Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

JE ME SOUVIENS
by Claurida (Levesque) Philippon

Version française

What follows are great excerpts from the little biography, written by my mother, Claurida Levesque, on lined paper, in longhand and in French. Where there are clarifications of my own, they will be in brackets
Louise Dubrule JE ME SOUVIENS by Claurida (Levesque) Philippon
Memories of Lac Saint-Jean

I was born on Sunday, September 10, 1905. My father was Eugene Levesque; my mother was Felixcine Daillaire.

My childhood was rather somber because there always seemed to be deaths in the home: my grandfather, whom I remember well even though I was only three. (He was a fuller by trade, and she remembered his hands that always bore scald burns) Later, five sisters and two brothers all died between the ages of one and eight. And then there was the death of my paternal grandmother, whom we all loved very much. She helped raise us.

My father was partners with a brother on a small farm on the outskirts of Jonquiere, Quebec. He also had five other brothers: two ran a sawmill, making doors, window frames, etc. Two others were carpenters, working here and there, building houses in the city. The other brother was a jeweler and he was my Godfather.

My father was an excellent and proud hunter. Besides farming, he also worked in the woods with horses as a contractor for the Price Brothers of England. He would contract to supply thousands of feet of logs, cut and moved to the rivers for downstream floating in the spring.

In November all the women and children left with the men to go to the lumber camps. The lumbering site was sixty miles away from the home, and it was a three and a half days’ journey. We would be gone for four months. We met ten or twelve other families at a depot rendezvous, spread lots of blankets on the ground to sleep on and ate out of tin dishes. The women looked after their children while the men took care of all the horses while partaking of a little gin and some good Canadian-grown tobacco.

There were many provisions with us: fifty pounds of salt pork, a half a beef, dried peas and beans, frozen onions. We would not see a fresh egg all winter. The small children would drink nothing but canned milk all the time we stayed at the lumber camp. In between babies, my mother would go to help tend kitchen. She carried water from the river, and washed on a washboard for seven hired men besides her own family. Our camp itself was made of logs, the floor rough-hewn planks. There was mail once a month, which arrived with extra provisions: flour and hay and grain for the horses. The priest came an overnight visit only once during the winter. How we counted the days until the end of March! (A young boy under the age of 15 earned $4.50 for the winter; at age 16 his wages were raised to $15.00)

Before school age, none of us children ever left the house except for the trips to the lumber camps. If our parents went somewhere, we never asked to go along…it was unheard of. There was no Christmas celebration. Our special occasion was New Year’s Day when we asked our father’s blessing. I remember well a plaid dress I had, and a red ribbon for my hair. After the blessing, we each received an orange, a few pieces of candy and perhaps a little gift from our God- mother. We truly believed it all came from Heaven since we had never seen the inside of any store.

School was a torment for me. We were poor country folks and my shoes were made at home: felted wool booties with leather soles. They earned me the hated nickname of “habitant” and worse. When we returned from the lumber camps, I was behind my age group in school, and that was a further source of humiliation. But in those days, there were no rules about how many years of education a child should receive. Boys left to attend to duties in their fathers’ way of life, and girls tended to marry at an early age and start families before being fully grown themselves.

When I was ten years old, my father sold his share of the farm and we packed up and headed to new virgin land near Normandin in the Lac St. Jean region. The intention was to set up our own farm and as well as farms for my two brothers, Albert and Henri. Life was extremely hard.

(Because the money from the sale of the farm was not sufficient to cover land for three farms, Eugene found a patron who agreed to provide basic necessities of life for the family. In return, Eugene signed a contract that obligated him to clear an acre of land for the patron for every acre he cleared for himself. The goods provided by the patron were intended to carry the family until the first crop came in, but the work was to continue until a certain number of acres were cleared.)

It was thirty miles to the nearest train, so travel was all by horse and wagon. We lived fifteen miles form the nearest store. The parents went for supplies, leaving the children alone for two days. A month after we had moved from Jonquiere, a baby sister became ill with a cold and died ten days later. Several people in the area died of a great flu epidemic.

My father became ill with TB and continued to work anyway, to fulfill the contract. He died January 24, 1918. He was buried on the 26th when it was forty below zero. Winters were so cold that it was the fashion and duty of the men to take turns staying up during the nights just to keep the fires going.

After my father’s death we were all very disorganized. (The contract with the patron was still in effect, and now Felixcine and the children had to dig in and finish the work. Mother called it “la misere noir” and would shake her head and her eyes would tear up as she remembered.) Finally the family was free and it was time for me and my brothers to make our own ways.

One of my father’s cousins had a farm near us. He was unhappy with his life in Canada and traveled to Vermont to buy a farm in East Berkshire. It was very lonesome since he could only speak a little English. Then his wife had several babies and needed help. They sent word back to Normandain, asking me to move to East Berkshire to be their hired girl.

I arrived in Richford, Vermont on July 3, 1923. I left behind my mother, three brothers, one sister, and my country. I was seventeen and half years old, and it would be ten years before I saw my loved ones again.

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