- Marie Laure
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- Mar 24
- 3 min read
I am Franco-American. What does it mean to be a Franco-American? Let's just say, it's personal. My French Canadian grandparents, Memere, Marie Laure, and Pepere, Arthur, were born in the Province of Quebec in the village of St. Patrice de Beaurivage (beautiful shore). Early in their marriage they emigrated to the United States. Their Quebecois roots outlasted their departure from a homeland they loved and shared through language, food, faith, and music with their many descendents.
Like many immigrants to the U.S., they sought work opportunities. During the industrial revolution that meant mill jobs. My first-generation American-born mother was a "mill girl". Her education ended at grade 10. She talked about twelve-hour days standing on her feet in hot, unventilated, noisy vast rooms where textiles were made on huge looms. Her paltry pay was turned over to help the large family in which she grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. Those same Mills are now part of the National Park Service* where those conditions have been replicated. Noise-cancelling headphones are handed out to visitors as a precaution to the deafening slamming of loom against loom. I chose not to wear them for the
one hour when I walked in my mother's well-worn shoes. Her beginnings were so unlike my own, yet we shared a Franco-American heritage. Hers is a story of another time, while at the same time being deeply embedded within my own.
There is no way to shake loose from family folklore and rituals even when no longer practiced. My many cousins have a million stories to share whenever we get together. We help each other to remember the Sunday dinners after Mass; the Saturday suppers of toutiere (pork pies), a staple in all our households; the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve followed by the reveillon de Noel (more pork pies!); the required French spoken with Memere and Pepere, even as we struggled in our bi-lingual classrooms to read and write the phrases we knew by heart; the Uncles with their fiddles (everyone had one, hand-made by Pepere).**
"Little Canada" where my grandparents settled in their adopted country was surrounded by the "Irish", the "Greek", the "Polish" people, each with their own customs and foods and music. They had their celebrations, we had ours, and sometimes it all overlapped in one gigantic melting pot!
Canadians are not Americans, anymore than Americans are Canadians. How could they be? Erasing cultures is impossible. Everything embedded in a person, say in a Franco-American girl, is once and for all.
I'll never stop wanting the "perfect crepe" that my mother made from her mother's recipe. I'll never stop seeing clothing as a fabric made by someone at a loom. I'll never stop remembering the words of "O Canada" which we sang in our Catholic school after the Pledge of Allegiance. I'll never forget the fiddles in the glass case in the parlor in my grandparents' home. Whenever they opened those French doors to the otherwise off-limit room, there was stomping and singing and playing music of a heritage harking back to Vieux Quebec. The tiny French-speaking Province in the Great White North is a neighbor, not a foe, and for many a family.
Canadians, like Americans, fought for their freedom.
The 1774 Quebec Act*** gave the Quebecois, my grandparents, their place and language with local rights and customs and protected their Catholic religion. That act stands today.
This is a Canadian story passed along from grandparent to parent to daughters and sons. Nothing can change that history! Rien!
