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Tag Archives: Octave Crémazie

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Charles Guérin, François Xavier Garneau, France, lack of professions, New France, Octave Crémazie, Patrice Lacombe, Quebec literature

Boutique à Crémazie

Boutique à Crémazie (Crémazie’s Bookstore)

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin 


RELATED ARTICLES

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau: Biographical Notes
Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Patrice Lacombe
La Capricieuse & Crémazie’s Old Soldier
Maria Chapdelaine
The Canadian & his Terroir                      
 

This blog is a continuation of my blog on Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle. It also deals with regionalism in Quebec literature. However, the author of the novel we will peruse, Charles Guérin (online text, in French) was is a prominent Canadian who helped lead Canada into confederation and was Quebec’s first Premier, among other achievements listed in Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau: Biographical Notes. His novel is well written, but it reflects a facet of its author’s imagination that suggests a divided man. This novel is the expression of the subconcious mind. In other words, there was a public Pierre-Joseph-Oliver Chauveau, but Charles Guérin is the portrait of the very private author of Charles Guérin.

The Honourable Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau

Charles Guérin is a roman du terroir, a regionalistic novel, published the same year as Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle. However, with Chauveau, the plot of our story of regionalism takes on new dimensions. Although it is a roman du terroir, Charles Guérin is nevertheless the work of a major public figure and a leader. However, the subconscious has its dictates that may be at odds with the dictates of the conscious self and I doubt very much that we can draw too wide a line between our public self and our innermost private self. We are the sum total of our private and public selves.

Charles Guérin (French entry for Chauveau) was first published, in 1846 in L’Album littéraire et musical de la Revue canadienne, a periodical. Its first venue is therefore the same as Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle except that it was published as a book in 1853, sooner than Lacombe’s Terre paternelle.

Summary of the plot

We are in the 1830s. Charles Guérin is the story of two brothers, Charles and Pierre, who, having completed their études classiques, realize that there are very few careers French-Canadians can enter. Students pursued their études  classiques in a Petit Séminaire, a private teaching establishment. Only the études classiques gave access to University studies. The études classiques have now been replaced by a two-year tuition-free programme taught in a CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel). Students enter a Cegep after grade eleven and upon completion of the two-year programme, they can then enroll in a university.

Two Brothers: a Dilemma 

Realizing that their choices are the priesthood (le Grand Séminaire), law, and medicine, one brother, Pierre Guérin, who has thought of becoming a businessman leaves for France. As for Charles, he decides to study Law. In Quebec City, Charles falls in love with Marichette,[i] a peasant’s daughter. However, during a study break he goes home and meets Clorinde, an Englishman’s daughter and his mother’s tenant, Mr Wagnaër. Madame Guérin is a widow who needs to rent part of her SEIGNEURIE in order to pay for her son’s education.

Charles meets Clorinde 

During a break, Charles meets Clorinde and is smitten. He falls in love with her and acts as though he does not already have a lady friend, Marichette. Wagnaër would like to own the SEIGNEURIE, located on the south side of the St Lawrence river. At first, he hopes to woo Madame Guerin, but she will not marry him.

Charles loses the ancestral Seigneurie

However, given that Charles is in love with his daughter, Wagnaër sees and seizes the opportunity he needed. He has an accomplice in Henri Voisin, a disloyal friend. A plot is hatched. Wagnaër manages to make our love-stricken Charles sign lettres de créance (letters of credit), making Charles his debtor. Charles loses the ancestral SEIGNEURIE, his inheritance.

Charles’s salvation: Agriculture

As in La Terre Paternelle, the second son returns. Pierre has become a priest and cannot help his brother financially, but they are at least reunited. Charles is also reunited with Marichette. They inherit land from Charles’ employer, Monsieur Dumont, and live there with friends who do not want to leave Canada. So, once again, all is well that ends well. A farmer is not a SEIGNEUR but, in the Quebec of Chauveau’s youth, or the Bas-Canada of the 1830s, one could not do better than till the land, as had been Richelieu‘s wish. Québécois are depicted as hereditary cultivateurs: farmers.

“Agriculture : Cette grande et noble occupation, seule base de la prospérité des peuples, est suivie par la très grande majorité des habitants du Canada.” (p. 676) (Farming: this grand and noble occupation, on which is altogether founded the prosperity of nations, is the one the majority of the inhabitants of Canada [Quebec] choose.)

The Shrinking 30 Acres

However, the habitant’s 30 acres are shrinking, so the time has come for the habitant‘s son to move to the city. That was nightmarish for the inhabitants of the Province of Quebec. The Canadien was unskilled and those who tried to become businessmen usually lost their business. Moreover, there were very few factories in Quebec.

As a politician, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau sold farming land at very low prices because French-Canadians had started moving to the United States, where there were factories. Consequently, nearly a million French-Canadians and Acadians left the Dominion of Canada. They could not find work.

Those among you who have read Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine or my post on Maria Chapdelaine,[ii] know that Maria makes the “patriotic” choice, although unknowingly, when she chooses to marry Eutrope Gagnon, who is a “cultivateur.”  She could have married Lorenzo Surprenant and lived an easier life in the United States. 

Quebec is a large province, but only part of its vast territory can be used as farmland. Making land (faire de la terre), as the Curé Labelle advocated, was to a large extent an unrealistic proposition. How does one turn rock into arable land, which is what Maria Chapdelaine’s father has chosen to do?

At that time in history, the birthrate in Quebec was very high, but as soon as they had reached adulthood, men had to go where they could make a living: the United States, even if this choice was deemed unpatriotic.

Let us listen to Charles Guérin. Just outside the Church, where parishioners gather, Charles preaches to those who will not hear that there is cowardice (lâcheté) in leaving one’s country, that one may lose one’s faith (perdre sa foi) and traditional values [moral values and customs, or les mœurs] in a foreign land (à l’étranger).

Charles rassembla à la porte de l’église tous les fugitifs et il leur fit un magnifique sermon en trois points sur la lâcheté qu’il y avait  d’abandonner son pays, sur les dangers que l’on courait de perdre sa foi et ses mœurs à l’étranger, sur l’avantage et le patriotisme de fonder de nouveaux établissements sur les terres fertiles de notre propre pays. (pp. 608-609)

Comments

Here again, as in La Terre Paternelle, farming is the preferred occupation for patriotic Québécois. So, despite losing the ancestral SEIGNEURIE, Charles and Marichette are fortunate. They inherit land and Marichette is an early portrait of Maria Chapdelaine. The dominant ideology is one occupation: farming; one language: French; and one religion: Catholicism. It resembles French absolute monarchy: one language, one religion, except that the monarch is a farmer.

However, the cast of this novel includes an Englishman to whom Charles loses the ancestral land. So, although there was only a treaty, the Treaty of Paris (1763), not altogether a “conquest,” Charles reenacts the loss of his land to the British and the Englishman happens to be an “ugly” Englishman. Losing one’s land becomes the national plight and in Chauveau’s Charles Guérin the land is lost to a conniving Englishman. They therefore re-lives the Battle of the Plains of Abraham down to the ethnicity of the “conqueror.” 

In a letter his mother does not read until after he has left, Pierre Guérin writes that he would like to be a businessman, but not a Wagnaër, as Mr Wagnaër and people of his ilk destroy the forests as though there were no tomorrow. The forest is the land. Once the foreigner conquers the land, he destroys it.  

Moreover, Charles Guérin, in discussions with his friends, says that he fears the Canadien will lose his language, a language he cannot dissociate from the Canadien‘s religion.  

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau was a brilliant and enormously successful man. He was as accomplished as an individual can be. So I will end by saying that the author of Charles Guérin is and is not Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau. Chauveau’s novel reveals a dispossessed innermost self: the fictitious Charles. Yet, the author or public Charles was the Honourable Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau, the first premier of the Province of Quebec.   

Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify the artist whose art work I have used. These are lovely works of art. Chauveau was a member of the École littéraire de Québec and members, including historian François-Xavier Garneau, a close friend, met at Crémazie’s Bookstore, la Boutique à Crémazie Chauveau was born in Charlesbourg near Quebec City. There were years he had to spend in Ottawa, but he lived in Quebec City and Quebec City is where he died.

________________________
 
[i] Not to be confused with Marichette, the pen name for Acadian author Émilie C. LeBlanc (1863-1935).
[ii] Maria Chapdelaine can be read online in either English or French: 
Maria Chapdelaine  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4383/4383-h/4383-h.htm EN
Maria Chapdelaine  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13525/13525-h/13525-h.htm
 

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© Micheline Walker
5 June 2012
WordPress
 
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La Capricieuse & Crémazie’s Old Soldier

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, History, Literature, New France

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

France, French Canadian, French Revolution, Institut canadien, La Capricieuse, Le Vieux Soldat canadien, Octave Crémazie, Province of Canada

ship

I would like to tell you about French-Canadian poet Octave Crémazie (1827-1879).  Crémazie wrote « Le Vieux Soldat canadien, » a poem featuring an old Canadien soldier watching the harbour and asking his son whether or not the French can be seen.  France returned, but the arrival of « La Capricieuse », in 1855, did not signal a rebirth of New France.

La Capricieuse

As unbelievable as it may seem, it had been ninety-two years since France had visited its former colony.  From 1763 to 1855, no French ship had come from France to what was, in 1855, the Province of Canada.

The ship, a Corvette, arrived at Quebec city on the 14 July 1855, Bastille Day, a day which meant very little to French-speaking Canadians.  In fact, as devout Catholics, many of them looked upon the French Revolution (1789-c. 1794) as the moment when the French clergy had been imperiled to such an extent that many priests had to flee their native land.

French-speaking Canadians who witnessed the arrival of « La Capricieuse » were overwhelmed.  They may have known that, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763), France had chosen Guadeloupe over New France.  But it may have been comforting for the former citizens of New France to think that they had simply lost a battle, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham was a fifteen-minute battle fought on 13 September 1759.  Yet, the short battle claimed the life of its two commanding officers: 32 year-old Major-General James P. Wolfe and 47 year-old Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. French-speaking Canadians look upon that defeat as the catastrophe that caused New France to become a British colony. The defeat is a major factor in this narrative, but it doesn’t tell the full story. It is better for French-speaking Canadians to think they were defeated, than ceded to England. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763), France chose to cede New France in order to keep Guadeloupe.

The Literary Movement of Quebec: Octave Crémazie

Octave Crémazie, baptized Claude-Joseph-Olivier,[i] (1827-1879) was the leading member of a literary school created in the wake of Lord Durham’s remark to the effect that French-speaking Canadians did not have a history and lacked a literature.  That remark had been offensive to French-speaking Canadians and the decision to assimilate them was also unacceptable.  They had been living in on North-American soil since the 1600s, tilling their thirty acres of land.

François-Xavier Garneau (1827-1879)

When he was appointed Prime Minister in 1842, (1827-1879) addressed the assembly in French and French-speaking Canadians set about to prove Lord Durham wrong.  François-Xavier Garneau (1809-1866) wrote a three-volume Histoire du Canada,  published between 1845 and 1848.  Moreover, a literary movement was created in Quebec city, called Le Mouvement littéraire de Québec (the Literary Movement of Quebec or the Patriotic School of Quebec.) 

Octave Crémazie was the leader of that particular school and was one of the founders of l’Institut Canadien. Although he declared bankruptcy and had to seek refuge in France, in 1862, never to return to Canada, these circumstances did not tarnish his reputation as a poet.  He is considered the father of French-Canadian poetry.  During his years of exile in France, he kept in touch with members of group.  He and Henri-Raymond Casgrain wrote to one another. But he had become Jules Fontaine and died in poverty.

The Encyclopædia Britannica on Crémazie

In The Encyclopædia Britannica, the “national bard,” is described as “[a]n extraordinarily learned man, educated at the Seminary of Quebec [who] started a bookshop in 1844 that became the centre of an influential literary circle later referred to as the Patriotic School of Quebec (or the Literary Movement of Quebec).”  Writers and historians met in “la boutique à Crémazie,” Crémazie’s shop.

Britannica also tells us that “[i]n 1861 Crémazie and his friends began issuing a monthly magazine of literature and history, Les Soirées Canadiennes, to preserve the folklore of French Canada” and that among Crémazie’s most “famous patriotic poems are ‘Le Vieux Soldat canadien ’(1855; ‘The Old Canadian Soldier’), celebrating the first French naval ship to visit Quebec in almost a century, and ‘Le Drapeau de Carillon’ (1858; ‘The Flag of Carillon’).”[ii]  At Carillon, New France won the battle.

Le Vieux Soldat canadien

However, the poem we are looking at is “Le Vieux Soldat canadien.”  The old soldier is certain France will return and keeps asking his son whether or not the ships can be seen on the horizon.  Each eight-line decasyllabic (10 syllables) stanza ends with a haunting:  Dis-moi mon fils ne paraissent-ils pas?  (Tell me, my son, are they not within sight?).  As he was dying, (« mais en mourant ») the old soldier was still telling his crying son ( « il redisait encore » ) that he, the son, would see the dawn (« l’aurore ») of that great day, when they would return (« Ils reviendront ! »), but that he [the father] would no longer be alive (the full text is online).

Mais en mourant, il redisait encore
À son enfant qui pleurait dans ses bras: 
« De ce grand jour tes yeux verront l’aurore, 
« Ils reviendront ! et je n’y serai pas ! »
  
(But as he was dying, he kept saying
To his child who was crying in his arms:
“Of that great day your eyes will see the dawn
They will come back! but I will not be there!”)
 

The people of Quebec city were delighted to see “La Capricieuse.”  The French had sent a gift of books for the Institut Canadien, its Montreal branch, I should think.  But the French were in Canada to conduct business.

La Patrie Littéraire or The Literary Homeland

Crémazie’s poem is an example of literary homeland (patrie littéraire) literature as is Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé Anciens Canadiens.[iii]  (For the Wikipedia, entry click on Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé.)  French-speaking Canadians had lost their Lower Canada and built a “literary homeland.”  They created the history and literature which, Lord Durham had reported, they did not have.  Writing became their salvation.

Sailing Ships in Art

The Fleet off Shore (art.com)

© Micheline Walker
25 April 2012
WordPress
 
 
 
_________________________

[i]  Odette Condemine, “Octave Crémazie.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/octave-cremazie 

[ii] “Octave Crémazie.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/142505/Octave-Cremazie>.

[iii] Dale Miquelon, “La Capricieuse,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/la-capricieuse

The entry “La Capricieuse” reads as follows:

“Commander Paul-Henry de Belvèze proceeded by steamer and train to Montréal, Toronto and Ottawa before leaving Québec for France on August 25. His mission was to report on the prospects of trade with Canada, made possible by Britain’s proclamation of free trade and by the Anglo-French alliance of 1854. The result was the opening of a French consulate at Québec in 1859, followed by mutual, short-lived tariff concessions and the development of a modest trade. However, the visit is remembered chiefly as the official endorsement of the Franco-Canadian cultural rapprochement that had been gathering impetus since the 1830s.”

Links to related blogs

“The Aftermath (cont’d) Aubert de Gaspé’s Anciens Canadiens” https://michelinewalker.com/2012/03/30/the-aftermath-contd-aubert-de-gaspes-anciens-canadiens/

“The Aftermath & Krieghoff’s Quintessential Quebec” https://michelinewalker.com/2012/03/29/the-aftermath-krieghoffs-quintessential-quebec/

“The Battle of Fort William-Henry and Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans http://michelinewalker.com/2012/03/26/the-battle-of-fort-william-henry-coopers-last-of-the-mohicans/

“Louis-Joseph de Montcalm Gozon, Marquis de Saint-Veran” https://michelinewalker.com/2012/03/25/louis-joseph-de-montcalm-gozon-marquis-de-saint-veran/

“Nouvelle-France’s Last and Lost Battle: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham” https://michelinewalker.com/2012/03/24/nouvelle-frances-last-and-lost-battle-the-battle-of-the-plains-of-abraham/

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