Introduction and Comments on the Text

The Travel Notebook of Odelie Demers:

An account of a young Canadian immigrant’s travels to her native country.

June 21 to July 12, 1898.

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Odelie and Éva Demers, circa 1898, in the side yard of their family’s home on Allen Street (now, Pioneer Avenue), Sanford, Maine. Odelie is posing with pen in hand and an ink pot on a portable writing desk, perhaps the same desk on which she wrote or revised the travel notes. Éva is reading a French-language newspaper from Montreal, Le Monde Canadien. They are very likely wearing clothes that they or their mother made at home. Note that they are sitting on the trunk of a mostly delimbed tree.

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Introduction

In the early summer of 1898, Odelie Demers, 27 years old, left Sanford, Maine, with a younger sister, Éva, 19, for a three-week visit or promenade to the Province of Québec. Both still single, living with their parents, and employed in the textile mills in Sanford, they said their good-byes to their large immigrant family to visit their even larger extended family still living in the small farming villages just above the Maine border in the Eastern Townships of south-central Québec. But before making social calls, they would make the almost obligatory stop for devoted French-Canadian Catholics to the great shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré outside of Québec City. There they would witness several miraculous healings, the types of healings for which the shrine was celebrated throughout the French and broader Catholic communities of North America.

Even with the miraculous healings, however, there was nothing particularly unusual about their trip. In fact, these promenades were common among recently arrived immigrants from Québec. What was unusual was the detailed, daily journal kept by Odelie in the careful penmanship that she had used and taught as a teacher at a country school, une école de rang, in Québec when she was only 16 and 17 years old.

Odelie and Éva would travel primarily by the extensive train network existing at the time in New England and Québec. But they would also travel by electric trolleys in Sanford, cross the St. Lawrence river by ferry between Lévis and Québec City, see the sights in the city by horse-drawn caleche, and ride on farm wagons within and between villages in the Eastern Townships, including a one day, 50-mile wagon ride from Saint-Hilaire-de-Dorset to Saint-Fortunat. Most of the promenade was spent in the towns of Saint-Samuel-de-Gayhurst, now called Lac-Drolet, and Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown, with a brief stop in Saint-Hilaire-de-Dorset between the two.

Odelie and Éva were born in Saint-Fortunat and had lived there until 1890, when their father, Télesphore, and mother, Henriette, uprooted their family of nine surviving children from the family farm to join the decades-long flood of French-Canadian emigration to New England. Left behind in Canada were many family members, including Henriette’s elderly father, Simon Lamontagne, and friends that Télésphore and Henriette and their children had made over a period of 30 years.

Not left behind, however, was the French language in which the journal was written or the French-Canadian cultural traits of the time which are recorded in it, including deep and active religious beliefs and practices, strong connections to family and friends, and an eager readiness to entertain and be entertained by family, friends, and even strangers.

Odelie carefully recorded the names of most of the family and old friends that she met in the three villages - Demers, Lamontagnes, Girards, Aubins and many more. And she also recorded the names of strangers she encountered while traveling, like a Monsieur Champoux of Montreal whom she met at the train station in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré who told her about the miracle that had saved the life of his daughter.  Other times, she recorded meetings and conversations with young men she met, but not their names, because to ask for their names would have been improper.

The events she describes also include a tragic train accident, soirées, a double wedding, boat rides, hikes, social calls, the relocation - la levée - of the old cemetery in Saint-Fortunat, and the ongoing aggravation of a missing clothes trunk. And consistent with the strong Catholic sentiment of the time, she writes of numerous visits to churches and chapels and of religious thoughts. Perhaps most touchingly, she hints at a love story.

And throughout the journal, Odelie’s personality comes through - confident, funny, strong-willed, a little mischievous, conventionally religious. And best of all, the journal reveals a teller of stories, une raconteuse, in the old Québec tradition.

But enough description of Odelie and her journal, let’s hear her tell the story herself.  

Bonne promenade!

Comments on the English Translation

Before translating Odelie’s travel journal from the original handwritten French to English, it was transcribed and edited in French. The handwritten notes contain hardly any punctuation (including periods at the ends of sentences), capital letters, accent marks, or paragraphs. These have been added to the typed transcript. The handwritten notes also did not have any chapters or parts. These “Parts,” with appropriate titles, have been added so that the text can be followed and referred to more easily. The numbers in brackets in the center of the text refer to the pages of the manuscript; the pages in the manuscript itself were unnumbered.

The manuscript contained a number of spelling and grammatical errors, especially relating to the proper “agreement” among verbs, adjectives, nouns, and pronouns that are so important in the French language. All these have been corrected in the French transcript.

There is limited use of editorial comments in the text. Where added, they are contained in brackets. To give a reminder to the reader of the original French text, the translated text retains accent marks used in the names of people and places and a few French words, especially monsieur, messieurs, madame, and mesdames.

Finally, the original handwritten notes, of course, do not contain photographs or other images. These have been added with captions in the French transcript and the English translation.

Dennis M. Doiron

Gardiner, Maine, Maine November 2017

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Edmund Demers´ 1990 Introduction

To the Travel Notebook of Odelie Demers

     The original manuscript is now in the possession of Oline Doiron of Sanford, Maine, daughter of Eva Demers Doiron, 1879-1962. Eva was the younger of the two sisters whose trip to Canada in 1898 is the subject of this narrative. My aunt, Odelie Demers Dubois, 1871-1937, committed her notes in careful penmanship to a blue-lined notebook, tightly filling its 75 pages with some 12,000 words.

       Beyond its obvious interest to members of the Demers, Dubois and Doiron families, the journal provides a glimpse into the daily lives of typical Franco-Americans during the early days of the French-Canadian migration.

      Born in Canada, the two girls, aged 19 and 11, arrived in Sanford, Maine in 1890 as members of the large family of Telesphore Demers. The youngsters found work in the textile mills while their father worked as a carpenter.

      When Odelie was 27 and Eva 19, they planned a three-week trip to Canada. A high point of the trip would be the pilgrimage to Ste Anne de Beaupré, an experience duplicated by thousands of Franco-Americans.

      The importance of the extended family and the obligatory social calls on all the relatives is well documented here. The relative ease of travel to Canada in the heyday of the railroads is seen. The simple pastimes which provided entertainment in rural French Canada are recorded.

      After returning to Sanford from New Bedford, Mass., in 1921, Odelie Demers Dubois lived at 51 High St. Later she moved to 24 ½ State St., where she died in 1947.

      Éva Demers Doiron spent most of her married life at 7 Nason St., Sanford, Me. She died there in 1962.