Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

GRANDE DAME OF LAC ST. JEAN
by Louise Dubrule

A visitor from far Western Canada was complaining to Pauline that they had been in the area of Lac St. Jean for a week and hadn’t seen a single Indian. “I thought you had a lot of them around here,” he said. To which Pauline replied “Mais oui, nous en avons beaucoup mais ils ne mangent pas dans nos assiettes.” (Of course, we have a lot of them, but they don’t eat out of our plates.)

This Pauline was my dear aunt, the youngest of Mama’s siblings. Grandmother Felixcine had twelve children but only five survived to adulthood. Such were the conditions described in a previous article “Je Me Souviens.” Other contributing authors to KÉSSINNIMEK-ROOTS-RACINES have discussed the intermingling of Indians with the French settlers and the bias they faced. It was unwritten knowledge that my maternal grandmother had Indian blood, but it wasn’t mentioned in polite company. Yet, a picture of Pauline, taken at age two, seems to verify the truth.

Pauline was only six when their father died, and the most vivid memory she retained of him was of being awakened by his singing “Réveillez-vous Belle Endormie”. She was fortunate that she later had a stepfather who was kind. In 2003, my sister sent me a large portrait of a distinguished gent. It had been in Mama’s cellar for 40 years, and in Simone’s cellar another 20 years, and it was my turn to store it. Instead, the portrait was cleaned, framed in an antique gold oval, and hung it in our entry. I sent a photo of it to Aunt Pauline to share the mysterious find. Within a few days, Aunt Pauline was on the phone, nearly in tears: this was her father, my grandfather Eugène, and the memories came flooding back for her: the lumber camps, the desolation after Eugène’s death and the utter misery of the following years.

By age twenty, Pauline was married to Francis Xavier Trembley who was employed at the huge hydroelectric plant. Before their first anniversary, she was a widow: her new groom was electrocuted at work. She supported herself for several years by becoming an accomplished seamstress and she catered to the wives of the employees at the new Alcoa Aluminum industry that had sprung up in the area. These ladies were mostly Irish or Scots, and Pauline quickly learned the English words that allowed her to ply her trade.

A subsequent marriage to Agenor Bergeron produced a son, Denis. This marriage, too, was cruelly terminated by an accident at the same hydroelectric plant. This time, Agenor was in a turbine with several other men doing maintenance work and the machinery was turned on by mistake, suffocating all of them. Pauline pulled herself together, took in her mother who was a widow again herself, and began her dressmaking enterprise anew.

When Denis was five, Pauline was brave enough to try marriage again with Tancred Boily who worked at the foundry unit of Alcoa. Within a year, they were the parents of a raven-haired daughter, Diane; now there was a complete family to occupy their minds and hearts. Ten years after their marriage, Tancred was crushed from the waist down in an industrial accident. Miraculously, he survived but he was never able to work again. Later she would joke that she kept him anyway and dusted him once a week, like the piano. They were content to fill their lives with their children, and then three grandchildren. They had a summer camp at the lake and had a wide circle of friends and a multitude of adoring nieces and nephews.

Pauline coped with more loss: her mother, a grandson, and then their beloved Diane of a drug overdose. They drew their grief around them and kept the truth of Diane’s death a close family secret so as not to spoil her memory for others. How much sadness could one woman bear? Later, it was her only living brother, and then finally Tancred.

Aunt Pauline and I found each other after my mother’s death on Pauline’s birthday in 1992. For ten years we looked forward to a Saturday phone visit, and I found her the repository of all family history and lore. From her I learned that the stubborn streak referred to as "tête de Lévesque" was really the gift of a Scot ancestor, a mail-order bride named Scolastica. We exchanged stories, recipes, secrets and hopes. Most of all, we made each other laugh.

In 1993, we made the trip to Lac St. Jean with my brother John and sister Simone and their spouses. It was the first time I’d been there since 1949, and Aunt Pauline arranged a family reunion that included more cousins than I knew existed. It was a lovely affair of memories, music and food. The audio tape of the festivities is a cacophony of French , and the photos captured the various family groups, frozen in time.

One cousin declared that Aunt Pauline could take the contents of the cat’s litter box and make something pretty. The lady was truly amazing. She could sew, knit, crochet and embroider fancy cut-work. She was skilled at drawing, painting, and wood-burning. She could whittle the most cunning little things from bits of wood.

My favorite memories of her are the snippets from our Saturday chats. She had a way of expressing herself that evoked vivid mental pictures and chuckles. She described the tousled and bleached hair of a woman as looking "comme une poule blanche qui s’est roulée dans la terre dessous la galerie d’en avant" (like a white hen that had rolled in the dirt under the front porch.) How much clearer can you get?

There was a young man in her neighborhood who ran errands to earn a little money. While we might have called him "retarded," she maintained that he was "innocent." In her words "Il n’est pas assez fou pour mettre du feu, mais il n’est pas assez habile pour l’éteindre." (He’s not crazy enough to set a fire, but he’s not clever enough to put one out.) For him, she saved generous pieces of pie or cake for payment along with the dollar bills, because he had no one else to bake his favorite sweets.

Even in her eighties, Aunt Pauline did little sewing jobs for her neighbors who were not at all adroit with a needle. Her favorite: "Elle ne sait pas coudre plus que le chat connait le jour de l'an." (She doesn’t know about sewing any more than the cat knows about New Years Day.) All right, some things don’t translate so well.

The bit of wisdom that has become incorporated into our daily vocabulary grew out of our discussions about the national news that was often disturbing. It was her opinion that we should go back to the customs of the biblical days when the lepers were required to wear a bell around their neck to warn people to stay away. She said that the weird or stupid people should wear a bell so we’d hear them coming. I laughed at the thought, and then she decided “There aren’t enough bells in the world. And it’s a good thing, too, because we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think.” Now, when we read something idiotic in the newspaper or see an outrageous story on TV, we nod and say "Yep, there aren’t enough bells."

Goodness, I miss her.

Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines
Copyright © 2003 & 2004 & 2005 & 2006 Norm Léveillée
©Tous droits réservés
Created 1 Feb 2003