Gabriel Franchère

I titled my blog Oregon and Quebec and in one post I acknowledged that many readers (both readers?) likely believe the two places are far apart and have little to do with one another. But one of my goals is to show that in fact many of the earliest Euro-American residents of Oregon came from Quebec. The first Catholic bishops of the Oregon territory were Quebecois. The earliest comprehensive glossary of the Chinook jargon, the trade language used by Indians and trappers in the Oregon territory, was published in Montreal (written by Rev. Modeste Demers, revised by Rev. F. N. Blanchet, in 1870). And among the founders of Astoria, Oregon in 1811, the trading post financed and named for the fur trading magnate John Jacob Astor, was Gabriel Franchère, a Montrealer. He is particularly noteworthy because he wrote a travel narrative that is the best record of the expedition, and was the primary source for Washington Irving's Astoria.

Franchère sailed from New York in September 1810 on the Tonquin, and stopped at the Islas Malvinas or Iles Malouines before rounding Cape Horn, and for a lengthy stopover in Hawaii after the horn. In late March they reached the Columbia, and with great difficulty and the loss of eight men in their launches, crossed the bar. For me, homesick for the Willamette Valley, a great charm of this text is Franchère's reaction to the climate and the vegetation. The enormous trees, the spring flowers, and the success of his garden: “les navets etaient d’un grosseur extraordinaire; nous en mesurames un qui portoit 33 pouces de circonférence et pesoit quinze livres et demie. De douze patates que nous plantames, le produit fut de 90, que nous conservames avec soin pour l’année suivante." But at leaner times Franchère was forced to trade for horses and dogs; the animals that the Indians themselves did not care to eat.

Astor's scheme was inspired by the fact that as the Hudson's Bay company and especially the Montreal based Northwest Company stretched their networks farther and farther into the Rocky Mountains, they pushed against the limits of the yearly routine around which the trade had always been organized. The voyageurs would leave the posts in the spring with furs trapped over the winter, deliver them to Montreal, and return to the posts in the fall with the essential goods Indian trappers needed for the winter. It was not feasible to make this round trip from the upper Saskatchewan River in one season. Moreover, one of the richest markets for beaver, mink, and other furs was now in Canton (China). So a Pacific Coast fur factory could be very lucrative. Trade goods might be supplied in large ocean-going vessels, and furs collected from the western slopes of the Rockies, and shipped directly across the Pacific, along with the seal and otter skins collected along the coast. At last the transcontinental trade that explorers had dreamed of since the sixteenth-century could become a reality!

Astor sent a ship around the Horn, and a separate expedition overland, along the same route used by Lewis and Clark some six years earlier. But at the same time the NW Company traders, including David Thompson, were exploring the Columbia Valley with the same goal as Astor. And on july 23, 1811, Thompson himself showed up in Astoria: “Ce monsieur voyageoit plutot en qualité de géographe qu’en commercant de pelleteries. Durant un séjour de 7 à 8 jours qu’il fit avec nous, il eut occasion de prendre plusieurs observations, étant muni d’un bon quart de nonnante. Et il me parut qu’il tenoit un journal régulier” One thing that amazes me in this book is how the traders and explorers all seem to find each other in this enormous country. When I go hiking I usually have a map and look at it every mile or so. These guys followed directions on a very large scale; something like "ascend the Columbia to its headwaters, turn east, cross over a pass, and..." This was the route Franchère followed home, where he arrived on Sept. 1, 1814.

Franchère was extremely lucky to survive, but not lucky enough to find his fortune. While he stayed at Astoria to build the trading post, the Tonquin set sail to explore the coast, and near Nootka on Vancouver Island was attacked by the Indians and burned. Only one man survived, escaped from captivity and returned to Oregon to tell the tale. The party that crossed overland to Oregon suffered horrible privations. When the War of 1812 broke out and Britain and the United States became enemy powers, the competition for Astoria was no longer merely commercial but political. The Astorians surrendered to the more numerous NW Co. men, and “C’est de cette maniere que je perdis en un instant mes espérances de fortune après avoir franchi les mers et enduré toutes les fatigues et les privations auxquelles je fus exposé en formant l’établissement.”


Franchère kept a diary during his voyage, and wrote a narrative upon his return. In 1820 the editor Michel Bibaud published Relation d'un voyage à la côte du nord-ouest de l'Amérique Septentrionale, dans les années 1810, 11, 12, 13, et 14. This text was used by Irving, along with interviews with Franchère and other members of the expedition. Then an English translation appeared in 1854, and several others after that. But the original manuscript, held now at the Toronto public library, remained unpublished until 1969, when the Champlain Society released it in a bilingual edition. I've purchased a less-expensive French edition from LUX of Montréal.


I look forward to reading Astoria when I get back to Oregon, and perhaps to studying how Irving and others changed Franchère's original narrative. It's final lines are mémorable enough, and Franchère finally reaches his hometown, after paddling all the way from the Rockies. "Enfin après avoir desscendu ce dernier rapide nous mimes pied à terra à Montréal après le coucher du soleil, après quatre ans, un mois, et six jour d’absence. Je m’acheminai immédiatement vers la maison paternelle, ou l’on ne s’attendoit guère à me revois, les nouvelles leur étant parvenues que j’avais été massacré avec M. McKay et l’équipage du Tonquin. Je me retrouvai ainsi au millieu de ma famille et de mes amis, par un effet de la divine providence, qui voulut bien me preserver...”

Update on Student Strikes

The student strike is at an impasse. On Monday the provincial education minister, Line Beauchamp, resigned. She was deputy prime minister under Jean Charest as well. Charest's defense is that his government promises to add $39 million in bursaries, so low-income students will not be hurt by the $1,778 tuition hike, and says Quebec will still have the lowest tuition in Canada and the best student-aid program. But a hard-core group of protesters turns out nearly every night here and even more in Montreal, and the Montrealais are getting really tired of it, particularly when a smoke bomb in the metro there delayed trips for thousands of commuters last week. I saw reference to another subway disruption yesterday but can't confirm that.

The worst incident in terms of injuries was at the liberal party conference, which had been moved from Montreal to the small town of Victoriaville. The liberal party holds the majority in the "national" assembly, under Premier Jean Charest. So Charest was trying to avoid tying up Montreal, but the student organizations rented a bunch of motorcoaches and turned out in force in Victoriaville. Confrontations with riot police led to one policeman and several students being badly injured. One student lost an eye. 

After that the student associations met with the liberal party leaders and reached a tentative agreement. It proposed small tuition and fee increases for next year, something like $150, and would convene a special committee with members from university administration, faculty unions, and student groups, which would be charged with looking for cost savings in university budgets that could be used to offset the proposed increases, possibly reducing the increase to zero. But as my local host pointed out, administrators have been trained their entire career never to admit that they have been spending too much, and so that committee was never going to succeed. The proposal was sent to student groups for a vote and they all voted it down.

But as I started to write this I had not caught up on the latest news from just last night! The Assembly convened at 8 pm for a special session to debate a bill that would make it illegal for student associations to form picket lines preventing the classmates from attending classes. It would impose steep fines. This news prompted students in Montreal to march around the city until 3 am when they finally got tired and dispersed.

The merit of the student protest I think is that they have turned attention toward the Universities' bloated administrative costs, and claimed that tuition hikes are not necessary even if the province faces a budget crisis. I have no idea how administrative bloat here compares to schools in the US, but at least I get the sense that the students are concerned about educational value for the money, rather than expecting posh dorms and health clubs, and free tickets to big-time sporting events.

The peculiarities of Quebec politics have helped sustain the strike, even as a large majority of older Quebecois have come to oppose the students. The separatist Parti Quebecois, out of power in the province since I think 2001 or 2002, has embraced the students' cause and on the floor of the Assembly the PQ members wear the red square, symbol of the student movement. The students use slogans from the separatist movement like "maítres chez nous" and this ideology helps them justify the fact that even after the hikes tuition in Quebec would be much lower than in the other provinces. It doesn't look like this alliance will help the PQ win a majority in the next election, but voters may also turn against Charest's Liberals because they have failed to resolve the crisis by now.

The spring term is lost for those students who were on strike, which is roughly a third of all students. Now people are concerned that the strike could continue into the fall. The severity of the student debt problem here seems minor compared to the USA. A student here quoted in the newspaper was outraged at the prospect of a $30,000 debt upon graduation, but students in the US often have more than $75,000 and I don't see how anyone here could run up that much, with tuition at $3000/year or less. Plus, unemployment here is lower than in the US, and many jobs go begging in the remote mining and oil patch regions. Would you want to spend the winter in an iron mine in Labrador?

The translations of Montcalm

The re-burial of the remains of the "Braves" found near the Dumont mill site in Ste-Foy was called a "translation" (the word is the same in French) referring to the ceremony of re-intering the relics of a saint. In looking at the major monuments to Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, I'd like to again emphasize the function of translation.

We've seen how the obelisk in the jardin des gouverneurs, the paired statues above the entrance to the Parliament building, and the pair of markers for their death spots on the Plains of Abraham all grant Montcalm and Wolfe the status of equals, of twins whose shared sacrifice undergirds Canadian nationalism. One might say they were not twins separated at birth, but twins united in death. And the twinning of the two heroes goes along with the continuous acts of French-English translation that are also part of Canadian nationalism.

The monuments to Montcalm alone define a different type of translation; that of re-membering and re-burying a saintly hero, and moving his image back and forth between Quebec and France.

This is Léopold Morice's Monument to Montcalm, cast in 1910 and erected in 1911 facing the Grande Allée a few meters away from the Plains. The plans for the monument began, presumably at the time of the 1908 tri-centennial celebrations and the founding of the National Battlefields Commission. Today it stands in front of the concrete monstrosity of the Loews hotel and back to back with a bronze statue of Charles de Gaulle at the other end of a short median.

I don't think the statue really does the hero justice. The expression on his face and his pose, with both arms stretched out, suggests that the allegorical angel come to crown him with laurels has suddenly bumped into him and may topple him over. He straddles a cannon that lies on the ground in a position where it cannot possible aid him in battle. But let's look at the inscription on his pedestal.

The polished curved surface is hard to read. It says simply
    Montcalm
La France
         Le Canada

Another copy of this statue was unveiled in 1910 at Montcalm's birthplace, the Chateau de Vestric, in Vestric-Candiac, France, just south of Nimes. I've not seen a photo of that one, but its existence, and the inscription here in Quebec, suggests an emphasis on his French identity and the connection he provides between Quebec and France. This even though some of the major histories of the Seven Years War by Quebecois, including Guy Frégault and François-Xavier Garneau, tended to criticize Montcalm's battlefield leadership and favor that of the Canadian-born governor Vaudreuil.

Here is the plaque on the house now standing on the site of the house where Montcalm died, the day after the battle in 1759. This is one of the few inscriptions in the city that is not bi-lingual. It emphasizes his French birth. It was put there only in 1999, on the 240th anniversary of his death. The house faces Rue du Parloir, the short street where the cars of parents of Ecole des Ursulines students line up twice a day. Montcalm's remains were interred in chapel of the Ursulines until 2001, when a translation ceremony was held to move them to the cemetery of the Hôpital général de Québec, in the lower town. A nun at the Ursulines chapel recalled the event and said they had to dig a big hole in the floor, and that only part of his skull remained. However small the remains, they were carried in carriage pulled by four black horses and in a procession to the new site. I need learn the reasons for this move, but at the same time a new monument was built there to the memory of soldiers who died during the Seven Year War and had been buried in an unmarked mass grave in that cemetery.

Montcalm got a new mausoleum as you see here, but the effect was nonetheless to democratize the hero by putting him alongside some of his troops.The plaque in the foreground reads in part: "Il repose desormais auprès de ses soldats tombés avec luis devant Québec pour la défense de la Nouvelle-France." Inside, too dark for photos yesterday, is another inscription explaining that at the ceremony his descendant laid a stone from the ancestral castle at Saint-Véran, France next to his relics. So we see how the fetishism of objects inheres not only in holy relics, but even in buildings, stone, monuments, etc. To translate remains is to transfer the magical power of heroism or ownership, from one place to another. These "restes" carry a magical aura, that apparently can be felt by the remains of the soldiers who must be comforted at the thought that their leader now lies close to them.

Monument des Braves

One response of Quebec francophones to the cult of memory surrounding Wolfe and the battle of Sept. 13, 1759, has been to emphasize the Battle of Ste-Foy fought the following year on April 28th. In this battle the Chevalier de Lévis, whom most historians regard as a more capable tactician than Montcalm, but who was away from the city in September 1759, attacked the English forces led by James Murray in an attempt to retake Quebec. He was able to inflict significant casualties, and then beseige the fortified city, but when British ships arrived two weeks later and relieved Murray, Lévis' effort failed, and the focus shifted to Montreal. Because the French carried the day at Ste-Foy, commemorations of this battle have been used as a counterweight to Wolfe and the Plains of Abraham. So when military reenactment hobbyists proposed activities on the occasion of the 250th anniversary in 2009, they promised to reenact both battles. And likewise when the National Battlefield Commission began designing the park, they included the Monument which already stood at the sight of the former Dumont mill, around which the Ste-Foy battle had been fought. Here is a reproduction of a painting of the battle by Joseph Legaré, on a signboard at the park.

The text of the signboard contains a detailed account of the military maneuvers which led Lévis to victory. It also explains how "in 1849, workers discovered bones and remains of weapons near the presumed site of the Dumont mill. Excavations conducted in 1852 seem to confirm that the remains were those of soldiers, both French and British, who died in the Battle of Sainte-Foy. ON June 5, 1854 a translation ceremony was held, at the end of which a casket containing the soldiers' remains was lowered into a grave on the battlefield, where the monument was later erected."
The battlefield commission seems reluctant to endorse the authenticity of these finds. I also like the way the verb "translated" has the obscure meaning of "the removal of the body or relics of a saint to another place of interment" [OED I 1. a]. As we have seen, translation between English and French is also an important element of the commemoration process.

The monument is at the north end of the Avenue des Braves, a street of sumptuous residences, which runs from the eastern end of Battlefields park. It's about a kilometer to walk, and so few tourists who see the Wolfe Monument and other sites in the park are likely to make the trip, although in the high season there is a shuttle bus.

The monument itself was commissioned by the Societe Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Québec (the francophone social/political club, which had purchased the land in 1855), designed by celebrated architect Charles Baillargé, and erected in 1860. It has the Roman goddess of war, Bellona, on top, and plaques on opposite sides honoring Levis and Murray.

 So it seems clear that the SSJB wanted to reply to the Wolfe monument and the Dalhousie one by putting up their own to the 1760 battle, which was a French victory, but they made it appear non-partisan by using a design similar to the Dalhousie monument, with paired French and English heroes, plaques with the name of each facing away from each other on opposite sides of the monument even as they faced toward each other on the battlefield.

There are also, in an adjoining shelter added much more recently, two bronze statues of the two heroes. The francophones were already in the mid 1800s adept at monumental balance, at giving equal time to both sides so as to avoid offending the Anglophones who held greater economic clout in the city. The same kind of delicacy is often required today when building historical monuments and composing plaques and texts, whether in the U.S. or Canada, and whether the issue is the Civil War, or slavery, or what-have-you.

The only way the francophones can celebrate their own side is to do so obliquely. Thus, for instance, the first stone in the construction of the monument was laid in June 1855 by the captain of the Capricieuse, the first French military vessel to reach Quebec since the Conquest 96 years earlier. In our next posts we will see more examples of this oblique patriotism.

The Wolfe Monument

The Wolfe Monument is the is the most highly charged monument in the entire city. Not because of its appearance, more because of its location and its history. Wolfe’s heroic image and the commodification of it in England and the Empire (see Alan McNairn's book Behold the Hero) has aroused resentment among some Francophone partisans and Quebec nationalists. And the location of the monument directly in front of the national museum of art is a position of privilege exceeded only by that of the Champlain and Laval monuments at the brink of the bluff in the old city, and monuments in front of the Capitol building. An heroic bronze equestrian statue might be more provocative in suggesting Wolfe's military might, and huge bronze statue of Wolfe is found in Greenwich park near London, but of course Wolfe did not ride a horse into the battle on Sept. 13, 1759. The Wolfe column is a memorial not a statue, on the top are a bronze helmet and a sword, a neoclassical symbol for the fallen warrior. It marks the spot (supposedly) of Wolfe’s death, and suggests a metonymic connection with his body, much like the relics of a saint.

That's me at the monument, which stands in a traffic circle directly in front of the entrance to the national art museum, and just a few meters off the Grande Allée. But the monument predates the civic buildings (including the city's main jail, only recently transformed into a wing of the art museum). The travel writer John Lambert reported that in 1807 he "went sadly to the place where Wolfe had given his life for the glory of the Empire, deploring that sacriligeous hands had taken the large stone against which the motrally wounded general had been held up by his officers, and indignant that his compatriots did not show more respect." Lambert suggests and English pilgrims were so eager to take home a piece of this sacred rock that they finally destroyed it altogether. Adjacent to the site, but now effaced by the construction of a new building for the Musée de Beaux Arts de Quebec, was a well, from which Wolfe was supposedly given water in the last moments of his life. Like the name Plains of Abraham, (which had an entirely secular origin in the name Abraham Martin, who sailed with Champlain), this story gives a biblical weight to Wolfe's heroic image. He sacrificed so that his people (the English) might become God's chosen and might reign over Quebec and the world.

The plaque explains that this column is the fifth monument on the site. The fourth was destroyed on March 29, 1963 in an act of vandalism that some attribute to the Front pour la Libération de Québec, a radical nationalist group. In my photo here you can see faded evidence of a red X across the plaque on the left. I will update with more about the attack.

I believe that the reason this monument is so provocative is not simply that it is devoted to Wolfe but that it lacks the balance carefully observed in the obelisk at the Jardin des Gouverneurs and in the Monument des Braves, which will be the subject of my next post.

The other monuments of Quebec City either show a careful balance between English and French communities and heroes, or they use an allusive rather than direct method of favoring one side over the other. The Wolfe monument here is direct and partisan.

The Wolfe/Montcalm Dialectic

Now, after a beautiful morning walk on the Plains with Marsha, I have new photos and can begin the narrative.

Monuments can be to persons or to places. A bronze statue is of course a monument to a person who may have little to do with the site where the statue stands, while an inscription can attach event to place with or without a specific person. Just behind our building is this monument to Wolfe's famous fatal wound:

And just about 100 meters farther east is another granite block, of nearly identical size and shape, and carrying a nearly identical inscription:

Dual French and English texts are found on nearly every such inscription and every signboard in the city, but here the two languages recapitulate the tense balance in which the two heroes are memorialized. For the heroes represent the two language communities in the city. A monument to Wolfe without equal time for Montcalm would be like a sign in English without French translation; it would be an offense and likely even a violation of the law.

I am not sure when these were erected but it would have to be after the park and the battlefields commission were begun in 1908-09. The first major monument to the heroes was erected in 1827 in the Jardin des Gouverneurs behind the Chateau Frontenac hotel. It is another example of the careful balance between the two heroic figures, and is the first volley in the ongoing dialectic.

Here are two sides of the obelisk, rigorously balanced. And here the bilingual rule is broken. In the spirit of compromise and reconciliation, the inscription was done in Latin, on the side facing the river, between the two hero's names, has two panels. The top panel, the shorter text, says:

Mortem vitus communem, famam historia, monumentum posteritas dedit
Leur courage leur a donné la même mort; l’histoire, même renommée; la postérité,même monument
Their courage as given them the same death, history, the same renown, posterity, the same monument
The larger lower panel is below the photos:

HUJUSCE

MONUMENTI IN MEMORIAM VIRORUM ILLUSTRATIUM

WOLFE ET MONTCALM

FUNDAMENTUM P.C. GEORGIUS COMMS DE DALHOUSIE

IN SEPTENTRIONALIS AMERICAE PARTIBUS

AD BRITANNOS PERTINENTIBUS

SUMMAM RERUM ADMINISTRATUS;

OPUS PER MULTOS ANNOS PRAETERMISSUM

(QUID DUCI EGREGIO CONVENIENTIUS;)

AUTORITATE PROMOVENS, EXEMPLO STIMULA

MUNIFICENTIA FOVENS

DIE NOVEMBRIS XV a A.D. MDCCCXXVII

GEORGIO IV BRITANNIARUM REGE

roughly translated this means

this

demonstrative Monument in memory of

Wolf and Montcalm

was founded during the administration of P.C. George of Dalhousie

In the northern regions of America

controlled by the the Britons, 

an administrator whose

Work went unnoticed for many years

(as is fitting for this good duke)

under his authority, to stimulate and promote examples

and foster generosity

November 15,  A.D. 1827

George IV King of Britain

The Governor General of Canada at this time, Lord Dalhousie, was trying to defuse political tensions between Anglophone and Francophone factions by promoting a sense that their patron heroes were of equal status. But the historical content--what they did to deserve such acclaim--is referred to only obliquely, and the Latin inscription reaffirms British colonial rule and the status of Dalhousie himself.