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Tag Archives: Philippe Panneton

L’Exode told: Trente arpents …

10 Monday May 2021

Posted by michelinewalker in French songs, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec history, Régionalisme

≈ Comments Off on L’Exode told: Trente arpents …

Tags

Bilingualism, John Neilson, L'Exode, Philippe Panneton, Régionalisme, Ringuet, Seigneurial System, Thirty Acres, Tocqueville, Trente arpents

La Rivière Magog par Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, 1913 (Ontario Art Collection)

—ooo—

Trente Arpents (Thirty Acres)

I am forwarding links leading to a discussion of a novel entitled Trente arpents (Thirty Acres). Ringuet’s Trente arpents was published in 1938, at the very end of the period of French-Canadian literary history labelled “régionaliste.” (See Philippe Panneton, Wikipedia). Unlike earlier régionaliste literature, Trente arpents is characterized by its realism. A farmer, prosperous in his youth, “gives himself” (his land) to one of his sons. Everything goes wrong. This novel reflects the difficulties habitants faced when they had to divide the ancestral thirty acres among sons. It is also an excellent depiction of an habitant’s family

One presumes Euchariste Moisan, an habitant, owns his thirty acres. When the Seigneurial system was abolished, in 1854, “habitants” who could purchase the thirty acres they had farmed since the beginning of the 17th century. Those who couldn’t buy had to pay a rente for the rest of their life, as though they still had a seigneur. As noted in an earlier post, the rente was a form of debt bondage which ended in 1935, when Alexandre Taschereau was Premier of Quebec. Whenever the priest arrived at their door, these “habitants” no longer wanted to pay thite (la dîme). Trente arpents was published in 1938. At that time, the United States and the world were nearing the end of the Great Depression and migration was less frequent. It should be noted that the exodus started at the time of the Rebellions of 1837-1838. It endured. Trente arpents was discussed in two parts.

  • Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Ringuet’s Trente arpents (Part One) (1938) (27 July 2012)
  • Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Ringuet’s Trente arpents (Part Two) (1938) (29 July 2012)

Forthcoming: John Neilson on Canadiens, and the potatoe famine

Alexis de Tocqueville’s inverviewed John Neilson, a bilingual polititian in Lower Canada. I have translated this interview. In 1831, John Neilson, Scottish, praised Canadiens and looked upon French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians as compatible. The interview took place six years before the Rebellions of 1837-1838. The French had friends. Among them were the Irish who had fled their country because of the potatoe famine. When they arrived in Quebec, they were very sick, which caused a cholera epidemic. Canadiens had survived various blows and survived again. In fact, Canadiens bonded with the Irish, many of whom went to work in factories but were never promoted. So, we know why the music of Ireland and Scotland exerted a great deal of influence on Québécois music. We also know why my grandfather, on my father’s side, had an Irish mother.

Confederation

To a very large extent, Quebec entered Confederation because Confederation pleased Quebec’s bourgeoisie, French and English, as well as the Clergy. The Clergy feared dissention. My source is Denis Monière‘s Développement des idéologies au Québec[1] and the sources he quotes. For a very long time, the bourgeoisie, including Quebec’s bourgeoisie and the Château Clique, attempted to minoritize and assimilate French-speaking Canadians. The Clergy sided with the British. The Clergy was in favour of confederation. Moreover, several Englishmen and United Empire Loyalists, who were given the Eastern Townships, les Cantons de l’Est, now l’Estrie, wished to absorb French-speaking Canadiens. The Townships were home to Abenaki Amerindians. I have Amerindian ancestry.

French-Canadian literature is a subject I taught for several years. In 2001, I gave a lecture on La Patrie littéraire at the University of Stuttgart. As you know, I had huge workloads, so many subject-matters. A mission impossible is the only accurate description of the tasks expected of me when I taught at McMaster University. Yet I was elected to the presidency of the Canadian Association of University and College Teachers of French, l’Apfucc and to the Fédération des Études humaines, and to its Executive. But let us call these years an epiphany.

The image above shows la Rivière Magog. It crosses la rivière Saint-François in Sherbrooke.

The Magog River and the Saint-François River

We may have seen the video I have embedded. It tells a story.

RELATED ARTICLES

  • About the Seigneurial System, cont’d (23 August 2020)
  • About the Seigneurial System (21 August 2020)
  • Upper Canada and Lower Canada (12 April 2012)
  • Canadiana.1 (page)
  • Canadiana.2 (page)

_________________________
[1] (Montréal: Québec/Amérique, 1977)

—ooo—

Love to everyone 💕

Music video of “A la claire fontaine” (By the clear fountain/spring) performed by Vancouver choir musica intima, arrangement by Stephen Smith. My own urban re-interpretation of the traditional French folk song.

Director/producer: Nigel Hunt. DOP: Terry Zazulak, Editor: Brian Nemett. Actors: Jerry Prager, Sigrid Johnson. Funding: Bravo!FACT. Video copyright: Garrison Creek Productons, 2000.
Allégorie de l’automne par Suzor-Coté (paperblog.fr)

© Micheline Walker
10 May 2021
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The Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Survival

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, Literature

≈ Comments Off on The Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Survival

Tags

Claude-Henri Grignon, Félix-Antoine Savard, French-Canadian literature, Germaine Guèvremont, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Philippe Panneton, Regionalism

Mild Spring by Claude A. Simard, R.C.A. (2010)

(Claude A. Simard is featured with permission from La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal)

Today, I will start and perhaps finish writing about our last Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Ringuet‘s Trente Arpents. If you are interested in French-Canadian literature and use my posts as further information on both Canadian literature and history, you may wish to keep the list below. There are other romans de la terre or romans du terroir, or novels of the land (regionalism), but the works listed below are fine representatives of this school, and some are classics. The theme underlying these novels is survival, as in Margaret Atwood‘s Survival.

Classification: The Canadien runs out of Land

I do not want to put these novels into little boxes, but a moderate degree of classification is necessary. Maria Chapdelaine, by Louis-Hémon, a Frenchman, tells the entire story. However, it does not convey the despair of those French-Canadians who had to leave Canada because they the thirty acres allotted their ancestors in the seventeenth century had shrunk. The exodus was a tragic and quasi-genocidal episode. Quebec could not afford to lose close to a million inhabitants.

The finest depiction of the Exodus is Ringuet’s (Dr Philippe Panneton)  Trente Arpents or Thirty Acres.

Ideological Texts

1. In La Terre paternelle, French-Canadians are told that it is better to stay on the land. The same advice is given in Charles Guérin, were it not that Charles Guérin, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau‘s novel, also brings up the thorny matter of the lack of professions available to French-Canadians living in Quebec.

2. Un Homme et son péché (Les Belles histoires des pays d’en haut), by Claude-Henri Grignon, is about a séraphin, a miser. But it features real-life who advocate colonisation: faire de la terre (making land). “Notre culture sera paysanne… ” supports that ideology.

Poetical

1.  In Menaud, maître-draveur, Félix-Antoine Savard‘s novel, no explicit ideology is expressed, but Englishmen will be renting the mountain so they can harvest its riches. Menaud feels dépossédé (disowned). A French-Canadian no longer “tied” (lié) to the land, le Délié, will be pocketing the rental money. Savard’s novel is a masterpiece. It is a poetical, evocative, and “green” novel. Do not abuse nature.

2.  Le Survenant (and its sequel: Marie-Didace), Germaine Guèvremont‘s novel is also very poetical. It has a bucolic and, at times, spell-binding quality. The land is rich and it still feeds French-Canadians. In The Outlander (Le Survenant), the central character, is both liked and feared.

Patrie Littéraire (after Lord Durham’s Report)

La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin are Patrie littéraire novels. They were written in the wake of Lord Durham’s report, who described French-Canadians as having no history or literature.

Radio and Television serials

Un Homme et son péché* (Radio and TV) and Le Survenant* (TV) were serialized and extremely popular.

The “Bad” Englishman and the “Vendu” (sold)

The “bad” Englishman is Wagnaër in Charles Guérin and the “vendu,” le Délié in Menaud, maître-draveur.    

  • La Terre paternelle, Patrice Lacombe (1846) ←
  • Charles Guérin, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau (1846)
  • Maria Chapdelaine, Louis-Hémon (1914)
  • Un Homme et son péché, Claude Henri Grignon (1933)*
  • Notre culture sera paysanne ou elle ne sera pas (We will be peasants or we will not be), Public letter to André Laurendeau, an article published in L’Action nationale, n° 6, juin 1941, pp. 538-543. 
  • Menaud, maître-draveur, Félix Antoine Savard (1937)
  • Trente Arpents, Ringuet (Dr Philippe Panneton) (1938)
  • Le Survenant, Germaine Guèvremont (1945)*
  • The Canadian & his “Terroir”

I will be writing about Laurendeau, l’Action nationale, Refus global, etc.

 —ooo—

Gilles Vigneault sings Gilles Vigneault: Mon Pays

© Micheline Walker
17 June 2012
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