Québec Canada Mariannes-Coming of Age.Book

   I  was born in  Washington Heights at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, NYC, NY. At the time Mother and Father lived with Mother’s grandmother, Sarah Baker, and Mother’s brother, Arnold, in a brownstone on 179th street in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge. My parents lived in an apartment that took up the first floor of the brownstone; my grandfather Marc lived on the second floor until he remarried, and my great- grandmother lived on the third floor with my Uncle Arnold. My maternal grandmother, Marianne, and her father Jacob Baker passed away before I was born.

Since both of my parents devoted their full attention to their careers, my primary caretaker ended up being my eighty-six-year-old great-grandmother, Sarah Baker. She also looked after my older brother Jan. When I was three months old, Father’s mother, Alice, traveled from Québec, Canada to visit us in New York City. My aunts, Diane and Rolande, and uncles came along as well. In later years, Father’s sister, Diane, related that Grandmother Alice saw that I was not flourishing as a newborn; she told my parents that it was too much for Sarah at eighty-six-years old to take care of two little children.

My parents decided that Jan, who was two-and-a-half years old at the time, and I would return to Québec with Grandmother Alice to live with the family there. My parents said they would send money to take care of Jan and me in Québec, but they did not send it on a regular basis.

I lived with Father’s family in Québec for almost six years. My first language was French, the French dialect spoken in the 16th century at the time of the french playwright, Moliere. In Québec we lived in several different houses and finally wound-up living in an old house bordering St. Famille and St. François village on the Île d’Orléans. The house was owned by the Nadeau family, an old family from that area—Grandmother and Jean Nadeau were a couple. My grandfather Romeo had left the family some years prior, and Grandmother’s common-in-law husband, Mr. Guerard, had left too. My aunt Diane and her two younger twin brothers were from Mr. Guerard. I never met my grandfather Romeo, nor my uncles, the twins.

I have happy and poignant childhood memories from my childhood in Québec. The historical patriarch of Father's family on the French side was Nicolas Gendron, an immigrant to New France (Québec) in the 1640s from Île de Ré, an island off the Atlantic coast of France. Gendron was a notary, and Gendron’s wife, Marthe, was from Reims, France. They were the first couple married on the L’Isle D’Orléans, a plaque at the church of St. Famille commemorates the event.

On the First Nations side of our family heritage, our Wendat patriarch ancestor was Nicolas Arendanki, killed in action in 1649 by the Iroquois at the destruction of Huronia, a cluster of villages near the Georgian Bay. Arendanki’s wife was Jeanne Otrinohandet-Otrihouandit (1630-1654). Jeanne and their daughter escaped to Christian Island and later took refuge on the L’Isle D’Orléans.

The house my family lived in on the L’Isle D’Orléans was made from field stones, had two chimneys, a fireplace, a woodburning stove, and was three stories high. It was situated on a parcel of land that stretched from the Chemin Royale Street to the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The first floor of the house was semi-submerged into the earth to provide additional insulation from the cold winters and where we had our living room and kitchen. My uncles cut firewood for the large walk-in fireplace and the wood burning stove in the kitchen. The second floor had bedrooms, and the attic had alcoves and space where my brother Jan and I slept in spring and summer.

There was an orchard in the back of the house with over fifty apple trees

stretching down to the St. Lawrence riverbank. Apple seeds and trees were introduced to Acadie (Nova Scotia) in 1633 by the French and became a staple of Québec. When I wanted a snack, I would go out to the orchard for some apples. Grandmother made apple pies from these apples. In the orchard there were tents of worms in the apple trees—my uncles would manually take them down—but worm holes and bird bites in apples were not a problem: I ate around these.

About St. Famille village, it was founded in 1661. The Huron Wendat call the island “Minigo” (meaning “Enchantress”) because of its charm. Chemin Royale road circles around the island, which is forty miles long. There are six villages in all: St. Famille, St. Pétronille, St. Pierre, St. Laurent, St. Jean, and St. François.

My recollections are vivid. There was the time Uncle Henri and Uncle Gaston brought a milk cow home. I asked Uncle Gaston where the cow came from, and he said that we had “borrowed” her. They put our new milk cow in a small shed filled with hay on the side of the house. We named the cow “Bootsy”; she was temperamental around children and would kick over the milk bucket when Jan and I were nearby. I was taught to wrap my small hands around the udder and squeeze milk into the bucket. She would flatten her ears back in disapproval and kick over the bucket and the small stool on which I was sitting.

Bootsy provided milk for the entire family. We traded milk for other provisions from our neighbors in a barter system. Jan and I were tasked with walking over to our neighbor’s farm to trade a bucket of milk for eggs. Further down from the farm was the Blouin Boulangerie, a bread and patisserie store (it is still there today). We were told to pick up a sack of flour there after getting the eggs before returning home. It was a long and dusty walk to do these errands— the Blouin Boulangerie was about a mile away. Our first stop was at the neighboring farm where we delivered the milk; there were cows, chickens and roosters on the farm. Jan was frustrated with our routine and long trek so he concocted a plan to steal a chicken from the neighbors; a chicken would lay eggs at home.

One day, we arrived at the neighbor’s farm, and after delivering the milk, Jan chased around a rooster and trapped it in our empty milk bucket. We walked back home along the main road, Chemin Royale, with the rooster squawking the whole way in the bucket. When we arrived home, we trapped the rooster in the bucket in the backyard. The rooster squawked so loudly that Uncle Henri heard the noise all the way inside the house. He came outside, saw the milk bucket and lifted it off the rooster. The rooster was fighting mad. Uncle Henri grabbed the rooster and secured its legs together with some string. He insisted that Jan and I walk back with him to the neighbor’s farm to apologize and return the rooster.

We went back to delivering a pail of milk a few times a week until Bootsy was no longer in our shed. We learned the hard way that roosters do not lay eggs. After a year or so, Bootsy disappeared one day. I asked what happened to her, and Uncle Henri said she had become “beefsteaks,” although I liked to believe that she had been returned to her original owners.

After the long frigid Canadian winter, we looked forward to the summer. Grandmother would make tarts, pies, and beignets (small donuts with jam inside sprinkled with powdered sugar) to sell to tourists who drove along the Chemin Royal, the main road. We put up a table along the side of the road in front of our house. There was also confiture (jam) that Grandmother made and sealed in glass jars with wax and lids.

In the kitchen she had a large pot of oil into which she dropped the beignet dough. Jan and I were tasked with picking strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries that grew in abundance around the island. We would take a basket each and forage. The Island is famous for apples and fresh berries. When we returned to the house with our baskets brimming with berries, Grandmother would note that Jan’s basket was full of berries, but mine was almost empty as I ate most of the berries while out foraging.

Jan and I wandered off sometimes onto the farms near the house. One day we came across two magnificent horses in a pasture, one black and the other white.

Jan tried to approach one of the horses; it was startled and reared up making loud noises. Next to the pasture was a farmhouse. The owner came out with a rifle and shouted at us to get off his land. We were frozen in fear, and I felt my Uncle Henri’s arm lifting me up, his other arm around Jan. Uncle Henri carried us both off down the road back to our house. It was then that I became aware that both Uncle Henri and Uncle Gaston watched over us when we explored the Island.

A cherished memory I have is of a rainbow that arched over the St. Lawrence River and streamed through the attic windows—Jan and I had been sleeping in the attic during the summer. The rainbow appeared in the morning; the house on the Island was close to the riverbank. When I woke up and saw the rainbow I jumped out of my bed and ran through the colors of the rainbow streaming into the room. As I ran in a circle around the room the colors of the rainbow changed on my arms and legs.

Hearing me running around, Jan woke up and joined me running through the rainbow in the room. I looked out the attic window to the front of the house and saw that the rainbow had ended right on the steps at the front door. Jan and I climbed down the wrought iron circular stairs in the house and out the front door. We ran through the rainbow which lasted about ten minutes before fading. In the open doorway I saw Uncle Henri laughing and enjoying the sight of the rainbow. He told us the legend of the pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, and although we did not find gold at the end of the rainbow, both Jan and I became artists.

Winters on the Island were severe; snow would accumulate almost up to the roof tops. Although we drove down to Washington Heights for Christmas to visit my parents, during the winter on the island we stayed inside and moved our cots to the first floor where we slept in front of the fireplace. There was plenty to eat at home: canned goods and salted meat had been put away in the shed outside where it was kept cold. Near the dining table there was a big glass bottle that held three gallons (eleven liters) of wine. Jan and I drank a watered-down version of the wine at meals.

One winter we had run out of wine, I recall. Uncle Henri and Uncle Gaston decided to go down into the cellar to see if there were any bottles of wine. The cellar was a no-go zone; there were river rats down there. The St. Lawrence River rats were big, very big and scary, if cornered they put up a fight. They went down the ladder into the cellar with flashlights, and shortly after there was a lot of shouting and a ruckus. They appeared at the top of the ladder with a terrified expression on their faces. In the cellar they had found a bottle or two of wine before being driven out by the rats. They slammed the door to the cellar shut; there were too many rats down there to explore further. I sometimes saw river rats along the bank of the St. Lawrence River behind the orchard, and the rats were as big as small dogs.

About the St. Lawrence River: it is the third largest river in North America starting at Lake Superior and ending in the Atlantic Ocean. Where the St. Lawrence River meets the Atlantic Ocean one can see wildlife, whales, dolphins, sturgeon weighing hundreds of pounds, and salmon. The St. Lawrence River freezes from December to March and when it starts to thaw, I heard loud cracking noises throughout the day and night. Big chunks of ice that looked like small glaciers coursed down the river. The Island was originally accessible only by ferry or by an ice bridge during the winter until 1935 when the Taschereau Bridge, now called the Île d'Orléans Bridge, connected Québec City to the Island. Many years later, long after I had left Quebec, I still return there in my memories and dreams and find it a peaceful and quiet place to call home.