The Labrador Echo

They had set out along the “King’s Road,” which follows the coast, to gather berries. The outing promised to be splendid, and the three little girls were delighted: the cousins Florida and Rosanna Hébert, twelve and thirteen, and seven-year-old Joséphine Petitpas, with her older sister, Miss Elvine Petitpas, in charge of the group.

They wore straw hats and white dresses. Each carried a small red pail and a basket of provisions for lunch on the dwarf-juniper grass. “Above all,” their mothers had said, “be good and come back soon.” “Yes, Mama. You’ll see at three o’clock how hard we’ve worked.”

They went on, at times following the shore, where the tide gently broke at their feet in the sunlight, at times running and fluttering about in search of rare bluebells as the breeze played in their hair. “I want to make a bouquet for the Blessed Virgin,” Rosanna said. “And I’ll make one for St. Anthony,” Joséphine added. “Come on, ‘Phine, hurry. You know Mama doesn’t want you going into the woods. What if you got lost?”

“Oh, big sister, look how many I’ve found!” She ran with both hands full of flowers and two slices of buttered bread. “And so I don’t lose my way, I’ll count the telegraph poles from our house. Six, seven, eight, nine… I’ve lost count. I don’t know my times tables anymore!”

They had already passed Pointe-aux-Basques. “The Ball,” its great grey mass bare at the summit but covered at the foot with fir and birch, looked closer now. The four girls climbed the slope. It was time to pick berries! They gathered cranberries, carpeting the sand in green, larger and redder than the “whortleberries” back home. Thoughts of the delicious cakes they would have for supper that evening, and of the rest being turned into excellent jam in a basin—the sharp scent softened with sugar—made them work even faster in silence. Their little hands darted beneath the stems, and their pails quickly filled.

“The horses! The horses, children!” Elvine suddenly cried. At the sound, the girls jumped up and ran, grabbing their food. A herd of loose horses had suddenly appeared from behind a thicket of alders. They came forward slowly, packed closely together, ignoring the timid gestures meant to scare them away, and walked straight toward the girls. Fear took hold of them. The portage trail lay ahead, so they fled to it. The horses seemed to follow. “My little ones, come into the woods,” Elvine cried, frightened. They rushed beneath the dense fir trees, where they stayed for a while, trembling and silent, listening carefully. They thought the horses were close by. To avoid meeting them, they walked along the edge of the woods. “Sept-Îles is ahead of us. Let’s go home quickly.” Walking over soft moss and magnificent silver lichens that barely gave way beneath their feet, they moved in single file between the trees, careful not to let branches knock over their berries or catch on their clothes. The sun guided them with its rays.

The houses lay beyond another clearing. They would soon arrive, and they kept walking, placing their feet in one another’s tracks so they would not get separated. Suddenly, beyond a thicker thicket, Elvine stopped and looked around. The sun seemed to have changed direction; its slanting rays had turned red and were slipping away from the trees. Breathless, she looked at her little group. “Tell me, sister, where are we? Can you see Papa’s house?” Joséphine asked. She read the worry in their questioning eyes. Looking bewilderedly at the trees around them, she had no answer and fell silent. “Look over there, a telegraph pole!” Florida said. They all headed toward it, but soon their hopes were dashed: it was a dead birch tree. They no longer knew which way to go. It was over; they were lost in the vast forest. The fading sunlight disappeared. Dusk fell, then night! Still the lost girls went on, huddled together, trembling at the squirrels’ cries and the rustling of falling leaves.

At last a little lake blocked their way. They followed it to its source, trying to walk on the plentiful grass. To stave off hunger, they ate the last piece of bread in the basket with some of the berries they had gathered.

Elvine understood the full responsibility resting on her. “My children, let us pray, and then we’ll sleep peacefully. Tomorrow the Good Lord will bring us home.” “I have a little St. Anne in my pocket,” Florida said. “And I have my St. Anthony,” Joséphine added. “He’d better bring us back to Mama, or I’ll put him in time-out!” Their prayer went straight up to heaven. Then they huddled around their big sister, while the two little dogs they had brought lay at their feet to keep them warm.

Sleep was already closing their eyes… “I’m scared!” the little Hébert girl suddenly cried through her sobs. “All right, I’ll sing a hymn, and you can join in after me…” Elvine’s voice rose into the air, pure but trembling in the great silence of the woods. The little ones quietly repeated the refrain… more and more softly, until their eyes closed and their fear drifted away in a gentle dream…

Meanwhile, in Sept-Îles, the bell rang piercingly from the open belfry. In a mournful voice it had announced the sad news to the whole village, and now it called to the lost girls: “Children, come back quickly and comfort your mothers, who are calling for you. Please, do not stay away. Can you not hear my urgent repeated calls?” The priest kept ringing the bell while armed men searched the thickets, shouting into the woods. But all was in vain. Late that night the bell fell silent, the men returned home, and the night was long and sad in the homes of the poor parents.

The next morning the whole village was in turmoil. No boats went out; all the men headed back into the woods. Three gunshots were the signal that the girls had been found.

We visited the two families, whose mothers were pitiful to see, then set out to search, risking that we might get lost ourselves. It was past noon, and only the two little dogs had been found. The trails had been searched over and over; still nothing. How sad we were in the face of such uncertainty! Could some catastrophe plunge the village into grief? We saw the fear on every face: women leaning outside, watching along the fences, questioning each man as he returned. We were urgently asked to visit one of the poor mothers again. My confrère went to see her. What could one say during such a visit?…

“My children, my children. The little one is dead. I know it,” she kept repeating through nervous sobs. “I saw men carrying her back… They won’t give her to me!” The hours passed, and no one had heard the agreed signal. So, putting all our trust in heaven, we brought all the children in the village together at the church. There, they prayed the rosary, invoking St. Anne, St. Joseph, and St. Anthony, and pleading with their purest prayers to have their lost companions returned to them.

It was a good idea; our prayers were answered! Soon a gunshot rang out in the distance, from the north… then two… then three. It was the signal: the girls had been found! The three liberating shots echoed again in the distance, carrying the joyful news to the exhausted searchers. A carriage was quickly hitched, and people ran to meet the children. The bell rang at full peal to announce everyone’s joy.

At last, at four o’clock, they arrived, smiling, safe and sound, amid an enthusiastic crowd, and were reunited with their mothers. Then they told us about their extraordinary walk in the woods: how the deceptive echo of the bell had led them farther north; how they had crossed bogs, sinking in up to their waists; and how their faith in St. Anthony, whom they had prayed to so often before his little statue, never failed. Hearing their story and learning that their rescuer had suddenly been inspired to take an unusual route that no one in the village had ever considered—leading straight to the place where they stood silently in a thicket—we compared the time of our prayer with the time they were found. We could only conclude that heaven had miraculously intervened on their behalf. That evening, with the whole village gathered, we sang a Te Deum of thanksgiving amid the brilliant lights that gave St. Anthony a smiling face, matching the emotion and joy in our hearts.

Imagine this: last Thursday, my confrère and I felt like taking a walk in the forest. The Father had just returned from a mission full of adventure and sleepless nights, during which he had once again spent a night at sea. For my part, I had been confined to my room for more than eight days, nursing a cold. In short, we both wanted to enjoy the fresh air… and our freedom. And so we set off without telling anyone about our plans, which were, in any case, quite vague.

The weather was splendid; there were no mosquitoes in the woods. They say the bears have fled. By every measure, it was a perfect day for an outing. The forest, you should know, has its charms.

To begin with, a real path opened before us. It was what people here call the “portage trail,” leading to the winter camps. It had recently been widened and was quite passable for two men willing to give up the pleasure of walking side by side. But what variety, to the left, to the right, straight ahead! Everywhere stood trees of different sizes, if not different kinds. Along the path we saw only raspberry bushes, still green despite the hard frosts of recent days, and strawberry plants, yellowing, it is true, but full of promise for the coming spring. And the many little streams, the waterfalls—and those gentle murmurs!

What beautiful country! And so, from one delight to another, we reached the first camp, then the second, and then a river where many pearl oysters lay. What a stroke of luck if only we found a pearl! We searched for a few minutes, but I think a few minutes would not suffice; whole days would not have been enough to make us rich.

We continued on. Five times I suggested to my companion that we turn back. The Sisters would worry if we failed to arrive for prayer at five o’clock, followed by supper.

But the forest was still there, magnificent on a day made especially for us. Just then a partridge took flight before our eyes!…

At last, around half past four, we decided to turn back. Even happier than on the way out, we chatted about this and that and walked briskly. The three or four leagues we had to cover seemed a trifling distance, and we were already a mile from our “town” when—what a surprise!—three men appeared around a bend, saying, “There they are!” Without another word, they began firing into the air, for they were carrying rifles!

Neither my confrère nor I understood at first—or rather, I understood all too well. I understood even better when I saw at least twenty men running toward us. I need hardly describe the impression our triumphant return made on me: I apologized profusely, then laughed and made those good people laugh… though inwardly I was cursing! Gunshots rang out on every side; the little chapel bell was trying to make itself heard in the farthest corners of the forest, where everyone thought we were lost. The mill whistle sounded as it did on great occasions. All Manicouagan was in turmoil. The men had abandoned their steaming suppers, and I later learned that the women had been making vows, offering novenas, promising prayers, and so on, for their Fathers’ safe return. Wasn’t it unfortunate! A beloved priest had just left them, and now his two replacements had lost their way in the forest, exposing themselves to the merciless teeth of bears and other beasts!… I still dream about it.

When we entered the presbytery, it was half past six—or rather, a quarter past six, according to my confrère’s watch, which, to our misfortune that evening, was still set to Pointe-aux-Outardes time. Let us hope we behave more wisely next time… Though I would not stake my head on it.

— L. Garnier · Source:L’Écho du Labrador, transcribed by the Société historique de la Côte-Nord.

So I left Natashquan on October 2 at eleven in the morning. Aguanis, the nearest post entrusted to our care, is twelve miles away. I landed there at three in the afternoon. Fifteen days earlier, Father Pihan had set out at three in the afternoon and had not arrived until half past five the next morning. The winds make all the difference! I shall leave this dear colleague to tell you about that mission.

I myself stayed too briefly to become acquainted with the place, even superficially. Indeed, I had to re-embark at nine on Sunday morning for our second mission post, Piaster Bay, more than thirty miles from Aguanis.

The weather was fine and the sea calm (just as it is in “Faus”), but alas, the wind was not strong enough to carry us that far before nightfall. So at six in the evening my two men dropped anchor near “Mascadin” Island, and we slept in the barge’s cabin. Oh, that cabin! One can hardly sleep there, with a stove heated white-hot after smoking for nearly two hours!

Still, one does not travel by barge every day, and a missionary’s life must help us earn a few small merits.

At three in the morning we left the harbour and headed back out to sea. This time there was wind—perhaps a little too much! I was tossed in my bunk like a basket of laundry. Before long I felt the terrible grip of seasickness. I suffered all the more because, throughout the journey, my exhausted stomach had had to make do with five or six sardines in oil.

At half past eight I set foot on the rocks of Piaster Bay, and it was all over! I rested until ten in the room prepared for me, and by half past ten I was able to perform the wedding that had occasioned my visit and celebrate Mass.

There are only eight families at Piaster Bay, all related to one another. A young Belgian, Mr. Beetz, an agent for a large Paris fur company, came to settle there and devote himself entirely to the varied pleasures of fishing and hunting. This intrepid Nimrod built himself a charming little villa near the coast, where he and his gracious wife, Mrs. Beetz, kindly offered the missionary warm hospitality.

I was their guest during my stay at Piaster Bay. When I arrived on Monday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Beetz had not yet returned from their customary trip to Europe, which they made every two years.

They did not return until Wednesday morning, aboard the “King Edward.” I had gone out to meet them on a barge, knowing that the Very Reverend Father Blanche was also aboard the steamer.

How surprised the Apostolic Prefect was to see me climbing aboard, dressed like a fisherman in my boots, my face covered with a black beard as bristly as a Labrador bear’s fur! He and Father Pottier, who had accompanied him from Pointe-aux-Esquimaux, were doubled over with laughter. I stayed and talked with them while the luggage was unloaded, then returned to my mission post.

I stayed there until Saturday morning and took the opportunity to lead the mission exercises, which were very well attended. I was greatly edified. In between, I went trout fishing at the foot of a fifty-metre waterfall and hunted yellowlegs. As for ducks, I shot a bittern in flight, but it fell into the reeds, where the men who had taken me out in their canoe (!!) could not retrieve it… Darn bittern!

I nearly forgot to tell you that during my stay at Piaster Bay I had the chance to see black foxes. As you know, a single pelt sells for $700 to $800 (3,500 to 4,000 francs). Mr. Beetz raises seven magnificent ones in enormous cages. He also owns a black bear that was caught in a trap. I once saw Mr. Beetz return from a three-hour hunt carrying forty-one birds: ducks, “moniacs,” black game, Canada geese, and so on. If only I could shoot a tenth as many…

I finally ended my odyssey with a five-day visit to Pointe-aux-Esquimaux, where I stayed with Father Pottier. One is truly well received there, and I am still touched by the thoughtful kindness the two residents showed me.

When I returned to Natashquan, Father Pihan was preparing to resume the “express service” to Aguanis for a wedding. One may assume that this second voyage went more smoothly than the first. So far, public rumour has said nothing…

— A. Divet · Source:L’Écho du Labrador, transcribed by the Société historique de la Côte-Nord.

It is a curious and heartening fact for French hearts to see how admirably faithful to their customs, traditions and language the former colony of Canada has remained attached to the Mother Country, despite nearly a century and a half of separation.

Whatever was done, and whatever is still being done, this is always another France, the France “overseas” that we find here. To show what the descendants of peasants from the old provinces of Brittany and Normandy have become in this vast country that Voltaire disdainfully called “a few acres of snow” would provide a striking example of the energy, vitality and capacity for growth of the French people.

Could our old settlers of long ago have done anything but love this place? The country is truly beautiful, though not as wild as one might imagine from the novels one read as a child. Abundant rivers, widening here and there into broad sheets of water, flow like a network of veins through the dense forests, creating an infinite sense of solitude where water and trees meet. The trees are magnificent and astonishingly abundant: linden, maple, sturdy ash, reddish wild cherry, all mixed among the profuse pines and spruces. They have stood here for centuries, so accustomed to growing together that no one can be separated without perishing. Their enormous roots probe the soil and hold it fast, like a miser’s hands gripping a treasure.

Squirrels dart through the branches; sometimes a startled caribou flees through the undergrowth, or a Canadian nightingale flutters along the forest’s edge. Here and there, fire has passed, leaving trees dead in the flames; they are now only skeletons, the colour of charred bones, their sight a blight on the landscape. In places they stretch for mile upon mile, bringing to mind some immense cemetery, endless pale roadway or necropolis whose streets have no end.

Among the dead and living trees, the waters flow or lie still. At times they carry felled trunks; at others, they follow stretches of forest, motionless yet changing, the colour of sky, space and light, rippling with reflections and welcoming ducks and brilliantly plumaged kingfishers. How can one describe the mystery of these lakes, lost in the stillness of solitude? Each has its own colour and shape, from which it takes its name: Blue Lake, Black Lake, Green Lake, Round Lake—each with its own character and individuality. Nowhere else can one better understand the ancient myths and the legends of nymphs and dryads (?), for the more untouched nature is, the more individual it becomes, seeming almost to possess a soul, a body… At times, an isolated farm disappears into the landscape; one scarcely notices it. Here, where people are still few, the land belongs to the animals, the trees, the rocks and the waters. Carefree nature reigns peacefully, and its serenity seeps into you; you listen, fall silent and merge into the space where you are alone.

Long ago, a people lived freely in this vast land: the “Redskins” so many little white boys, myself included, dreamed of after reading the novels I told you about. This people is disappearing as the forests fall and civilization advances. They were nomads and hunters, and they wish to remain so; they do not want to be farmers and settle down. Their game is taken from them, they are confined to reserves and laws are imposed on them. They die from it… Each year the Canadian government, which strives to treat them humanely, distributes blankets to them; they wrap themselves in them to die, and their numbers continue to dwindle.

It is said that a few remain in a village near Montreal, on land once granted to them by a decree of Louis XIV. But they are so mixed by ancestry that one can scarcely distinguish them by the colour of their skin.

They are Christians, Catholics, and cultivate their fields; little remains of their former customs. But the “real” ones—the people of wigwams, tomahawks, scalping and moccasins—are disappearing. A few more generations and they will be gone. Yet they were a noble, courageous and proud people, who had developed freely on this land, where the French found them when they entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence under Samuel de Champlain in 1608!

These last representatives of the original people live in tents made of animal hides or coarse cloth. To their hunters’ weapons they have added old-model rifles abandoned by their conquerors. Fast horses, bark canoes and snowshoes are their only means of travel across the plains and woods where they are confined.

The true inhabitants today are the settlers, descendants of the French peasants who remained in the province of Quebec after the British conquest. There were 70,000 then; today there are nearly two million, not counting the million emigrants who went to the United States in search of an easier life.

What a glorious story of resistance and loyalty theirs is! Poor, while the rich had returned to the mother country, surrounded by far more numerous English people who held the administration, and long treated with hostile suspicion, they nevertheless preserved their faith, language and customs. An admirable clergy sustained them through the ordeal. They gathered around the Church as around a flag.

I do not believe there is a more striking example anywhere in the world of the persistence of national feeling. In these circumstances, that feeling was bound up with faith. They say that in parts of the former Poland peasants remain Catholic chiefly to remain Polish; if they abandon the practices of their ancestral religion, their friends say, “Then you are no longer one of us!” I imagine it was much the same for French Canadians. The Church must have been for them the sacred place where the faith, traditions, customs and language of their ancestors were preserved—the noble inheritance they had kept intact across the seas, despite time and distance—so that today they are as Norman, Breton and French as in the days of Champlain and Montcalm.

— J. Hoëllard

Source:L’Écho du Labrador, transcribed by the Société historique de la Côte-Nord.

Julien Hoëllard was born in Elven, Morbihan, on April 10, 1877. He studied at the Juvénat de Plancoët and at Saint-Martin in 1896–1897, then completed his theology studies at La Roche-du-Theil in 1898. He joined the Eudists in 1901 and was ordained in Rennes on June 6, 1903.

He went to Canada and taught rhetoric in Valleyfield in 1903. The biographical note then records his return to France in 1904 as secretary to the Superior General, followed by teaching positions in Chicoutimi from 1906 and at Pointe-à-l’Église, Nova Scotia, in 1910.

Mobilized in France in 1914, he returned to Plancoët in 1919 and died there on June 22, 1921, at the age of 44.

Source: Eudist Archives.

I went out the other evening, weary after my class
To gaze upon the vast plain before night fell.
In its white fur, it slept without a sound.
The sky was a vivid steel blue, bitterly cold.

I watched along the endless path
That God’s hand had strewn with countless flowers,
The Moon, a gentle lamp in the gentle twilight,
Slowly carried by an unseen hand.

All around, a cold silence… A wild goose,
High above, neck outstretched, flew alone in the open sky.
Only a swirl of pale snowflakes disturbed
The great, silent calm of the snowy landscape.

Then, dreamily, I looked north. Suddenly,
With the wind rising, I thought I heard
The simple echo of a tender song,
Sung in “Labrador” on a distant mountain.

In its thin voice
The Echo said, I understood:

“It snows, it freezes,
And ice has seized the River,
But with my wing I can
Join our fraternal friendship
Across the grey lands…”

In its gentle voice
The Echo said again, I think:

“Despite the winter that makes us cough,
I shall sing through the cold winds
Of how, in their narrow dwellings,
Eudist missionaries
Always know, without growing sad,
How to carry their cross with God.”

In its clear voice
The Echo said, I remember:

“Across the lonely vastness,
Along the shores of the Gulf from which I come,
Where, in his poor presbytery,
Even surrounded by good Christians,
An Eudist missionary would be sad
If he were forgotten by his own…”

In its thin voice
The Echo said, I understood:

“It snows, it freezes,
And ice has seized the River,
But with my wing I can
Join our fraternal friendship
Across the grey lands…”

I said softly: “Echo reaching us
So cheerfully from distant shores,
Delicate Echo, since you wish
To join our fraternal friendship,
Take upon your wing
My wishes.”

The Moon, a gentle lamp in the gentle twilight,
Slowly carried by an unseen hand,
Went calmly on along the endless path
That God’s hand had strewn with countless flowers.

— J. Hoëllard

Source:L’Écho du Labrador, transcribed by the Société historique de la Côte-Nord.