation to redress horrific events by considering itself a “conquered,” rather than abandoned people. Doing so could be called damage control. Careful wording can constitute a form of resistance.

Evening on the North Shore, by Clarence Gagnon

Evening on the North Shore by Clarence Gagnon, 1924 (National Gallery of Canada)

A Laurentian Homestead, by Clarence Gagnon,1919

A Laurentian Homestead by Clarence Gagnon, 1919 (National Gallery of Canada)

The “Royal Proclamation” of 1763

It would have to be resistance.  New France was not ceded unconditionally. It kept its religion, its language and its seigneuries. Habitants remained on their thirty acres, and French Civil law was respected, to a reasonable extent. Here is an excerpt from the Treaty of Paris:

“His Britannick Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholick religion to the inhabitant of Canada: he will, in consequence, give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. His Britannick Majesty farther agrees, that the French inhabitants, or others who had been subjects of the Most Christian King in Canada, may retire with all safety and freedom wherever they shall think proper, and may sell their estates, provided it be to the subjects of his Britannick Majesty, and bring away their effects as well as their persons, without being restrained in their emigration, under any pretence whatsoever, except that of debts or of criminal prosecutions: The term limited for this emigration shall be fixed to the space of eighteen months, to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty.” (See The Treaty of Paris, Wikipedia.)  

Résistance

However, once the Traité de Paris was signed, on 10 February 1763, how long could anyone expect England to keep its promises? The small nation Tocqueville and Beaumont visited was a British colony and, as such, its future as a French-language nation was imperiled. It is relatively easy to assimilate 70,000 inhabitants.

In the case of the “Royal Proclamation,” Canadiens, as they called themselves, were little less than a man away from possible assimilation. That man was James Murray (21 January 1721, Scotland – 18 June 1794, Battle, East Sussex), the Governor of the province of Quebec.

“In October of the same year  [1763], London issues its « Royal Proclamation », thus allowing French-speakers to practice their religion. But Great Britain lets governor Murray know of its plans to found Protestant schools to assimilate the population. The proclamation also wants to replace the old French civil code of law by the British Common Law. Governor Murray judges this measure unrealistic and decides to keep the French civil laws.”[v]

Allow me to quote the Canadian Encyclopedia with respect to Governor James Murray:

“A member of the landed gentry, he supported the agrarian, French-speaking inhabitants over the newly arrived, English-speaking merchants. He was reluctant to call a legislative assembly, promised in the ROYAL PROCLAMATION OF 1763, because he feared that Canadians would be barred from it on religious grounds.”

 

The "Seven Year War" or French and Indians War

The Seven Years War or French and Indian War (blue: Great Britain, Prussia Portugal, Britain, with allies; green: France, Spain, Austria, Russia, Sweden with allies.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Alexis de Tocqueville: 1831

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited Lower Canada in 1831, the 70,000 inhabitants, “abandoned,” in 1763, had become a small nation, which delighted him. The habitants The were in fact quite prosperous, but Tocqueville noted that “the English ha[d] control of all foreign trade and r[a]n domestic trade without any opposition,” which was alarming.[vi] What would the habitant do once his thirty acres could no longer be divided? 

Village dans les Laurentides, Clarence Gagnon, 1925 (National Gallery of Art)

Village dans les Laurentides (A Village in the Laurentides) by Clarence Gagnon, 1925 (National Gallery of Art)

Colonization & the “Revenge of the Cradles”

Tocqueville’s fears were legitimate.  Many habitants did leave for the United States, when Canadiens ran out of land.  As I wrote in earlier posts, nearly a million French Canadians and Acadians would move to the United States during a period of Canadian history named l’Exode: the exodus.  They could not find work in Canada.  However, many chose to “make land,” faire de la terre, (Chapter 4, Maria Chapdelaine).  The leader of this movement was a priest, le curé Labelle   (24 November 1833 – 4 January 1891).

Le curé Labelle [vii] proposed that French Canadians go north, to the Laurentides, Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, and turn unfriendly soil into arable land.  Le curé Labelle saw colonization as a realistic option, which it was, to a lesser or greater extent.  When Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913), a visitor from France, travelled to the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, the habitants, now called cultivateurs, were colonizing and the Francophone population of Quebec had grown to approximately 2 million inhabitants. Once again, a visitor from France was looking at an expanding nation. Hémon noticed a demographic victory and a will, on the part of the people of Quebec, to remain what they had always been.

Louis Hémon: 1913

Shortly after Louis Hémon arrived in Canada, he went to the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area. He worked at Péribonka during the summer and fall and then spent the winter of 1912-1913 writing his novel: Maria Chapdelaine.  In his short novel, Louis Hémon captured a Quebec that was not about to die. After sending his novel to a publisher, Hémon started traveling west and was killed by a train, at Chapleau, Ontario. His novel was published in 1914 and proved an enduring success. Louis Hémon had seen not only a small nation but a people who were a testimonial: “un témoignage.” Hémon did not express doubts concerning the survival of the small nation he was visiting: Quebec. “These people belong to a breed (race) that does not know how to die.” (See Chapter 15 of the novel.)

 Ces gens sont d’une race qui ne sait pas mourir.

Conclusion 

The growth of a population of 70,000 inhabitants, in 1763, to half a million, in 1831, when Alexis de Tocqueville visited Lower Canada, was perhaps due to an already high birthrate called the revanche des berceaux, the revenge of the cradles. It was not a trivial phenomenon. When Louis Hémon went to Péribonka, in 1912-1913, and spent the winter months writing Maria Chapdelaine, the francophone population of Quebec had risen to 2 million inhabitants. Three films are based on Maria Chapdelaine and we owe its first English translation to W. H. Blake.

Information: online publications, etc.

Canada under British Rule, Wikipedia (demographics).
Maria Chapdelaine is the Project Gutenberg [EBook #4383] EN
Maria Chapdelaine is the Project Gutenberg [EBook #13525] FR
It is also a Wikisource publication EN.
Voltaire‘s Candide is the Project Gutenberg [EBook #19942]
The illustrations I have used are by Clarence Gagnon (1885 -1942), but they are not necessarily the ones Clarence Gagnon created for Maria Chapdelaine. These can be seen at the McMichael Gallery, in Kleinburg, Ontario. (Please click on McMichael Gallery to see the Maria Chapdelaine collection).
 
 

Going Home from Church, by Clarence Gagnon, 1926

Going Home from Church by Clarence Gagnon, 1926 (NGC)

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Maria Chapdelaine (michelinewalker.com) (illustrations by Gagnon)
  • Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine (michelinewalker.com)
  • Alexis de Tocqueville on Lower Canada (michelinewalker.com)
  • Séraphin: Un Homme et son péché, or Heart of Stone (michelinewalker.com)
  • Germaine Guèvremont’s Le Survenant (michelinewalker.com)
____________________
[i] Claude Corbo, Alexis de Tocqueville’s visit to Lower Canada in 1831, in the Encyclopedia of French Cultural Heritage in North America.
Tocqueville and Beaumont first visited Niagara Falls and then found their way to Bas-Canada. They were in Lower Canada from the 23rd of August to the 2nd September 1831.
[iii] In Upper Canada, the Act Against Slavery was an anti-slavery law passed on 9 July 1793.
[iv] Claude Corbo, op. cit.
[v] République libre: Le Bas-Canada (1763 – 1867).
[vi] Claude Corbo, op. cit. 
[vii] A miser is featured in Les Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut, a radio and television series based on Claude-Henri Grignon‘s (8 July 1894 – 3 April 1976) Un homme et son péché (1933).
Clarence Gagnon (1885 -1942) (déjà vu)
Johannes Brahms, Intermezzo, Op.117, No. 2                                                                         
 
 
Paul Robeson (9 April 1898 – 23 January 1976)
“Un Canadien errant”  
  
 

In the Laurentians, by Clarence Gagnon, 1910 (NGC)

In the Laurentians by Clarence Gagnon, 1910 (NGC)

© Micheline Walker
10 January 2014
WordPress 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1914, Clarence Gagnon, illustrations, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Quebec, Quebec seen by a Frenchman, Regionalism, roman de la terre, roman du terroir

Péribonka

Maria Chapdelaine is the next step in examining regionalism in Quebec literature. I have published a short post on Maria Chapdelaine, a novel by Louis Hémon (October 12, 1880 – July 8, 1913), a Frenchman born in Brest. After studying law and oriental languages at the Sorbonne, Hémon moved to London and, in 1911, to Quebec. In 1912, he spent several months working with cultivateurs, or farmers in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, up the beautiful Saguenay River. He lived in a community called Péribonka and spent the winter of 1913 in that community, writing his novel.

Having completed his manuscript, Hémon sent it to France and started travelling west, probably to Edmonton, where French citizens had settled. He was killed in a train accident on July 8, 1913, in Chapleau, Ontario. He did not live to see Maria Chapdelaine become a bestseller. It has been translated into more than 20 languages in 23 countries, and it has been made into four movies.

The plot is simple, but although Maria Chapdelaine is a roman du terroir, it differs substantially from Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle and Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin. Louis Hémon’s Samuel Chapdelaine does not feel dispossessed of his ancestral land and betrayed. Moreover, Louis Hémon’s novel, Maria Chapdelaine, does not feature an ethnic conflict.  

The artwork featured in this post is illustrations for Maria Chapdelaine, executed by Clarence Gagnon and housed at the McMichael Museum, in Kleinburg, Ontario.

However, Hémon worked with men like Maria Chapdelaine’s father, Samuel Chapdelaine, a name not coincidentally resembling that of the Father of New France, Samuel de Champlain. These otherwise unemployed men were trying to transform rebellious soil into arable land. They had gone north, as the colourful curé Labelle (November 24, 1833 – January 4, 1891) advocated, and were “making land” (faire de la terre).[i] Father Labelle preached “colonisation,” which was the “patriotic” choice. Leaving for the United States wasn’t.

Maria’s ‘Choices:’ F. Paradis, L. Surprenant & E. Gagnon 

As indicated in my post, Hémon gives Maria Chapdelaine three suitors: François Paradis, Lorenzo Surprenant and Eutrope Gagnon. In traditional Quebec society, happiness was viewed not only as impossible but as dangerous. François dies in a snowstorm, which was to be expected. Lorenzo Surprenant has come north to find a wife and take her to the United States, but Maria turns him down. She will marry a neighbour, Eutrope Gagnon, and live as her mother lived. The names of the suitors are revealing: Paradis is paradise; Surprenant is surprising, and Gagnon’s name is close to the French verb gagner: to win.

Maria Chapdelaine also differs from Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle and Chauveau’s Charles Guérin in that, unlike Chauveau’s Charles Guérin, it does not feature an “ugly” Englishman: Mr Wagnaër. As for La Terre paternelle, although the novel does not feature an explicit “ugly” Englishman, Jean Chauvin fails where an Englishman would succeed. I believe this is the reason why Lacombe views cities as unhealthy.  

—ooo—

Our next regionalist novel is Father Félix-Antoine Savard‘s (August 31, 1896 – August 24, 1982) Menaud maître-draveur, 1937 (translated as Boss of the River, or Master of the River by Alan Sullivan (1947). It earned Savard a Medal from the French Academy.  

To view more illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, 
please click on the link below: http://www.archiv.umontreal.ca/exposition/louis_hemon/oeuvre/oeuvre_page2-3.html 
_________________________      

[i] Curé Labelle, a legendary figure, is featured in Claude-Henri Grignon’s (Sainte-Adèle, 8 July 1894 – Québec, 3 April 1976) novel Un homme et son péché (1933). Grignon’s novel was transformed into a popular serialised radio and television drama and made into a movie three times. The second movie is entitled Séraphin: Heart of Stone (2003). Séraphin is a miser, and he is cruel to his wife Donalda.

The White Horse, by Clarence Gagnon 
 
 
 
thedayafterthestorm300© Micheline Walker
7 June 2012
WordPress 
 
Related Posts:
Maria Chapdelaine 
Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle
Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin
 
 
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