The Poirier family

Tracing the Poirier Family.

On Meacham’s map of Lot 1 as you can see by the two red X marks, that Isidore Gaudet lived about one quarter of a mile from the centre of Tignish on his 50 acres of land, and Jean Sosime Poirier’s land was in Palmer Road, with his 45 acres, not far from the church. In the 1863 Baker/Lake map of the Island, several Perry properties are identified in the Palmer Road area indicating that that these farms had been bought when the landlords were forced to sell to the tenants around the time of Confederation.

Here is a detail that shows the specific location of Marie Blanche Poirier’s home where she loved running down to the brook to pick gooseberries and hazelnuts.

 

I want to introduce you to my maternal ancestors by means of genealogical charts made with Ancestry software. This detail from a chart, on which I have been working for about four years shows the first five generations of a very clear progression of the Poirier family for eleven generations. My grandfather’s family, the Gaudets, is documented on a similar chart in the previous post.

 

If we push this table back to the eleventh generation, Marie Blanche Poirier’s ancestor was Jacques Poirier dit Boyer, who was born in 1600 at St-Andre d’Abbeville, Rouen, Normandie, and died 12 Nov 1671,  in Rouen. The farther back we go, without expert guidance, the more questionable these forays into the remote past become.

I have never come across a list of the various places in France where the settlers in New France originated. That story is a complicated one, not at all clear to me, involving urban over-crowding, getting the new Protestant rebels, the Huguenots, out of the country, and most obviously, seeking workers skilled draining salt marshes such as could be found in Brittany.

It is important, in our study of Island Acadians, that we not forget to go back to our most remote identifiable French ancestors and try to identify what beliefs, religious practices, music, foodways and aspects of material culture which might still be lurking in hidden corners of our Island world. That would require advanced folkloric studies.

The Origins of the Poiriers in Acadia

By the eighth generation the Poiriers had settled in Port Royal, then moved up to Beaubassin to work on the massive project of reclaiming the Tantramar Marshes. One of the ancestors who witnessed the beginning of this great project was Michel Poirier de Beaubassin (1651-1707).

Fort Beausejour and Tantramar Marshes. Scan from a 1975 colour slide.

The Poiriers were to live in Beaubassin until the deportation of 1755. The last of the family to be born and to live there was Pierre Poirier dit Pierrot (1733-1842), who somehow, in ways I do not understand, like so many others, survived the deportation to die in Tignish in 1842. At some time, he settled in Palmer Road where my maternal grandmother, Marie Blanche Poirier was born and grew up on the family farm.

For the purpose of this family section in the blog that tells my story, I will describe only those family members whose lives touched mine, and by extension, their own immediate families. It would satisfy me if I were able to establish a basic life chronology for each person, but that is impossible, except for Marie Blanche, my grandmother who brought me up for the first fourteen years of my life.

The more recent Poirier generations.

Here is very basic information on the four generations going back in time from Marie Blanche as I was able to assemble it when I worked on her genealogical table on Ancestry.ca.

Marie Blanche’s great great grandfather, Pierre Poirier dit Grand Couette was born in 1767. He married Marie Chiasson in Ile Saint Jean. They had one child, Sosime. Pierre la Grande Couette died on September 24, 1842, in Tignish, having lived 75 years.

Her great grandfather Sosime Poirier was born on December 14, 1788. His father, Pierre, was 21 and his mother, Marie, was 20 at the time of his birth. He married and had one son, Jean Sosime with Domithilde Arsenault in 1827. He died on November 13, 1882, in Tignish, at the age of 93.

Her grandfather, Jean Sosime Poirier was born on December 24, 1827. His father Sosime was 39 and his mother Domithilde was 41 at the time of his birth. He lost his mother when he was only 3 years old. Jean Sosime then married Barbe, or Babette Pitre and they had two children together, Irénée called Henry, and Pierre à Jean. It appears he married a third time to Sophique dite Sophie Poirier on January 7, 1877. I do not have a date for his death.

Marie Blanche’s father was Captain Pierre à Jean Poirier who was born on June 12, 1857, in Tignish. He owned a schooner which made the family comfortably well-off. His father, Jean, was 29 and his mother, Barbe, was also 29 when he was born. He married Glaphira, also called Catherine Gaudet on November 21, 1882. They had ten children in 18 years. He died on October 25, 1925, in Tignish at the age of 68.

 

The Ten Poirier Children

Pierre a Jean’s and Glaphira’s children were an elusive group to me when I was forming impressions of who was who in our Poirier and Gaudet families. I know almost nothing about them and do not recall them ever being discussed in our home or even visiting their Island relatives. For the sake of being thorough, I will list them below and then move on to describe those members of the family whom I knew in various ways.

William (No information available.)
Stanislaus “Stanley” (10 Sep 1897– ?)
Jean Joseph (1883 – 1973)
Francis (1891 – 1972)
Joseph-Edouard (1893 – 1933)
Mary Jane (1902 -?)

This detail from a family group probably depicts Jane, of whom I have very vague memories from my early childhood.

 

The four (of the ten) Poirier siblings I met and knew.

 

Georges (1885-1974)

[photo required]

George Poirier (Perry – nicknamed Brow) was born on August 29, 1885, in Tignish, Prince Edward Island. His father, Pierre, was 28 and his mother, Glaphira, was 26. When he was 22 years old, on August 4, 1908, a son called Edmund J (1908-1984) was born. I don’t know when he married but he had two other children, Hilda Mary (1917-1996) and Lauretta Mary (1922-1991) with Mary Susan Arsenault (May 10, 1887- December 19, 1979). He died on September 26, 1974, in his hometown at the age of 89.

George was probably the most colourful and eccentric of the ten Poirier children. He was extremely volatile and high spirited, and stories abound about his wild behaviour. Perhaps the most spectacular story concerns the foundering of the family schooner, the Brier Rose during a violent storm on the rocky shores of Northern New Brunswick. George and another of his brothers were at sea when a storm blew up, the boat went aground, and was so damaged it had to be sold for scrap.

The nature of this boat had always interested me, and I asked Harry Holman of Charlottetown, who is an expert in all things nautical on PEI, if he could tell me something about the boat from the image we have. This is what he had to say.

The photo quite clearly is of a small two-masted coastal schooner. These were common work boats used for both fishing and carrying goods in the Atlantic area through to the second war. You can see that there are gaffs resting atop the fore and aft sails and the boom of the aftersail extends well beyond the stern of the vessel but is hidden by the draped sail. If the individual standing on the dock stands about 5 1/2 feet, then the boat is about 40 feet in length. If he is shorter then the length would be slightly less. I am intrigued by the picture as it seems to show what may be an oar lashed to the rear shroud of the aftermast. If so, there is probably another on the other side of the boat but hidden from view by the mast. These oars, or sweeps, would have been used to move the boat when there was no wind, or to help manoeuvre in port.  Unfortunately, there is nothing in the picture which would help identify this particular boat.

Harry Holman, personal communication, November 1, 2022.

In the records available to him Harry was not able to find out anything about an Island ship registered with that name. More information may turn up after this blog post gets published and readers or Poirier cousins respond.

 

We know practically nothing of George’s early life except that in 1904, at the age of 22, he had fathered a son, Edmund. There is an immigration entry to the US that places him in Boston in 1912 when he was 26. In 1914 he was 29 years old and did not go to war. Perhaps – and this is a wild guess – that was because he was employed in coastal shipping.

He must have married Mary Susan Arsenault during this time because their first daughter Hilda was born in 1917 and his other daughter, Lauretta, was born in 1922. Nothing in family tradition that has come down to me provides any information about where he and his family – if they were a family – were living, whether he travelled or what kind of work he did on a regular basis.

George was a very skilled man and could put his hand to anything. To begin the narrative of his building skills there is a rather alarming story of George up on Jimmy Gallant’s roof working on the chimney, and as a certain individual drove past in his horse and cart, George threw a brick that clipped the man and could easily have killed him. He loved to tell that story and would go off into gales of laughter as he recounted this and other exploits.

One major exploit, which he claimed to have taken a part in at least twice, was the moving of the North Cape lighthouse a safe distance from the rapidly eroding cliffs. It is probable that he was involved in this work, and one could perhaps find evidence in obscure government accounts.

Built in 1866, the octagonal wooden tower had a height of 62 feet, without the lantern. It was a very powerful light with the oil flame greatly intensified by a complicated, massive Fresnel condenser which might be the original. It is as beautiful as it is functional.

The lighthouse was badly needed because of a long, three+ mile reef, once the tip of the northwest Island mainland, that had eroded away over the centuries. Jacques Cartier, in 1534 remarked upon it and the Basque fishermen  were also aware of it and named it on their maps. The sandstone cliffs upon which the lighthouse was built are, to this day, very unstable even though the upper layers of stone rest on a beautiful, solid and dense three hundred-million-year-old base course.

George claimed to have been involved in moving the lighthouse back on two occasions and that might be true. It was certainly moved back at least once during my early life and, when I explored North Cape in the early 1970s the hexagonal outline of the stone foundation could be clearly seen half eroded away by the disintegrating cliff.

 

George moves our house to Tignish

George worked in some capacity with the great house mover Erston Silliker (1891-1975) whose business was located near Bedeque. From earliest colonial times houses were always being moved from one place to another. It was not seen as a major challenge. The technique was simple. The building was jacked up and two huge beams were placed parallel under it for support. These beams were called runners, like in a sled, because, lacking snow, the runners moved slowly over greased skids, about the size of a railway tie. A hole was dug in the middle of the road and a heavy capstan installed there. A horse, hitched to a suitably long pole would walk in circles, winding up the rope that was tied to the runners. Slowly, with each step, the house moved forward, inch by in, until the rope was all wound on the capstan.

The process would begin again as another hole was dug further up the road, and over three days or so, the building could advance about a mile.

This photo from the internet of an unidentified subject illustrates perfectly what happened when our house was moved to Tignish. I remember that momentous event with great clarity. At the end of the first day, we camped on the road in front of Jimmy Gallant’s house!

Erston Silliker (1891-1975) house moving outfit – photo from the Internet

 

This story is of the greatest importance to the Gaudet family way of life and its status in the community, not only for moving next to the village of Tignish, but also for establishing a fresh presence for a family known formerly for its utter destitution by becoming a landowner near the village. This event took place in the summer of 1952 or’53 and was completely at the instigation of my mother, Mary Frances Gaudet, who bought a piece of land from Jack Perry that abutted the south edge of Pierre à Maximin’s great property, across the road from the place where she and all her siblings had been born in Joseph Isidore Gaudet’s ill-fated house.

The converted fisherman’s shack given to a large homeless family in 1940 now had its own land with room for a barn and pigpen, a garden and a new outhouse. A well was dug – by George, wouldn’t you know? – and he rebuilt the attic chimney that had to be dismantled for the move. Fortunately, the house was too far from the road to throw a brick at anybody trotting by. Electricity was not yet available in that part of town and so the house continued to be lit with kerosene lamps. Electricity did finally come but there was no plumbing in Marie Blanche and Charlie’s lifetimes. Thus, the house, a former fisherman’s shack, made respectable with a new roof and shingled siding, took its place in Metropolitan Tignish.

After the house had been hauled into town the barn, necessary to store fishing gear and to keep a pig, was cut into pieces and with great difficulty was re-erected in its new location. A large vegetable garden was dug next to it after the ground had been broken by a horse and plough.

 

So, it was Uncle George, the wrecker of ships and workman of many skills who brought us to the edge of the village. Instead, as a tiny boy, of walking a mile and a half to school each day regardless of the season, I was able to trot to the Dalton School or the Convent school in no time at all. Sewing business for my grandmother increased dramatically and when a boy’s choir was formed to sing Gregorian Chant in the church in 1952, Mary Blanche and her ancient Singer sewing machine were ready to create all the black soutanes and lace-trimmed surplices necessary to dress the boys for formal occasions. Life had changed dramatically, and George, so outrageously tiresome, had engineered it all.

George and Marie Blanche were never on good terms and in my perhaps distorted memory, every encounter between then turned into a violent row with George, foaming at the mouth, telling her Tu es folle, Marie Blanche, FOLLE! At this point he would be ordered out of the house, never to return. But he outlived Marie Blanche by two years.

George was known around the area as George Brow, and in the Acadian manner of giving every family a nickname prevalent in Tignish, his family also took on the name. This nickname business had started probably back in France when, to distinguish various people with the same name from one another, they were given their father’s name as well, hence Pierre à Jean. This custom was brought to the New World and survived among the Acadians. Occasionally, this naming went outside the Acadian community, and one suspects the Irish were responsible for calling my grandfather Charlie by the name of Bradley, said to be after a travelling boxer he resembled. Brow must also be an Irish nickname, based on a comparison with a person of that name, as there is no Acadian reason for calling him that.

George spent his last years alone in a very tiny shack placed illegally on a small no man’s land triangle where the old Western Road – Route 2 – turns into abandoned wilderness and eventually joins route 14.

Wrecker of sailboats, mover of lighthouses and houses, digger of wells and builder of chimneys, and spreader of discord in his family, – all accomplished in a state of the wildest mania – were the character and accomplishments of a funny, bossy, antagonistic yet very skillful personality.

 

 

Henry 1885- 1957

[find a photo of Henry to insert here]

Henry George Perry was born on July 1, 1895, in Tignish. His father, Pierre, was 38 and his mother, Glaphira, was 36. He had two daughters, Stella and Bertha, with Mary Judith Doucette (Doucet) between 1919 and 1924. He died on January 1, 1957, in his hometown at the age of 61, and was buried there.

Uncle Henry lived in a tiny house on Main Street in Tignish and had the most perfect and productive cherry tree in the village. When the fruit was ripe, I always found excuses to go and pay my respects to my grand uncle and his wife. They responded with a bowl of cherries. When he died in 1957, as a choir boy I sang at his funeral Mass and at the ceremonies at his graveside.

 

Malvina (1900-1990)

Malvina Poirier was born in 1900 in Palmer Road, Prince Edward Island. Her father, Pierre, was 43, and her mother, Glaphira, was 42. She married Joseph Emmanuel “Mike” Doucette in her hometown. They had one child, Dorothy. Malvina died on August 29, 1990, in Tignish at the age of 90, and was buried there. Her husband, Joseph Emmanuel Doucette was born on January 30, 1904, the son of? Doucette and?. and was christened in Palmer Road on February 14, 1904. He died in 2004 in Tignish, at the age of 100, and was buried next to his wife.

Malvina and her sister Marie Blanche were on very good terms. From an early age Malvina learned to play the fiddle and in her day was considered a good musician.

Marie Blanche, in her kitchen, listening to her sister Malvina play a tune, circa 1966.

Her greatest role however was to be my mother Frances’ godmother, and it is to her in Clinton that she fled in 1942, having become pregnant by my father, James MacKenzie Porter. Together they fabricated proof of marriage between my parents so that when I was born on November 23, 1943, in the Summerside Hospital, glowing with jaundice, they managed to produce sufficient documentation to satisfy the hospital. I am sure that my father’s absence in the Navy was to their advantage. It was these papers that were used as proof of marriage when I was baptised in Tignish in 1944. Need one ask who my godparents were? Aunt Malvina and her husband Emmanuel, stalwart as ever, were there to pledge their support. Perhaps it was convenient that the Summerside Hospital burnt to the ground after the war, and in it all its records. Years later when I came to get an official copy of my birth certificate for my first passport, the province had to request a baptismal certificate from the parish of Tignish as they had no record of me whatsoever.

Throughout my life, every time we met, Aunt Mal was very kind to me. She was interested in everything I did and questioned me intelligently and at length.

Mike Doucette as RCAF cook during the war.

 

In their last years Malvina and Emmanuel “Mike” moved to Tignish, and in the Chiasson field next to Marie Blanche and Charlie, Mike built a very fine house. He was a first-class carpenter and had great skills in finish work. In his last years he developed a passion for gardening and would rescue garden strays from the ditches, which everybody called weeds, and through careful nourishing produced huge, beautiful flowers with glorious blossoms. His neighbours were amazed.

This aerial photo I took in the summer of 1971 shows the neighbourhood that developed along the extension of Church Street after my family moved into a corner of Jack Perry’s cow pasture.

 

 

Marie Blanche (1890-1972)

Marie Blanche Poirier was born on January 19, 1890, in Palmer Road, Prince Edward Island. Her father, Pierre, was 32, and her mother, Glaphira, was 31. She married Charles Joseph Gaudet on April 13, 1915. They had 14 children in 18 years. She died in 1972 in Tignish, Prince Edward Island, at the age of 82, and was buried there.

She had been brought up in relative comfort in Palmer Road by a loving family who bought her lovely things, like a special carpet for her bedroom, that she liked to remember fondly from time to time. Her father owned a small coastal schooner called the Brier Rose that carried merchandise of varying kinds from Miminegash Harbour to ports along the North Shore of New Brunswick. It was a source of security for the family until, in a violent storm, it ran aground on the shores of New Brunswick and sold for scrap. The boat is described in detail in the section on her brother George, above.

The Pilgrimage to Saint Anne de Beaupré

Before she married Charlie on April 13, 1915, Marie Blanche had an epiphanic moment of deep religious significance which I believe gave her the strength to survive what would become, by any standard, an impossible life.

This episode – a joyful and exciting one – stands out. Before the First World War began, she and some friends took a train trip on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Anne de Beaupré in Quebec. It was a place of miracles, all attested to by the crutches, chairs and body supports left at the shrine after a sudden cure.

Taken from a book in Marie Blanche’s collection of prayer books and other holy works, these pictures show the 1878 chapel that had been erected to accommodate larger crowds visiting the shrine. This is the sanctuary that she would have visited. She prayed before the great gilded statue on the right that was made by a Belgian sculptor in 1885, and after it survived the fire that destroyed the 1878 church in 1922, it took on miraculous powers that are still petitioned by sick and troubled to this day. It has been placed in the present great stone Romanesque style basilica that was built as a replacement, beginning in 1923.

Marie Blanche’s life was transformed by her epiphany at Beaupré, and it is from this that she gained the strength, again and again, to endure one horror after another in those long years with Charlie.

 

The Marriage to Charlie Gaudet.

Full of the inspiration of good Saint Anne and after a whirlwind romance Marie Blanche Poirier married Charlie Gaudet when he was 24 and she was 25.

Charlie, with absolutely no resources of his own, and little ambition, married well. With a world war in progress, Marie Blanche left Palmer Road and came to live at Joseph Isidore’s house in Tignish because she and her husband had nowhere else to go. From conversations with Marie Blanche over the years, living in that house with various members of the Gaudet family, whose fortunes were on the decline, was not a happy time. Joseph Isidore was perhaps happy-go-lucky, and had, from time to time, to sell land to his wealthy and stand-offish neighbour, Pierre à Maximin Chiasson, who lived across the road in a grand house. From 1880 to about 1925 his acreage near the village of Tignish shrank from 50 to 4 acres. Marie Blanche often said that she found life there intolerable. In this very rare circa 1918 family photo we see Joseph Isidore costumed in a military uniform (he never saw service) hamming it up and looking very jolly.

On the left is Joseph Isidore (1859-1939) and next to him, his wife, Mary Elizabeth Bernard (1859-1927). In the centre, holding the new baby Joseph Isidore is Marie Blanche (1890-1972) and right of her, Marie Angeline Gaudet (1895-1974) and next to her, her husband Ernest John Gaudet (1893-1988), whom she had married in 1916 when she was 20 years old. In the front row is Mary Gaudet (1899-1972) and next to her Mary Jane Poirier (b. 1902), Mary Blanche’s sister and probably two of Marie Blanche’s other children, Mary Dora and Mary Elizabeth.

 

Marie Blanche had all her children in that house. No photo of it survives, but my mother remembers it as a three-bay central plan house. Tuberculosis was rampant at that time in the province and acute disease set in almost immediately and eight of her children had died before World War II set in. Only Rita survived until 1941. Of all those nine children only two photographs survive. Rita’s  photo is contained in a gold locket that was treasured by my mother Frances, who loved her dearly.

There is also a small photo, probably taken at school, of Elise (Elizabeth) 1920-37 and her slightly older sister Frances (1918-2014). It is lovely, and the only picture to survive showing two siblings together during that terrible time.

This list of deaths in their family tells it all.

Joseph Isidore, born 1916, died in 1921, aged 5.
Dora, born 1917, died 1923 from diphtheria, aged 6.
Elise, born 1920, died 1937 of tuberculosis, aged 17.
Edward, born 1921, died 1937 of tuberculosis, aged 17.
Jane, born 1922, died of tuberculosis 1937, aged 15.
Rita, born 1924, died of tuberculosis 1941, aged 17.
Frederick, born 1926, died of tuberculosis 1937 aged 11.
Cyrus, born 1929, infant death at 17 days.
Joseph Arthur, born 1934, infant death, one month.

 

They are all buried in the Tignish Cemetery in graves that are no longer marked. The Gaudet family plot is somewhere on the right, near the front, when you enter the cemetery today. If these children had any markers at all they would have been whitewashed wooden crosses that quickly rotted. They might have looked like this.

At some time, perhaps around 1960, a locally-made cement monument remembering all these lost children was placed in what is believed to be the Gaudet plot in the cemetery, next to a similar monument to Joseph Isidore Gaudet.

 

Family Life at Christopher’s Cross

We have absolutely no information on how the married life of Charles and Marie Blanche developed after they left his father’s home around 1939. They rarely appear together in family group photos and there is only a single photo, the detail above, that shows the newly-wedded Marie Blanche holding a child. Marie Blanche seemed to have spent her time becoming pregnant, again and again in good Catholic fashion, watching, over the years, one child after another cough up tubercular blood till they finally died.

Several photos from the late 1940s capture the spirit of the family that remained after the move to Christopher’s Cross. This lovely photo shows what was left of the family after John, May and Frances had moved away. We see Charlie and Marie Blanche, their daughter Susan and son Gerard, both of whom would soon leave home to find out of province jobs. By that time the family had been augmented by my presence and, in a rare  perhaps unique moment, Marie Blanche holds me to her.

 

Charlie as husband and father.

There are several pictures of Charlie that survive, showing him with fellow fishermen at the shore, or visiting – and drinking, with his friends, mostly Irish. This photo, perhaps from the 1930s, shows him with a group of buddies passing away an afternoon watching a tire inner tube being repaired.

Photo, perhaps from the late 1930s showing Charlie Gaudet, second from right, with his friends Stephen McInnis, his father Jack McInnis and Alphie Perry.

What does this close-up of Charlie tell us about his character and personality? Did Marie Blanche and Charlie have a social life or was it all babies, tuberculosis and funerals?

Charlie drank a great deal, especially with his Irish friends. They would drop by our house in horse and wagon, or else driving a big dump truck, and furtively make their way to the barn where homemade liquor – beer or moonshine – would be produced. Then they would get drunk and stagger to the horse and cart and be taken home by a horse who knew the way – and the routine.

The Miracle of the Divinely Directed Hammer

As small boy, I witnessed a most extraordinary scene that is burned into my memory. One day, when my grandfather was not at home, a couple of his drinking buddies had tied their horse at the gate and were calmly walking through the yard to our barn. I remember going out to the back porch with Marie Blanche who promptly ordered them off the property.

They laughed and carrying a huge gallon glass jug filled with a brown opaque substance that was probably beer, continued on to the barn, one of them saying, as he went, “Get back to the house, Missy Goody, you old bag.” In a flash Marie Blanche grabbed the hammer and threw it at them. By divine accident the hammer hit the jug which exploded into splinters, spilling the beer on the ground. Without another word, the two men turned around and got into their wagon and drove off.

 

Charlie suffered from drinking bouts, especially at Christmas and Easter, settling-up time at the end of the fishing season, and when elections came around and he was filled with liquor to go and vote for the Conservative Party. (Marie Blanche was a staunch Liberal.) These bouts would last several days and there were monstrous rows in the house. Charlie never physically abused his wife during these events, but they had horrendous verbal exchanges. Charlie knew Marie Blanche’s weak spot: profanity – and so, roaring, he went about the house cursing, swearing and even blaspheming. Those were dreadful times.

 

The Village Seamstress

In the picture below Marie Blanche sits at her window – a new double window – that had been installed when the house was moved to Tignish. This was to give her much more working light for her sewing machine. All her life she had been a very fine seamstress and people came from miles around to have clothing altered, reversed for a new life, trousers adjusted and cuffed, and dresses made from patterns. She even made most of the soutanes and surplices required by the altar and choir boys. Her customers were from all walks of life from our neighbours, an ex-Lieutenant Governor and the parish priest. This quite meagre income – she always charged too little – was what, in the dark days, kept food on the table and wood and coal in the stove. With this kind of work came a respectability and responsibility that boosted her self-image and helped compensate for the constant absence and neglect of her husband.

Mary Blanche was a deeply religious person who every day, without fail, after supper gathered the family to recite the Rosary. In my time it was something we all dreaded – those interminable “Hail Mary’s.” She had a particular devotion to Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, which she formed in her youth after her first of two visits off the Island.

She was a strong woman with high ideals and the courage of her convictions. Her strength of character can be seen in this, one of the last photos I took of her, as she sat pensively at the kitchen table. She possessed a detachment that was almost aristocratic in its manifestation, trusting no one anymore, relying for strength on her intense religious beliefs.

In a strange way Fate was kind to both Mary Blanche and Charlie in their last years together. Because of a cut on his toe that was neglected and turned gangrenous, his foot had to be amputated below the knee. His life changed drastically in two ways at that time. Because of mobility issues his social life took on a home-oriented course and his sessions with his old drinking buddies came to an end.

Financially the family was better off than it had ever been because of the Old Age Pension, something new in their world. It was obvious to their children that Charlie’s new dependence on his wife, and their access to more money no longer wasted on drink, reunited the couple to the point that they rediscovered the love that had drawn them so powerfully together fifty years before.

This is the last family picture that was taken, albeit a partial one, with May, Frances, John and Gerard absent. It was the summer of 1964, and I was visiting from Montreal, proudly wearing my school blazer with its crest. Susan was also visiting from Moncton and, very close to Charlie was Andrea, daughter of our wonderful caring neighbours Emily and Nelson Doucette.

It is a great moment in the history of this family because everybody is smiling.

Sometimes the difficulties of life become resolved, and, if only for several years, with a security never before experienced, the joy of living returns after an absence of half a century.

 

 

The Survivors

The next post will tell the stories of the five survivors of this large family of 14 children. It will be difficult because, although they are now all dead, many of us interacted closely with John, Susan, Gerard, May and Frances, and sensitivities persist.

 

Resources

My memory of events in family history is excellent, and this is supplemented by a very large collection of family photos and pictures of other people and documents that relate to my story.

Bush, Edward F., “The Canadian Lighthouse,” in Canadian Historic Sites No. 9, Information Canada, Ottawa, 1975, p. 87.

Lefebvre, Eugène CSSR, Terre de Miracles: Sainte Anne de Beaupré 1927-1947, Librarie Alphonsienne, Sainte Anne de Beaupré, 1949.