The Revival of the Travel Notes . . . and of My French!
During the 1980s and 1990s until we became too old to continue meeting, a group of cousins, all descended from Telesphore and Henriette Demers, met each summer in Sanford or Acton, Maine for a family reunion. It was at this time that the Travel Notebooks made their appearance after many years. Most of the cousins, including me, never knew about the trips to Canada of Odelie and Éva in 1898 and Télesphore and Henriette in 1908. We were very surprised and interested when Oline Doiron, one of the cousins, spread the word about these unheard of works. She had been the guardian angel of them for decades at her home in Sanford.
The Band of Cousins at the Roberge Family Camp
Claire Rivard, the only daughter of Odias (“Pete”) and Éva Dionne Demers; Jeannette Fifield, the youngest daughter of Damase and Andreanna Demers Roberge; Roger Roberge, the youngest son of Damase and Andreanna Demers Roberge; Edward Demers, the only son of Donat and Dorilda Gauthier Demers; Edmund Demers, the only son of Odias (“Pete”) and Éva Dionne Demers; Lorraine Wakefield, the middle daughter of Damase and Andreanna Demers Roberge; Delores Demers, the youngest daughter of Donat and Dorilda Gauthier Demers; Arthur, the only son surviving infancy of Phidelem and Laura Brunelle Demers; Yvette Doiron Keily, the youngest daughter of Albeni and Éva Demers Doiron; Lucille Demers Duffy, the oldest daughter of Donat and Dorilda Gauthier Demers; Oline Doiron, the second daughter of Albeni and Éva Demers Doiron; and Vivienne Dillard, the oldest daughter of Damase and Andreanna Demers Roberge.
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Apparently, when Telesphore went to live with his daughter, Éva, in the 1920s, he brought his Travel Notebook with him. The notebook stayed in Éva's care, and after her death in 1962, in Oline´s care. It was the same thing with Odelie’s Travel Notebook. After Odelie died in 1938, Éva, her companion on the 1898 trip, received the notebook and took care of it until her death, after which Oline assumed responsibility for both notebooks. But the years passed, and the notebooks were almost entirely forgotten until Oline mentioned them at a family reunion at the end of the 1980s. Thus began the “revival” of Les Livres de Notes de Voyage of Odelie and Télesphore.
All the cousins were interested in learning about the notebooks, but although most were able to talk French, almost none read or wrote it. (For example, my sister, Claire, had attended public schools for most of her childhood, and, therefore, missed out on a French education, especially reading and writing in French. And almost all her childhood friends were English-speakers. She spoke French at home, of course, and continued to speak French as a adult, but her vocabulary was limited, as were her reading and writing abilities.) So, what to do? Fortunately, because of my education, I could read the journals easily, and I found myself able to translate them in English.
With the translations, I added an introduction and several old family photographs to each journal. When the translations were finished, I printed copies of them for the cousins. It was 1990, exactly a century after Telesphore and Henriette and their children had arrived in the United States - a happy coincidence!
A Band of Young Cousins around 1925 in or near Sanford, Maine.
Leon Doiron, youngest son of Albeni and Éva Demers Doiron; Edmund Demers, only son of Odias (“Pete”) and Éva Dionne Demers; Edward Demers, only son of Donat and Dorilda Gauthier Demers; Dolores Demers, a daughter of Donat and Dorilda Gauthier Demers; Yvette Doiron Keily, youngest daugher of Albeni and Éva Demers Doiron; Lucille Demers, the oldest daughter of Donat and Dorilda Gauthier Demers; Oline Doiron, the second daughter of Albeni and Éva Demers Doiron; Vivian Roberge Dillard, the oldest daughter Damase and Andreanna Demers Roberge; and Rose Doiron, the oldest daughter of Albeni and Éva Demers Doiron.
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When I wrote the translations and introductions, I had not thought about also making transcriptions with introductions in French. I only wrote in English! As I mentioned above, almost all my cousins of the third generation in the United States could not read or write in French, and almost all of the fourth generation only knew English. My efforts were, therefore, solely directed at translations and other material in English with the goal of enabling the cousins and their children to read the travel notes.
After the translations were finished and copies distributed to family members, I heard back from many about how they appreciated being able to read them. But as the years rolled by and the family reunions no longer took place, I continued losing the French language until I met Dennis Doiron in 2015, 25 years after the translations were completed and almost forty years since the last time we had met.
After meeting him, I found myself relearning the French language by helping him with transcribing and correcting in French the travel notes. During our first meeting to discuss his project, especially his plan to write a revised transcription of the journals in French, I dared to read out loud to him from a French-language book to show him what kind of francophone I was. I, of course, understood the text right away, but I was taken aback by my difficulty in pronouncing the French words. The movements of lips and tongue were clumsy, I was humbled by the difficulty in enunciating the words.
I decided to try to recover the fluency I once knew by reading aloud to myself each day, but I could not really judge the quality of my pronunciation because I have lost my hearing in the left ear and I rely on a hearing aide for the right ear. And my accent? I cannot manage the standard French accent, but I do my best with the Canadian French accent. But since working on the journals with Dennis, I am happy, thanks to Dennis´ clear prose, that my vocabulary and my spelling has improved, but my ultimate goal is to write like Dennis in the two languages!
My association with Dennis has lead to the recovery of my French. Although I still can not speak it very well, I have not forgotten my ancestor's language completely and now I am able to communicate in written French with some of Dennis´ numerous friends in Canada. And the research done by Dennis on the blog will continue to involve me with the culture of Québec in I way I would not have thought possible until recently.
At work on the Travel Notebooks, Farmington, New Hampshire, Spring 2016. Edmund Demers, the son of Odias and Éva Dionne Demers, and Dennis Doiron, the son of Leon and Alveta Therrien Doiron.
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Edmund Demers
Farmington, N.H. April 2017
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