Ancestral shtetls

Great-grandaunt

After spending the night in Longueuil, just east across the Saint-Lawrence River from Montréal, we lit out for Saint-Ferdinand. The small town on Lac William is where my mother's maternal grandparents migrated from. And indeed migrated to, an internal migration a generation earlier from the Beauce region south of Québec to this area to the southwest, no doubt in search of new land to farm.

The beginning of the drive was via autoroute, not terribly exciting. We got well acquainted with the offerings from Sirius XM. Do you know any other people who would switch between the Beatles, Lithium (grunge and other 90s music), Bob Marley, Little Steven's Underground Garage, and Taylor's Version? Before long, per Sweetie, Taylor was the name of our rented white Chevy Malibu (reserve a small car you really want, get an "upgrade" because you're late).

Saint-Ferdinand turned out to be a very cute town right on the lake, with some historic buildings, surrounded by farms. It gets busy in summer. It turned out to be the only place I would find the headstones I was looking for: my great-great-grandparents, a great-granduncle, and a great-grandaunt.

We spent the next two nights on Île d'Orléans, just downriver from Québec. The Airbnb in Saint-Laurent was the shiz, a gorgeous place that overlooked the south channel of the Saint Lawrence River. Our host was as nice as the place. A short walk away was an épicérie with some foodstuffs and a variety of alcoholic beverages.

Our Lady of the Goat Dairy Gnome

It was during a motoring tour of the island on our first full day, in Sanite-Famille, that the injurious mishap occurred. Not to us. To Taylor. It involved a safe reversal of direction by me, an unsafe reversal of direction weirdly close by in the opposite direction by a young man with his mom in the passenger seat, a complete failure to check the rear-view mirror or hear a blaring horn, and an unfortunate assault on Taylor by the blue car's rear bumper. She suffered minor wounds to the driver's side front bumper and fender. No one was physically injured, and the tire was not impeded, so we could still drive the car. We did not need any of the stressful shit that came out of this, but I got zen about it, exchanged information, made the claim, and did followup when necessary.

To add insult to injury, the poutine from the famous place for which we had reversed direction was only a'ight. Not even, because something was weird about the sauce. And we had to wait in line behind the young man and his mother, who both seemed pretty casual about what he had done.

It wasn't easy for either of us to shake that off, but Île d'Orléans is too lovely, even in the off season, for us not to have had a good time anyway. We had a lovely dinner on the water; we got goat cheese soft serve, goat cheese, and a fresh baguette; we bought cool stuff from a place that made its own vinegar, primarily from black currant; and I had several kinds of beer from the local craft brewer (from the épicérie), all excellent.

From Saint-Laurent looking toward Beauport

We passed through Saint-Lambert and Saint-Isidore south of the city, the fragrant farm country of my father's maternal grandparents. As on the Île, no hits in the cemeteries. This trend would continue.

I didn't even bother to check in Montmagny, which has five cemeteries and a church that has been moved several times. Montmagny, a larger town downriver from the Île, is the land of my father's paternal grandfather, who left for work in the US when he was 14 and never went back. I wouldn't mind visiting again. There are things to do. We satisfied a craving for 'ot chicken (hot chicken sandwich with gravy and peas) at a Saint-Hubert in town.

Kamouraska, where we spent the night, is even further downriver. It's the town my mother's paternal grandparents came from. Kamouraska is tiny and, when it's not summer, mostly closed. Our loft above a jewellery store was funky, and somewhat dangerous to the head near the eaves if you weren't careful, but it had a nice view of the river (I am a river person) and was right among the only things that were open. We were across the street from the church and its graveyard (no hits), which itself was next to a farm. The town museum, the kind of thing we would have loved, was closed when Google claimed otherwise.

We did have an extraordinary meal, and that's no small thing. A short walk from our place was an elevated diner called Grand'Ourse: La Cantine de Kamouraska that served some of the most flavourful food we have ever tasted. We would so go back if we lived there. The local coffee shop was quite nice as well.

Next came one of three long driving days, all the way to Moncton, New Brunswick. I had no idea Moncton was such a not-nice place. Our Airbnb was fine, although weird -- a basement suite in a brand new house in a brand new development that wasn't even finished and often lacked paving. Don't go to Moncton.

The closest I came to my distant Acadian ancestors was at Fort Beauséjour. No graves here, no actual settlement, just this fort. It's a Parks Canada site and closed until the first week in June, so no museum, but we walked around the fort and read the interpretive signs and looked out over the extraordinary panorama of dikes and poulders and ocean. The forebears farmed land in that panorama. It was cold and windy and I loved the spot. The blueberry farm a few kilometres away that made their own ice cream was a very pleasant stumble-upon.

So this part of the trip was less about headstones than I had hoped, but as Sweetie says, I walked in the footsteps of my ancestors, literally. It was great to get a feel for the places where my migrant forebears grew up and that they then left behind.

 

 

(Panoramic view from Fort Beauséjour)