Tag Archives: Henri-Raymond Casgrain

The Canadien’s Terroir

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Art, French-Canadian Literature

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La Rivière Magog, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté*

Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté (1869 – 1937)
NB. The terroir is the Canadien‘s land. 

 

Classification of Canadian Literature in French

Until recently, Canadian Literature in French was divided into four periods.  This has changed.

  • The Literary Homeland (1837-1865): Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline, 1855

A few years ago, the period of French-Canadian literature during which l’abbé Casgrain’s books were published was called  la “Patrie littéraire” or the “Literary Homeland” and it took us from 1760 (the battle of the Plains of Abraham)[i] to 1895.

That period is still called the “Literary Homeland,” but it begins in 1837 and ends in 1865.  It has been shortened by seventy-seven (77) years now labelled “Canadian Origins” (1760-1836).

  • The “Messianic Survival” (1866-1895)

Henri-Raymond Casgrain‘s Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline was published in 1855.  It was therefore written eleven years before the start of the next period currentled called: “Messianic Survival” (1866-1895).  However, Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline does underline the importance of the priest as leader in the organisation of a territory, in our case, Acadie under l’abbé Sigogne and other French émigrés priests sent by England to the seminary in Quebec city (Lower Canana).

  • Exile and the Establishment of Roots (1896-1938): Maria Chapdelaine, 1914

As for Maria Chapdelaine, it is now classified in a period of French-Canadian literature called “Exile and the Establishment of Roots (1896-1938).” Where Maria Chapdelaine (1916) is concerned this classification is accurate, but only to the extent that classifications can be correct.  Formerly it was included in a period called: “Vaisseau d’or [the title of a poem] et Croix du chemin [road side crosses]” (1895-1938)

What may be good to remember about Maria Chapdelaine is

  • that Maria’s choice is the choice of a patriot, and
  • that her choice is also the choice the Church advocates.

Not that Maria is a nationalist.  The poor girl would not know anything about nationalism or any “ism,” but she nevertheless makes the patriotic choice in deciding to marry a settler.  Colonisation was a way of keeping French Canadians in their province, in their parish, and farming.

Priests feared that once a French Canadian settled in the United States, he and members of his family would cease to be good Catholics and would no longer speak French.  In all likelihood, this is what motivated the colourful Curé Labelle (November 24, 1833 – January 4, 1891) to urge people to go north and to create land: faire de la terre, faire du pays.

* * *

New France: farming as a priority

I should note moreover that even in the earliest days of New France, France saw its colony as a colony of farmers.  Samuel de Champlain had managed to convince Henri IV, le bon roi Henri, to move the colony from the Port-Royal in Acadie (in the current Nova Scotia) to what is now the province of Quebec.  As well, Champlain explored the great lakes.  Moreover, he engaged in fur trading, but Louis XIII, no doubt acting on the advice of Richelieu and Marie de Médicis, Henri IV’s widow, ordered Champlain to stop exploring and to govern instead.  So Champlain was Governor of New France and New France was a nation of farmers.

In short, Maria Chapdelaine, 1916, is a “roman du terroir,” a regionalist novel, extolling the virtues of farming.  There would be other such novels, the last of which was published in 1938:  Ringuet’s Trente Arpents.

Conclusion

So far, we have therefore examined works belonging to two periods of Canadian Literature in French:

1. The Literary Homeland or Patrie Littéraire (1837-1865): Un pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline (1855) and

2. Exile and the Establishment of Roots (1896-1938): Maria Chapdelaine, 1916.  During this period French-speaking Canadians were either leaving Canada or settling in new areas, the North mainly.  For instance some sons became voyageurs. The family farm can no longer be divided, so they must find other means of making a living.  But farming remains the mission of French-speaking Canadians.

3. But, I have also touched on a third period: The Messianic Survival (1866-1895).  Priests are organizing a new Acadie.

But, for the time being, our plate is full.  We pause.  I am including an Ave Maria because as Maria Chapdelaine senses her François is in danger, she recites a thousand Ave Marias.

This is not a new post, but it is a clearer one.  I cannot presume you already knew about the mythic, yet very real Évangéline, or Maria Chapdelaine.

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[i] The Battle of the Plains of Abraham, 1759, opposed the French, under the Marquis de Montcalm and the English, under General Wolfe.  The English won and four years later, in 1763, Nouvelle-France became a British colony.

© Micheline Walker
27 January 2012
WordPress

Évangéline & the “literary homeland”

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Canadian History, French-Canadian Literature

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Une Acadie heureuse (A Happy Acadia)

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 coralled the fictional Évangéline into the giants that gave French-speaking Canadians both a past and a 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, 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
Nana Mouskouri 
 

Une Barque

© Micheline Walker
24 January 2012
WordPress

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In these fairylike boats…

21 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Canada, Songs, Voyageurs

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Blue Heron, by Alfred Joseph Casson*

A. J. Casson was a member of the “Group of Seven”

Songs written by Voyageurs and “Literary Homeland” Songs

If we tally songs composed by the voyageurs, we have the following list:

  1. Les Roses blanches (White Roses),
  2. Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  3. Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis),
  4. Le Six Mai de l’année dernière (Last year on the Sixth of May),
  5. C’est dans la ville de Bytown (It’s in the Town of Ottawa),
  6. Parmi les voyageurs (Among the Voyageurs),
  7. Petit Rocher (also known as La Complainte de Cadieux or Cadieux’s Lament),
  8. Mon Canot d’Écorce or Le Canotier (My Birchbark Canoe or The Canoeman).

Included are Les Roses blanches, Petit Rocher or Cadieux’s Lament, and C’est dans la ville de Bytown. One of these songs, Petit Rocher, could be a forestier song. When dealing with the songs of the voyageurs, too strict a categorization seems injudicious. For instance, we have sixty-five versions of Le Canotier. Consequently, Madeleine Béland suggests that the popularity of l’abbé Casgrain’s Canotier warrants its folklorisation: “Cette chanson, le Canotier, a obtenu la faveur du public à un point tel que l’on peut admettre sa folkorisation.” [i]  So, if we include Patrie littéraire or Literary Homeland songs, we reach a total of eight (8) voyageur songs.

La Complainte de Cadieux, or Cadieux’s Lament

As for Jean-Charles Taché’s Cadieux (Forestiers et Voyageurs, Chapter 15), Taché considers him a voyageur.  As the story goes, Cadieux is a French-Canadian voyageur of the 18th century who lived in the Ottawa River region. When his cabin was attacked by Indians, he sent his family down the rapids in his canoe and stayed behind to prevent pursuit. The Virgin Mary is supposed to have guided the canoe through the rapids, which were generally portaged. Pursued by the Indians through the forest, Cadieux gradually weakened; he dug his own grave, erected a cross above it and composed a ballad about his misfortune, which he wrote in blood on birchbark; it was found by those who came to look for him.” [ii]

However, Barbeau dismisses Cadieux or Cayeux, as a voyageur. He considers him a coureur de bois whose story is not a legend but a true story. [iii]  Given that French-speaking Canadians have often associated forestiers and voyageurs, both of whom travelled to the “pays d’en-haut,” (the north, or the countries above), it may be best in this case to leave a little room for interpretation. Taché’s novel, published in 1863, is entitled Forestiers et Voyageurs, which suggests he perceived kinship between the two groups. In Forestiers et Voyageurs, the main character, le père Michel, is a voyageur.

Folklore

In his article on the Ermatinger songs, Marius Barbeau quotes a passage from R. M. Ballantyne’s (24 April 1825 – 8 February 1894) Hudson Bay (1843). Ballantyne was a Scottish juvenile fiction writer who praises not so much the voyageurs’ rendition of À la claire fontaine and Les Roses blanches as the feelings they evoke. These feelings border on synesthésie, a combination of sensory stimulation (hearing, seeing, etc. at the same time):

In these fairylike boats (birch bark North canoes gaudily painted on the boys and stern), we swept swiftly (from Norway House) over Playgreen Lake, the bright vermilion paddles gleaming in the sunshine and woods echoing to the lively tune of “À la claire fontaine” sung by the two crews in full chorus.  While yet in the distance the beautifully simple and lively yet plaintive song, so well suited to the surrounding scenery and yet so different from any other air, breaks sweetly on the ear; and one reflects with kind of melancholy, how far the singers are from their native land (Lower Canada), and many weary days of danger and will pass before they can rest once more in their Canadian homes.  How strangely too upon their nearer approach is this feeling changed for one of exultation, as the deep and manly voices swell in chorus over the placid waters.  In the canoe, bounding merrily up the river, while the echoing woods and dells responded to the lively air of “Rose Blanche” sung by the men as we swept round point after point and curve after curve of the noble river.  I have seen four canoes sweep round a promontory suddenly and burst upon my view, while at the same moment the wild romantic song of the Voyageurs as they plied their brisk paddles struck upon my ear; and I have felt thrilling enthusiasm on witnessing such a scene.  With hearts joyful at the termination of their trials and privations, sung, with all the force of three hundred manly voices, on of their lively airs, which rising and falling in the distance as it was borne, first lightly on the breeze, and then more steadily as they approached, swelled out in the rich tunes of many a mellow voice, and burst at last into a long enthusiastic shout of joy.  Away we went then, over the clear lake, sing “Rose Blanche” vociferously. [iv]

As you may have noted, in the above excerpt, Barbeau mentions Rose Blanche, a  song which Frances Anne Hopkins also heard. I still doubt that Rose blanche was composed by voyageurs.  As Wentzel stated, the voyageur’s songs could be “smutty.”  So it is possible that Rose blanche was simply a favorite, as was À la claire fontaine.

Grace Lee Nute wonders why À la claire fontaine was a “favorite.”  I have reflected that the melody is lovely and that few songs could express the degree to which these men remembered?  They remembered France.  They remembered their home in Bas-Canada. They remembered the woman they loved: I have loved you for a long time / Never will I forget you. (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime / Jamais je ne t’oublierai.)

* * *

We’ve come to the end of this topic. I may list the songs. That would be a blog without comments. I wish we had Wentzel’s collection and the songs of the Falcon. They are lost. But we know that voyageurs sang while facing great dangers.

For more information on the voyageurs, I would suggest you read Carolyn Podruchny‘s Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade. I bought it a few years ago and would classify it as a “good read.”

____________________

[i] Madeleine Béland, avec la collaboration de Lorraine Carrier-Aubin, Chansons de voyageurs, coureurs de bois et forestiers (Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1982.), p. 37.

(translation) This song has so pleased the public that we can consider it folklore.)

[ii] Nancy Schmitz, “Jean Cadieux,”
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/jean-cadieux/

[iii] Marius Barbeau, “La Complainte de Cadieux, coureur de bois (ca. 1709),” Journal of American Folklore, (Vol. 67, 1966 [1954], pp.163-183), p. 182.

[iv] Marius Barbeau, “The Ermatinger Collection of Voyageur Songs (ca. 1830),” The Journal of American Folklore (New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, Vol. 67, 1966 [1954], pp. 147-161.), p. 150.

Anna Netrebko sings “Solveig’s Song” by Edvard Grieg

Canada Geese, by AJ Casson

Canadian Geese, by A. J. Casson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker

The Voyageur Mythified

20 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Canadian History, Folksongs, Voyageurs

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The Canoe, by Tom Tomson

Tom Tomson was a member of the Group of Seven, Canadian artists.

The Voyageur’s Repertoire

The voyageurs’ repertoire consisted mainly of songs inherited from the trouvères, troubadours and the folklore of France. Different versions of this songs were composed, but they can nevertheless be traced back to the motherland.

As I noted in my last post, The Singing Voyageur, we know for certain that three songs were genuine voyageur songs.

  • Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  • Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis),
  • Le Six Mai de l’année dernière (Last year on the Sixth of May).

To this list, Barbeau [i] adds a song entitled Les Roses blanches (The White Roses). However, because there is a French song, not a folksong, entitled Les Roses blanches, it was somewhat difficult for me to call it a voyageur’s song. But we know that the voyageurs sang Roses blanches. In fact, I few days ago, I heard a folkloric Roses blanches on the radio. The song I heard could be the Roses blanches Marius Barbeau deems a genuine voyageur song.

As well, in the Beaver, Anne Frances Hopkins, an accomplished artist and the wife of an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Edward Hopkins, writes that “[m]any old chansons from Normandy—‘À la claire fontaine,’ ‘Rose blanche’—were popular canoe song.” [ii] Frances Anne Hopkins kept a record of a few songs, all of which are French folksongs, not voyageur songs. She travelled west in the ‘canot du gouverneur,’ when she journeyed west. She is a mostly reliable source. The eleven songs collected by Edward Ermatinger are folksongs brought to Nouvelle-France. [iii]

I also reread a paper I wrote on the voyageurs and I listed Rose blanche. To avoid confusion, I will add it to the three songs I listed yesterday.

Marius Barbeau’s authentic voyageur songs are:

  • Les Roses blanches (White Roses),
  • Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  • Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis),
  • Le Six Mai de l’année dernière (Last year on the Sixth of May).

We then have two songs discussed in Nute’s Voyageur, [iv] the first of wich could be a logger’s song or both a forestier and a voyageur song.

  • C’est dans la ville de Bytown (It’s in the Town of Ottawa)
  • Parmi les voyageurs (Among the Voyageurs)

We therefore know of six authentic voyageur songs, i.e. songs composed by voyageurs. If we do not include C’est dans la ville de Bytown (Ottawa) which could be a forestier song, the number goes down to six.

North West Company Coin

—ooo—

A Brief Look at Historical Events

In 1874, the Quebec Act made French-speaking Canadians into full fledged British subjects and Canada was named Quebec. Guy Carleton, 1st Lord Dorchester  (September 3, 1724 – November 10, 1808) was then Governor of Quebec. Later, in 1791, Canada was divided into the Upper Canada and the Lower Canada under the terms of the Constitutional Act. It was no longer Quebec. There were English-speaking Canadians in Lower-Canada, but the majority of citizens were French-speaking Canadians

However, in 1837-1838, both Canadas rebelled against England because the Crown was helping itself to money levied in the Canadas. There were reprisals in both Canadas and Britain asked John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792-1840), the governor-in-chief of British North America, to investigate the matter, particularly as it presented itself in Bas-Canada. In his Report, Lord Durham proposed that the two Canadas be joined, but he also stated that French Canadians did not have a literature and that they also lacked a history. For Canadiens, this was an insult, and some have yet to recover.

—ooo—

La Patrie littéraire or The Literary Homeland

In her superb selection of voyageur songs, twenty songs notated (musical notation) and translated, Nute includes:

  • Petit Rocher (also known as La Complainte de Cadieux or Cadieux’s Lament, and
  • Mon Canot d’Écorce or Le Canotier (My Birchbark Canoe or The Canoeman).

It seems unlikely that these are voyageur songs. First, they were written in the 1860s when the voyageur had ceased to transport fur. Second, and more importantly, these two songs are part of the literature which, according to Lord Durham, French-speaking Canadians did not have. As soon as the Union-Act was passed (1841), French-speaking Canadians gave themselves the history and the literature which, according to Lord Durham, they did not possess. That period of French-Canadian literature is known as The Literary Homeland or La Patrie littéraire.

Antoine Gérin-Lajoie composed his lovely and famous Un Canadien errant or Un Acadien errant. We have heard this song, but I will nevertheless include it at the bottom of this blog. In theory, the melody is from the French-Canadian folk tune “J’ai fait une maîtresse.” I do not think this is the case. Moreover, French-speaking Canadians quickly endowed themselves with two literary schools, one in Montreal and the other, in Quebec city.

In  the wake of Lord Durham’s Report, François-Xavier Garneau [v] published his three-volume Histoire du Canada (1845-1848) and added a supplement, published in 1852. Canadiens, later called Québécois (1960) were also writing poetry and novels.

Le Canotier and La Complainte de Cadieux

Le Canotier was published in Casgrain’s Légendes canadiennes et Œuvres diverses (1861). L’abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain [vi] (December 16, 1831 – February 11, 1904) was a prolific and excellent writer. Consequently, although some would like Le Canotier to be a folksong, it is a poem by l’abbé Casgrain.

However there are sixty-five (65) versions of Le Canotier or Mon canot d’écorce. Therefore, although l’abbé Casgrain’s wrote Le Canotier or Mon canot d’écorce poem, it was incorporated into the anamnesis, Plato’s theory, that followed the loss of the Canadiens’s Bas-Canada. The concept of anamnesis suggests remembrance and reincarnation. French-speaking Canadians started remembering and gave the voyageur mythic dimension.

The brothers Grimm collected folklore, thereby reaching into the past. As for Richard Wagner, he gave Germany a mythology and in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, he remembered Hans Sachs. He brought him back to life .

La Complainte de Cadieux, or Petit Rocher, it is a legend told by Joseph Charles Taché [vii] (December 24, 1820 – April 16, 1894) a nephew of Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché (5 September 1795 – 30 July 1865), in his Forestiers et voyageurs (1863). Cadieux’s Lament is a legend dating back to the seventeenth century. It had been passed down orally and was now entering a learned tradition. According to Marius Barbeau, it is not a voyageur song, but a forestier song.

As the legend goes, Cadieux “died in May 1709 after defending his family against the Iroquois at the Sept-Chutes portage on the Ottawa River. Cadieux diverted the Indians’ attention while his family, protected by the Virgin Mary, managed to navigate the rapids in a canoe. Prior to dying of exhaustion, he dug his own grave and lay in it.” [viii]

For Taché, [ix]

The mind of man can no more live on realism than his soul can live on the natural truths it perceives; [the mind] must venture into the unknown, [the soul] must find repose through faith in mysteries. Hence the need for our imagination to feed on magical notions. Herein lies the charm of legends and tales.

In short, the voyageur is now larger than life, but I am fascinated by the fact that he turned miserable circumstances into a source of pride and into pleasure. He had a job. He was un homme engagé, rather than unemployed. And he endeared himself to his employers. Besides, he was busy naming rivers, lakes, forts and he was taking explorers all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

 

Grey Day, by Tom Thomson

I have a recording of songs Voyageurs sang but I do not know how to incorporate it into a blog.

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[i] Marius Barbeau, “The Ermatinger Collection of Voyageur Songs (ca. 1830),” The Journal of American Folklore (New York:  Kraus Reprint Corporation, Vol. 67, 1966 [1954]), pp. 147-161. 

[ii] “Hopkins Book of Canoe Songs,” The Beaver, (Outfit 302.2, Autumn 1971), pp. 54-58.

[iii] Marius Barbeau, “The Ermatinger Collection of Voyageur Songs (ca. 1830),” The Journal of American Folklore (New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, Vol. 67, 1966 [1954], pp. 147-161

[iv] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society, 1987 [1931]).

[v] Pierre Savard, “François-Xavier Garneau” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/francoisxavier-garneau

[vi] Henri-Raymond Casgrain                                         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Raymond_Casgrain

[vii] “Joseph-Charles Taché”                                                                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Charles_Tach%C3%A9

[viii] Hélène Plouffe, “Petit rocher de la haute montagne,” Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/emc/petit-rocher-de-la-haute-montagne

[ix] Jean-Guy Nadeau, “Jean-Charles Taché,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=40576.