24 June 2016

Celebrating la Fête in 19th-Century Massachusetts



Pamphlet-souvenir de la fête patronale des Canadiens-
     français de Lowell, Mass., le 24 juin 1891
Lowell, MA: Bureaux et ateliers d'imprimerie de l'étoile, 1891

An item I don't own, though I dearly wish I did, this pamphlet-souvenir is just the sort of thing that 19th-century American nativists might've used as ammunition. Twenty-first-century nativists favour ammunition of a different sort.

I can't look at it without thinking of Antoine Gérin-Lajoie's Jean Rivard, le défricheur and Jean Rivard, économiste, twin fantasies written in an effort to stem the southern flow of Canadiens. Nearly one million francophone Quebecers left for New England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Charles Laflamme, Commissaire-Ordonnateur-en-Chef de la Fête St-Jean-Baptiste, was one.


Inspector Laflamme is one of twenty-eight men – they're all men – featured in this chapbook. Note the emphasis accorded his place of birth. Others came from Béconcour, Longueuil, Sherbrooke, Trois Rivières, l'Avenir, St-Eustache, St-Valentin, St-Laurent, St-Judes, St-Grégoire, St-Guillaume d'Upton and St-Théodore d'Acton. No one appears to have done so well for himself as Doctor J.D. Desisle.


The mind behind Dr Delisle's Kinium Compound Wine, he was clearly a man of means, and could easily afford a full page ad.


It's remarkable just how many pharmacies advertised in the pamphlet-souvenir; I count eight, including these two.


This being la Fête, as one might expect, a fair number of the ads play on patriotism...


...but most are ads from firms that neither play up nor hide their heritage.


And then there are the ads placed by those who saw la Fête St-Jean-Baptiste as an opportunity to show their appreciation for their immigrant neighbours:


Imagine.

The Internet Archive has scans of the pamphlet-souvenir here

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20 June 2016

Return to Miss Moneypenny's Fishing Lodge; or, Billy's Bad Trip



Return to Rainbow Country

William Davidson
Don Mills, ON: PaperJacks, 1975
186 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:
A Journey Through Canada's
Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through

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19 June 2016

'My Dad an' I': Into the future none may look...


Bernard Freeman Trotter
16 June 1890 - 7 May 1917
RIP
MY DAD AN’ I 
                    My dad an’ I we’re splendid chums,
                    We’ll stick thro’ every ill that comes
                    Together like two sugar-plums,
                         My dad an’ I. 
                    We go afishin’ in the spring,
                    An’ tho’ we oft get nary thing,
                    We’re each as happy as a king,
                         My dad an’ I. 
                    We go agunnin’, too, for game,
                    An’ tho’ we don’t attain to fame,
                    We like it first rate just the same.
                         My dad an’ I. 
                    I find, when I the past review,
                    He’s given me lickin’s very few:
                    We know each other through an’ through,
                         My dad an’ I. 
                    Besides the cane he’s given me pills
                    An’ other things to cure my ills,
                    An’ all along he’s paid the bills;
                         I thank him for ’t. 
                    Thus through the past, until this time,
                    When I do pen this little rhyme,
                    We have worked out a fair regime,
                         My dad an’ I. 
                    Into the future none may look,
                    Fast is it shut, like a brass-bound book;
                    But we’ll pull through by hook or crook,
                         My dad an’ I.  
                                                                     Wolfville, 1905.

A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems of War and Peace
Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1920

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