Saturday, August 4, 2012

A Monumental Discovery

 “We are not people who have their names on monuments.”

It was 2003 and my sister and I had taken a voyage to Québec. We were what she described aptly as genealogical tourists. We had traveled back in time, in reverse chronological order, to each of the towns where our paternal line had lived over a span of 200 years.  You can drive to all of these places in a morning and an afternoon. The final destination in our tour was Sainte-Famille, on the pretty island of Orleans, Île d’Orléans, near Quebec City. 

It was a beautiful summer evening. We had made this leg of our trip hurriedly, wondering if we could see Sainte-Famille before nightfall. Here, most likely on some other summer morning or evening in the 1660s, had landed a ship carrying our ancestor Antoine Vermet who had disembarked near here never to return to his native France.

Behind the church of Sainte-Famille, a structure from the days of the French Regime, we found a beautiful little park. In the park was a monument. At the top of the small structure, a human figure with branches for hands and roots for feet extended itself in a dance-like gesture. Below the figure was a list of names with the title “Les Familles Souches de l’Île d’Orléans” – founding families of Île d’Orléans. Among the names on the monument was Antoine Vermet. Among these names, my mother’s ancestor also appeared.

“We are not people who have their names on monuments,” I thought. But who are the people whose names are monumentalized, memorialized, carved in stone or engraved in metal, the hard surfaces that capture our collective memories?

I grew up in the Boston area, a place synonymous with storied American history. The place is so very monumentalized that each locality within Greater Boston has its local heroes and ours were the Adamses, Daniel Webster, and the Mayflower Pilgrims. These were the people who were remembered, this the cast of characters in stories told and retold.

The background of my family, textile and shipyard workers; railroad men and lumberjacks; machinists and factory foremen; farm women gathering and canning and sewing, these were not the people whose stories were told and there was, indeed, a vague embarrassment about them. They were “nobody special” and it was the “special” people, with names like Adams, Webster, Brewster, Cabot or Lowell whose names were monumental, worthy of commemoration and hence of admiration.

But here was evidence to the contrary. Here, at Sainte-Famille, was my story, our story, a story not so dissimilar to those Boston stories. It was a story of pioneers, sailors, soldiers, and voyagers. It was a story of women sent by the King of France with a mission to be the mothers of a new race. Through the violent death of the dream of a New France, with the slide of its habitants into the status of a conquered race, through rural poverty and hence ignominy, through a border crossing, the Vermettes and hundreds of thousands like them had entered the realm of Adamses, Websters, Cabots and Lowells.

What could be clearer evidence of the conquest of New France by New England than the fact that my great-grandfather Charles Vermette, eight generations after Antoine, came as a poor lumberjack to Brunswick, Maine to work in the Cabot Mill, a place whose principal partner was Francis Cabot, one of the famous Boston Brahmins whose surname is found on buildings at Harvard and monuments without end in New England?

The reddish gold of the setting northern sun struck the silver of the monument at Sainte-Famille, Île d’Orléans and shone on its list of names of the long dead but long remembered.   “We are not people who have their names on monuments,” I thought.

Here I stood in front of that thought’s incarnate contradiction.

9 comments:

  1. My friend, what a beautiful writing style you have. It's such a pleasure to hear historical perspective in such readable, engaging and delightful prose. It seems that all of the sweet fruit of Philosophy, History and Literature we immersed ourselves in all those many years ago has born a fine wine!

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    1. Thanks Jerry for your kind comment. I hope you stick around to perhaps learn some more about one of the least known peoples of this continent: French North Americans.

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  2. You are opening a completely new frontier of social history for me. I'm looking forward to exploring it further.

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  3. I was born in French Canada, in the province of Québec. My ancestors first established in Chateau Richer, so close to Ile d'Orléans. Through writings like yours I rekindle the pride I once felt at being born here and having French as my mother tongue. Thank you.

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  4. My brother and I just returned from our voyage to Quebec. We took the same picture of the monument. We weren't monument people either. But just four years ago, we were in Iceland looking at our dad's name on a WWII monument. That was our first and the one in St. Famille is our second. Our 8th great-grandfather, Pierre Rondeau is listed with Antoine Vermet. On our trip, we followed his path from Tadoussac to St. Anne de Beaupre to Ile d'Orleans, then followed his son and other family members to St. Ours and along the Richelieu River into New York.
    I'm looking for more records and history written in English of his life in Quebec. My search led me to your wonderful blog! Can you point me in other directions or share with me some of the history you have discovered? With gratitude, Sue

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  5. My Mom's ancestral name is also monumented at Ste. Famille...Etienne CORRIVEAU. So glad we made the trip from New England.

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  6. As Jerry said, earlier this year, your writing style is pure poetry. Memere was French Canadian, and so very proud of it. But, she was born in Vermont, a 1st generation American on one line, and a 2nd generation American on another.
    That puts me two generations removed from her, and she died in 1975, the year my daughter was born. Alas, my French, and my connection to my French-Canadian roots are rather distant.
    Only within the past few years have I learned 100 fold more that I ever knew before. Memere knew the names of most of her own grandparents, but she knew nothing of their history or roots.
    I find my French-Canadian ancestry traces itself back to the original colony with names as familiar to our fellow Quebecois as Patrick Henry, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and the founding fathers of the nation of our birth.
    Did you happen to have close up pictures of the plaques with all the names. I've seen many distant photos of the total monument, and I've seen partial closeups, but I would sincerely appreciate a high quality, photo, of each of the placards.
    Thanks again for writing -- I loved reading and reflecting on the journey of your ancestors.
    Bonsoir
    Dale

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    1. Dale, thanks for the kind comments. I don't have close-ups of the plaques available. Maybe we took pics of our name. But I know that somewhere online you can find a complete list. I've seen it. Thanks for reading and please check out my book at the link below! If you liked this post, I think you might like my book.
      https://www.barakabooks.com/catalogue/a-distinct-alien-race/

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  7. My 6th great grandparents Maurice Crepeau and Margarita Laverdure, a Filles De Roi are memorialized here. He arrived in 1663-4, she in October 1665

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