Sans l’homme la terre n’est point féconde c’est ce besoin qu’elle de lui qui le lie à la terre, qui le fait prisonnier de trente arpents de glèbe. (p. 65)
[Without man, the land is arid. It is because the land needs him that man is tied to it and becomes the prisoner of thirty acres of soil.]
Thirty Acres (Trente Arpents)[i]
by Ringuet (pseudonym of Philippe Panneton), 1938
translated by Felix and Dorothea Walter
Trente Arpents is considered the last of the regionalist novels. It is a gem of a novel and won its author, Ringuet, a pseudonym for Dr Phillippe Panneton (30 April 1895 [Trois-Rivières] – 28 December 1960 [Lisbon]), a medical doctor who went on to write more novels and became a diplomat.
However, among his other novels, none is so moving as the story of the rise and fall of Euchariste Moisan who is wedded to the trente arpents he has inherited from his uncle Éphrem. L’oncle Éphrem and his wife never had children, but they brought Euchariste whose entire family perished in a fire when he was still a tiny child.
Spring
At the very beginning of the novel not only does Euchariste learn that he will inherit his uncle’s land, but arrangements are being made for Euchariste to marry a neighbour’s daughter a neigbours’s daughter who will dutifully have “son nombre,” or the number of children she is destined to bear, as though her numerous and draining pregnancies had nothing to do with sexual intercourse.
Soon after Éphrem tells Euchariste that when he dies he will inherit the thirty acres, he dies and Euchariste finds himself the owner of the thirty acres farmers, the habitants of New France, rented from their SEIGNEUR. Because Éphrem dies, Euchariste and Alphonsine may marry a little earlier than anticipated and occupy the large room: “la grande chambre” The household also includes “la vieille Mélie,” an unmarried elderly woman who simply arrived at Éphrem’s door and never left. Mélie helps Alphonsine until she is very old and dies almost imperceptibly in her chair. As for Alphonsine, she gives birth first to a son, Oguinase, then to a daughter who dies shortly after the birth of the couple’s third child.
Il [Euchariste] les accueillait ces naissances, sans plaisir comme aussi sans regret…. Il fallait qu’Alphonsine eût ‘son nombre’. (p.67)
[He welcomed these births, without pleasure, yet without regret. Alphonsine simply had to have ‘her number’.]
Summer
In the second part of the novel, appropriately divided into the four seasons, Euchariste is more of an owner, but tilling the land and looking after the farm animals is onerous. Despite years of draught, Eucharists prospers. He puts money in the notary’s safe regularly. As for Alphonsine, she is raising her children and still “féconde” (fertile). At this point, Éphrem is asked to see the curé, the parish priest. Oguinase is old enough and sufficiently gifted to be recruited for the priesthood by the curé. He will not have to pay tuition fees.
So Oguinase leaves for the petit séminaire, the private school, now abolished, that allowed graduates to enter the priesthood, le grand séminaire, or university (law or medicine). Euchariste talks about his projetcs. On their way home, they visit a cousin living in a village. The house is more humble than Euchariste had expected. Euchariste talks about his projects: raising hens. Two events now mark the year: Oguinase’s departure for the college and his return.
Euchariste hopes his son Éphrem will now help more and more, but Éphrem is growing into rebel. Moreover, the world is changing. Machines are being used by farmers, machines that can cut fingers off, and cars the kill Euchariste’s hens. The parist has grown to such an extent that a new parish is founded. All around him, Euchariste’s world is changing and his new circumstances cause him to stiffen.
Moreover, it seems Alphonsine is again pregnant, but she feels that something is amiss. She sees her reflection in a mirror and the woman looking at her is no longer Alphonsine. In the mirror she sees an old and sick woman. A doctor is called who tells her to stay in bed, her death-bed.
Alphonsine raises her family; there are good years and years of draught. Euchariste saves his money. Oguinase is sent to the petit séminaire. On their way to the séminaire Euchariste stops in a village to visit with a cousin and says he will be raising hens. Machines, cars, enter the picture and they are very destructive. Machines, cars, enter the picture and they are very destructive. Euchariste will be raising hens. Éphrem turns into a bit of a rebel. Alphonsine dies. An American cousin and his wife visit. We suspect Éphrem will leave for the United States.
(Allow me to pause at this point as this blog is now too long. I am posting a sequel.)
Suggested reading:
The Canadian EncyclopediaRinguet (Athabaska University)
_________________________
[i] Ringuet, Trente Arpents (Paris: Flammarion, collection bis 1991[1938]).
Winter Landscape, 1909, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, (National Gallery of Canada)
“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, Montréal by Clarence Gagnon, 1917 (National Gallery of Canada)
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, larevanche 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)
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.
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.
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 Pariswas 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]
“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 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 habitantdo once his thirty acres could no longer be divided?
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 onMaria Chapdelaine and we owe its first English translation to W. H. Blake.
Sans l’homme la terre n’est point féconde c’est ce besoin qu’elle de lui qui le lie à la terre, qui le fait prisonnier de trente arpents de glèbe. (p. 65)
(Without man the land is not fertile. It is because it needs man that man is tied to the soil, that he is the prisoner of thirty acres of land.)
Trente Arpents (Thirty Acres)[i]
Trente Arpents is considered the last of the regionalist novels. It is a gem of a novel and won its author, Ringuet, considerable acclaim. Ringuet is a pseudonym for Dr Phillippe Panneton (30 April 1895 [Trois-Rivières] – 28 December 1960 [Lisbon]), a medical doctor who went on to write more novels and became a diplomat.
However, among his other novels, none is so moving as the story of the rise and fall of Euchariste Moisan who is wedded to the trente arpents he has inherited from his uncle Éphrem. L’oncle Éphrem and his wife never had children, but they brought Euchariste whose entire family perished in a fire when he was still a tiny child.
Spring
At the very beginning of the novel not only does Euchariste learn that he will inherit his uncle’s land, but arrangements are being made for Euchariste to marry a neighbour’s daughter who will dutifully have “son nombre,” or the number of children she is destined to bear, as though her numerous and draining pregnancies had nothing to do with sexual intercourse.
Soon after Éphrem tells Euchariste that when he dies Eurcharist will inherit the thirty acres. Éphrem dies and Euchariste finds himself the owner of the thirty acres land the habitants of New France, rented from their SEIGNEUR. Because Éphrem dies, Euchariste and Alphonsine may marry a little earlier than anticipated and occupy the large room: “la grande chambre” The household also includes “la vieille Mélie,” an unmarried elderly woman who simply arrived at Éphrem’s door and never left. Mélie helps Alphonsine until she is very old and dies almost imperceptibly in her chair. As for Alphonsine, she gives birth first to a son, Oguinase, then a daughter who dies shortly after the birth of the couple’s third child.
Il [Euchariste] les accueillait ces naissances, sans plaisir comme aussi sans regret…. Il fallait qu’Alphonsine eût ‘son nombre’. (p. 67)
(He welcomed these births, without pleasure, yet without regret. Alphonsine simply had to have ‘her number’.)
Summer
In the second part of the novel, appropriately divided into the four seasons, Euchariste is more of an owner than a farmer. Tilling the land and looking after the farm animals is onerous. Despite years of draught, Eucharist prospers. He puts money in the notary’s safe regularly. As for Alphonsine, she is raising her children and still “féconde” (fertile).
At this point, Éphrem is asked to see the curé, the parish priest. Oguinase is old enough and sufficiently gifted to be recruited for the priesthood by the curé. He will not have to pay tuition fees.
So Oguinase leaves for the petit séminaire, the private school, now abolished, that allowed graduates to enter the priesthood, le grand séminaire, or university (law or medicine). Euchariste talks about his projects. On their way home, they visit a cousin living in a village. The house is more humble than Euchariste had expected. Euchariste talks about his projects: raising hens. Two events now mark the year: Oguinase’s departure for the college and his return.
Euchariste hopes his son Éphrem will help him more and more, but Éphrem is growing into rebel. Moreover, the world is changing. Machines are being used by farmers, machines that can cut fingers off, and cars that kill Euchariste’s hens. The parist has grown to such an extent that a new parish is founded. All around him, Euchariste’s world is changing and his new circumstances cause him to stiffen.
Moreover, it seems Alphonsine is again pregnant, but she feels that something is amiss. She sees her reflection in a mirror and the woman looking at her is no longer Alphonsine. In the mirror she sees an old and sick woman. A doctor is called who tells her to stay in bed, her death-bed.
There have been good years and years of draught, but Euchariste saves his money. Oguinase is sent to the petit séminaire. On their way to the séminaire, Euchariste stops in a village to visit with a cousin and says he will be raising hens. Machines, cars, enter the picture and they are very destructive. Machines, cars, enter the picture and they are very destructive. Euchariste will be raising hens. Éphrem turns into a bit of a rebel. Alphonsine dies. An American cousin and his wife visit. We suspect Éphrem will leave for the United States.
(Allow me to pause at this point as this blog is now too long. I will publish a sequel.)
_________________________
[i] Ringuet, Trente Arpents (Paris: Flammarion, collection bis 1991[1938])
Winter Landscape by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, 1919 (National Gallery of Canada)
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