Part I: Introduction and Photos of Québec City
Edmund Demers, c. 1950-55.
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Preface
This blog was created to share the travel notes of Odelie Demers and Télesphore Demers written on their trips to Québec in 1898 and 1908 and to annotate the notes with related photographs and comments on the people and events mentioned in them. I am very pleased, however, to be adding another travel journal to the blog, one written by Edmund Demers, a member of the third generation of the Demers family to live in the United States. Edmund is a grandson of Télesphore and a nephew of Odelie.
Edmund Demers with his grandfather Télesphore Demers, circa 1930.
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It is particularly appropriate to include Edmund’s travel notes because it is to him primarily that we owe our awareness of the notes of his grandfather and aunt. After learning about the handwritten notes from his cousin Oline Doiron, Edmund translated the journals into English in 1990 and distributed them to some of his first cousins. More recently, he has helped me tremendously in producing the corrected and annotated French transcripts and with my own English translations of the journals. You can read more about Edmund’s work on his translations in 1990 and on his help with the blog in his guest post, "The Revival of the Travel Notes . . . and of my French," which he wrote at the start of the blog.
Like his grandfather Télesphore, who lived to the age of 102, Edmund has enjoyed a long life. He is now 98 and continues to help me with the blog and my research on the family’s history.
Edmund at the polls. Election Day, November 2018.
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