Saturday, July 3, 2010

Progress: July 3, 2010


I decided to “relive the romance of train travel” this summer on a four-day train journey from Toronto to Vancouver. Cashed in all my VIA points in exchange for a one-way ticket in Sleeper-Touring class. For budgetary reasons, I traveled back east in coach, but broke up the trip with stopovers. The Canadian is named after a famous Canadian Pacific train that ran between 1955 and 1978. However, VIA now takes the northern route on the Canadian National (CNR) line rather than the historic main line of Canada's first transcontinental railway (CPR). My cabin was in car #121 - Grant Manor; one of the stainless steel Manor sleepers that were built for Canadian Pacific by Budd Co. in the mid-1950s and refurbished by VIA.

 

 

It did feel like I was traveling back in time — from the stainless steel bullet-exterior to the art deco touches in the interior. It was an aesthetic experience alone just sitting in the dining car with its large picture windows, linen tablecloths and etched glass panels. Likewise, the Park car was equiped with a small bar and oval seating area in the back, complete with newspapers, fresh coffee and shiny steel communal ashtrays — no longer filled with ashes but holding drinks. Though my roomette was tiny it boasted an efficient design; from the fully made bed that pulled out of the wall, to the shiny stainless sink that also tucked away when not in use, to the retro metal fan. It was the perfect space for reading or just gazing out at the passing landscape through the picture window.

 

 

It rained for most of the ride through the dense forests of Northern Ontario. I settled into vacation mode with spontaneous naps and luxurious stretches of time reading in bed. I started with L’Ontario français : des pays-d’en’Haut à nos jours by the Centre franco-ontarien de ressources pédagogiques (2004) then delved into Philippe Aubert de Gaspé’s Les anciens Canadiens, which was first published in 1864. Before the trip, my livre de chevet had been Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush, first published in 1852. While these two novels do share a similar timeframe, they are stylistically different. I am met with daily anecdotes, often quite humorous, in each of Moodie’s chapters. So far the common thread seems to be the blurring of social classes in the new lateral hierarchy of early settler life in Canada. It is a tale of adaptation, cooperation and letting go of old patterns and beliefs, though the narrative still does carry the weight of the prejudices of that time. De Gaspé’s novel is more romantic with sweeping historical sketches and narrative arches that feature double protagonists. The writing is a lament for the lost grandeur of the seigneurial era. All this reading certainly set the stage for my trip westward.

 

 

On my stop-over in Winnipeg, I was aware that I was visiting places of historical interest for francophones — sites of collective memory — but creating my own memory map somewhat. That is, when I think of high school history classes, I remember fantastic stories of explorers, coureurs de bois, cajeux and missionaries. Women, for the most part, were relegated to the domestic sphere. In terms of cartography, men were generally in charge of drafting maps. Though there were some women who traveled alongside their husbands as well as women in the religious orders that undertook long journeys, I don’t remember having studied maps created by women?

This led me to wonder if women used other means to create a sort of personal cartography; an alternate form of written history? This is why I was intuitively drawn to the traditional tongue rug, which was common in the late 19th century. Could the tongue rug be interpreted as a memory map by its association to language (embroidered names and dates) and codes (abstract icons)? Embroidered icons on the tongues were a way of creating markers of significances to commemorate events and pinpoint specific memories. Though women may have not ventured out as explorers in the traditional sense, they still encountered newness in their everyday routines and had to adapt in order to survive. How did they choose to document their experience?

The creation of  a tongue rug requires the collection of pieces of fabric that hold meaning — old clothes of loved ones for instance — or that have interesting patterns and associations. Then begins the piecing together of disparate fabrics.

What have I been trying to piece together with this Tongue Rug project?

  • local history — Nouvelle-France and francophone life today in Canada
  • displacement and belonging — my situation as a Franco-Ontarian living in Quebec
  • hybrid identities — my French-Canadian, Swedish, Austrian and Scottish ancestry
  • changing notions of family – kinship (adoptive) and blood ties (birth family)

This process of reconstitution is akin to the creative process, to blogging by its piecemeal structure. With the Tongue Rug project, I am exploring on both a formal and theoretic level how the sladdakavring can be used as a writing and archiving system.

Gabrielle Roy

As I traveled westward, I noticed that the French language was not as present on the maps: francophone placenames were concentrated mainly in Northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. On my return trip eastward, I stopped off in Winnipeg to visit a friend. My intent was to take a day to explore the French quarter in St-Boniface, to make a sort of pilgrimage. I was hoping that by visiting historic sites of importance to francophones, I would be able to “make real” what can often be abstract information in books.

I crossed the bridge from The Forks to St. Boniface, a quiet community compared to the wide, busy streets of Winnipeg. Within five minutes I was greeted by a shy Bonjour from an elderly gentleman that caught me unaware and made me smile.  I found my way to rue Deschambault where Gabrielle Roy’s childhood home is located — a buttercup house now known as La Maison Gabrielle-Roy.

After an informative tour of the house where the author had spent 28 years of her life, I was left to my own devices in the attic, as visitors are welcome to stay as long as they like. I was moved by this humble space filled with all her books and designed with tiny nooks to settle down and read. In a tightly packed bookcase, I was surprised to see how much of her work had been translated: there was both a German and Korean version of La Petite Poule d’Eau, a book based upon the author's time teaching in a one room schoolhouse in Waterhen, Manitoba.

I was impressed by the attention to detail with which the curators designed the attic exhibit, complete with audio excerpts of her body of work and background material on the writing process displayed in “discovery boxes”. Corrected manuscripts also gave a glimpse into her writing process. It was a delight to spend time in the place that nurtured those early longings to write. To be able to look out the same attic window that she had looked out of once, knowing full well that the rural landscape she had gazed upon was no more, was a bittersweet experience.

Downstairs, they carried an interesting cross-selection of her work, including second-hand copies. This was a nice touch, as I wanted to buy several of her books and could not afford to at full price. Along with a few choice favourites, I bought a second hand softcover of La montagne secrète to read on the train back East, and then set out to walk in her steps along the rivière Seine. Unfortunately this was after a period of heavy rains and both the Seine and the Rouge had risen up enough to wash away the walking paths. It was not the scenic walk I had hoped for with the mud, the high humidity and the mosquitoes. Stubbornly, I followed the river until it met the Rouge. I soon stumbled upon a memorial site for Elzéar Goulet (1836-1870), the Métis leader and member of the military tribunal that condemned Thomas Scott. He drowned on 13 September 1870, forced into the river by a mob wielding stones. They were Canadian volunteers from the Wolseley Expedition. I ended up where I had started, at l’Esplanade Riel, the cable stayed footbridge connecting St. Boniface to The Forks.

Louis Riel

I then set out to visit all the commemorative sites for Louis Riel, founder of Manitoba and the Métis leader of the Red River Resistance of 1869-70. I had already visited the statue by Miguel Joyal erected by the Manitoba Métis Federation on the Legislative Building Grounds. Representative of Riel the statesman, this sculpture is rounded out and portrays Riel as firm in his stance for the determination of his people. I admire the solidity of this statue, the weight. I wonder if Chester Brown took inspiration from this sculpture for his graphic depiction of Riel in his excellent Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography (2003)?

Afterward, I visited Riel's modest gravestone at St. Boniface Cemetery before making my way to the renowned nude statue at St. Boniface College. An expressive figuration of the Métis leader by Marcien Lemay and Etienne Gaboury, it was moved in 1996 to the present location from the Legislative Building grounds where it had been erected in the seventies. This move was due in part to the controversy raised over the depiction Riel as a tortured and troubled soul.

My last stop was St. Boniface Museum, which houses the largest collection of Riel related artifacts in Canada. I found this museum to be very informative and spent a good amount of time reading all the exhibit displays. There was a respectful silence throughout. It was a sobering exhibit, culminating with the man's personal items and remnants of the actual coffin used to transport his body from Regina to Winnipeg. The bust of Riel by noted Francophone artist Réal Bérard is located in front of the museum. Erected in the late 1980s, this depiction seems to exude steadfast calm and outward vision.

 

 

Once I was back home from my trip, I picked up Brown’s graphic novel again for another read: the narrative was all the richer because of my stay in Winnipeg. I now understood the significance of certain placenames: Fort Garry, the Wolseley neighbourhood where I had spent a lazy Sunday with a friend, the relevance of The Forks as the future site of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. Thinking back upon my train journey and re-reading Riel's biography, I was reminded of the role the Canadian Pacific Railway played in transporting troops to counter the North-West rebellion of 1885 in what is now Saskatchewan. The Métis infinity symbol also took on added significance. I had made an assemblage more than ten years ago in the shape of a Figure 8 Traintrack to represent my double heritage as I have two intertwining families.

 

The Double Loop — Figure 8 Traintrack, 1998
Assemblage (3’7" x 6’ x 4’)
© Julie Lapalme
Photo by Sandra Belanger


It was only after that fact that I came across the Métis infinity symbol in Northern Ontario. I had noticed the shape while walking by the Sudbury Métis Council. It wasn't until recently that I learned that this symbol adorned a flag that was first used by Métis fighters in 1816 —  the oldest Canadian patriotic flag according to The Canadian Design Resource, a constantly expanding library of Canadian design and material culture.

“ This represents the coming together of two distinct and vibrant cultures, European and indigenous, to produce a distinctly new culture, the Métis. It symbolizes the creation of a new society with roots in both Aboriginal and European cultures and traditions. ”

I feel like I only skimmed the surface of Winnipeg on my short stay and want to return to delve further into its history. As a Franco-Ontarian, I understand the struggle of Franco-Manitobans to maintain the French language and culture in a sea of other languages and cultures. (The Manitoba Museum mentions a “plural Manitoba” made up of First Nations, Métis, French Canadians, British, Selkirk and Orkney Scots, Ukrainians, etc.) Since my return, I’ve been reading another of Gabrielle Roy's works — Fragiles lumières de la terre (1978). While this collection of non-fiction spans her entire career, I'm interested in her writing on immigrant communities in the prairies.