#356 – Dick Bernard: Bottineau Jig, Untold Tales of Early Minnesota

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Two sold-out performances of Bottineau Jig, Untold Tales of Early Minnesota, attested to the interest in Dance Revels Moving History’s interpretation of the life and times of legendary Pierre Bottineau.
The program was performed at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Friday and Saturday evening, April 1 and 2. The production was a creation of Jane Peck of Dance Revels. Jane is a long-time student of historical dance forms. The program proudly noted that the activity was “funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008” (This is the Clean Water and Legacy amendment approved by Minnesota voters November 4, 2008.)
Pierre Bottineau (played by Dr. Virgil Benoit) was a legendary early founder of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and he was renowned guide in the white settlement of the upper midwest. Bottineau, Metis (Michif) born in the area of present day Grand Forks ND, was gifted in languages and a larger than life presence. He was one of eight pioneers who built the original log cabin St. Paul Catholic Church (the first Cathedral of St. Paul MN); he owned land and built the second frame house in what was then St. Anthony, later to become Minneapolis; he founded Osseo and later Red Lake Falls MN.
Jane Peck’s program was an extraordinarily rich demonstration of period fiddling, music and dance.
The program interspersed spoken word, ethnic music and dance, covering the period from Bottineau’s birth in 1817 through 1870. At the conclusion of the program the cast of 14 invited the audience to join them in a Red River Jig, and then engaged in discussion with the audience. (Click on the photo to see an enlarged version.)

Audience and Cast participate in Red River Jig April 2, 2011


The program specifically intended to showcase an assortment of characters, not all well known in Minnesota History. So, Sarah Steele Sibley was emphasized over her more well known husband, Henry Hastings Sibley, and Franklin Steele, builder of the first house in to-be Minneapolis. Jacob Fahlstrom, early Swedish settler via England and years with the natives in Canada, and his wife, Marguerite Bonga, whose ancestry was a freed Haitian slave well known in what is now the Duluth area, spoke powerfully to the dilemmas of cross-cultural relationships in the newly emerging Swedish community northeast of St. Paul.
Among other purposes of the Bottineau Jig Project are, according to producer Jane Peck: “1) Offering the contributions and points of view of the mixed bloods and Metis in Minnesota history. They have been ignored as much or more than the French; 2) tracing the modern-day communities of some of the cultures represented in the play, including the Metis as the only modern mixed blood community.”
An expert cast was augmented by three fiddlers, all well known interpreters of Metis and French-Canadian music: Legendary Metis Fiddler from Turtle Mountain ND, Eddie King Johnson, gave his usual great performance, as did Twin Citians Linda Breitag and Gary Schulte. Larry Yazzie and Ricky Thomas provided outstanding dance, native and Metis. Other performers, all very engaging, were M. Cochise Anderson, Josette Antomarchi, Jamie Berg, Paulino Brener, Kenna Cottman, Craig Johnson, Scott Marsalis and Jane Peck.
Jane Peck has begun and will continue a blogging project on the Bottineau Jig at her website. See her site for more stories about Bottineau Jig.
Also visit the website of IFMidwest for upcoming activities in Virgil Benoit’s French-Canadians in the Midwest organization. The annual conference of IF Midwest is planned in Fargo ND October 7-8, 2011. Details will be at the website.

#313 – Dick Bernard: Old Music and Family History

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Last night we attended the Minnesota Orchestra, where we’ve had season tickets for many years.
I’m a fan of classical music, but not a particularly well-informed one. Before we left home, Cathy asked “what are we seeing tonight?“, and I said “I don’t know.” The ticket wasn’t helpful: “Symphony and Song” is all it said.
The program turned out to be a delightful potpourri of all-Mozart, including the always outstanding Minnesota Chorale.
I never tire of Mozart-anything. One of the pieces played, Veni Sancte Spiritus, was composed by Mozart when he was twelve years old! (That was about the age when I first became a terminally resistant pianist. It took a while for me to get around to truly appreciating music. I got a D in Music Appreciation in college….)
But, January 16 was a delightful evening, as evenings at “long-hair” music events almost always are for me.
This particular night, for some reason, I fixed on Wolfgang Amade Mozart’s biography: born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, Vienna. His was a short, intense and extraordinarily productive life. Apparently the music never went out in his head.
1756, his birth year, had a particular attraction this night.
It was about 1757, when Mozart was a year old, that my last French-Canadian ancestor, Francois Collet, came across the big pond from Bretagne (Brittany) to Quebec. (The first known ancestor in North America was Jean Nicolet in 1618.)
Two years after Francois Collet arrived, the English defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and Quebec became part of the British empire.
Sixteen years later came the American Revolution; and fourteen years after that the French Revolution of 1789 (Les Miserables, and all that).
In 1791, at the ripe old age of 35, Mozart died. In 1805, Francois Collet died in Quebec at the age of about 64, and life went on for families left behind: one with a famous descendant; the second whose story lives on in his surname (now spelled Collette) and many descendants, one of which is me, 7th generation downline.
As one of our families historians, I know that the history of all families, most especially ‘ordinary’ ones, are full of blank spaces, many of those spaces never to be filled. Indeed some of those blank spaces are intentional…”know all, tell some”…we all have our share of secrets….
All we know is that we descended from an almost infinitely long line of predecessors who left us with certain pieces of their abilities or disabilities. We are a sum of many parts.
During intermission I continued to read the program and came across an Essay on Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, by one Dan Chouinard. This piece was part of the program. (You can read the Essay here: Dan Chouinard Essay001)
Chouinard is most definitely a French surname, and in this case Dan Chouinard rang a bell: Dec. 7, 2010, my sister wrote about meeting Dan at an event in the town where she lives, and talk got around to our shared French-Canadian histories. Were we related, she wondered. “Dan Chouinard (Prairie Home Companion, pianist extraordinaire) and Prudence Johnson performed here in Park Rapids on Friday, hosted by the Kitchigami Regional Library with Legacy Amendment funding. Dan introduced himself as French-Canadian ancestry, whose early family immigrated to NE Minneapolis before Minnesota was a state. Of course, I told that I, too, was French Canadian, and told him about your family history project. He wondered if it was archived at the Minnesota Historical Society, and I’m glad to see that I was correct when I told him I was sure it was!
I briefly cruised through the genealogy part of the document we have and couldn’t see any Chouinards. Apparently some people in his family have also done a great deal of work on their genealogy, too.”
I don’t know how or if our families intersect in a genealogy sense, but I do know family pioneers were in the present day Twin Cities area “before Minnesota was a state” [1858]. I haven’t heard much about music as a special talent in my French-Canadian ancestry; my interest seems to come from my mother’s German side. But, who knows?
I’m going to see about meeting this Dan Chouinard….

#302 – Dick Bernard: Christmas Eve, a story of winter in rural Minnesota

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Yesterday, on my daily walk, I came across a guy who, I thought, was acting strangely.
He had a shovel, and was on the right side of the street, taking a clod of snow out of the abundant snowbank there. Then, oddly, he carried the clod across to the left side of the street, and returned to repeat the process.
Being curious, I asked “why?”
Quite matter-of-factly the young man said “I’m building a snow fort for my daughter”.
Oh….

Show Fort on a suburban street


Such it is at the season where we seem to have a great abundance of White Christmas – 6″ more by our house again this morning.
I just walked by the man’s house again, and there it was, a snow fort. As kids interest span goes, there probably was a flurry of activity at the fort yesterday; today it’s on to other things. But it was a nice piece of “Christmas”.
Maybe because it’s cold up here, and indoors is more a normal state of affairs this time of year, thoughts turn quite easily to reminiscing, especially as one moves on in years.
I could build on the snow fort story with my own recollections in long ago North Dakota; or I could reprint a Grandpa story sent to me by a friend, himself a Grandpa, with this years Christmas card.
Rather, I’d like to offer a more lengthy story, shared by a Minnesota French-Canadian in the winter of 1996, in a newsletter I was then editing called Chez Nous. The story link is Lowell Mercil – Winter 001 . Most recently I included it as part of a family history book I’ve written about my father’s family and their 400 year history in North America.
It’s about 7 pages, so take your time. But you’ll enjoy the trip back in time to, perhaps, the 1930s in northwestern Minnesota near Crookston and Gentilly.
All best wishes.

#300 – Dick Bernard: The "War" of the Season

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Today is the Winter Solstice, this one especially unique because of the total lunar eclipse which last happened on this solstice in 1638, three years after my first French-Canadian ancestors, Jean Cote and Anne Martin, married at Quebec City November 15, 1635. One can wonder if they watched that eclipse, and wondered what it meant….
Fast forward 372 years, this morning at my coffee spot the every Tuesday Bible Study group at the next table was chatting about this and that, and the resident old guy at the table got into the Christmas Cheer topic: “if someone wishes me Happy Holidays, I wish them a Blessed Christmas back“, he loudly said.
None of this “Happy Holidays” stuff.
We are a pluralistic society, which is troubling to some who seem to have the desire to take over the Meaning of Christmas as solely a Christian observance, and more specifically, a Christian observance as interpreted by their own denomination.
It can get rather confusing.
At the local post office, I could buy, this year, seven varieties of ‘holiday’ stamps: Evergreen (representing the natural world, I suppose); Angel with Lute; miscellaneous holiday – snowman and such; Madonna and Child; Kwanzaa, Eid, Hanukkah. When I got around to buying stamps they were down to Evergreen and Angel with Lute, so that’s what I got. I was planning to buy a book of each. I am sure someone is analyzing the statistics of how many of each were purchased this year; and I am sure there have been numerous and earnest committee meetings within the post office, and assorted other interests, to lobby to get rid of certain designs, or to add others. In its way the U.S. Postal Service accurately defines This Season In Which We Are Now In The Midst.
All of the observances represented by those stamps are clumped around the winter solstice for a reason. The history of each can be easily researched.
I happen to have spent my entire life within one Christian denomination, so the Christian observance of Christmas is my tradition. But many, perhaps most, of the people I know do not share my specific tradition, and they deserve equal respect for their own view of this time of year.
A recent New York Times column, and the responses to it, frame the issues pretty well: here and here. Prepare for a long and interesting read.
I close with a winter solstice poem sent to me by someone I know as a Christian….
THE SHORTEST DAY
Susan Cooper
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!
As Tiny Tim so immortally says in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “God bless us, everyone“.
Happy Holidays.

#295 – Hunkering down for a Blizzard!

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UPDATE 8:15 P.M. DECEMBER 11: Most likely we have over 20″ of snow at our home, thus far no wind. Didn’t leave the house all day. More snow than expected.
UPDATE II 8:10 A.M. DECEMBER 12: We can now classify the storm as a modern day catastrophe. Not only was the Vikings-Giants game postponed till Monday, but at least part of the Metrodome roof apparently has collapsed under the snow.
The storm lasted only 24 hours, and it didn’t even approach blizzard standards, at least where we live, but it was an unusual time for us.
At the end of yesterday’s post are some memories of past times storms.

Our grill in disguise, late afternoon December 11, 2010


There’s something energizing about a blizzard, even if you’re totally disabled and immobile (translated: not going out for coffee) as I am at this moment.
We’re in the fairly early stages of what they’re calling a blizzard – plenty of fluffy snow thus far, but relatively little wind. Once the wind comes along, those harmless little pieces of fluff will be even more disabling.
So there’s little to do but revel in the warmth of a home (we’re fortunate) and reminisce…about blizzards I have known.
Recently I completed a history of my French-Canadian roots, and a bit player in that history was Father Joseph Goiffon, called the “peg leg Priest”.

Fr. Goiffon lost his leg in a mis-adventure when caught in an All-Saints Day (Halloween) blizzard in 1860 near where the Park and Red Rivers come together in northeast North Dakota. Fr. Goiffon only lost his leg; his horse froze to death. His nephew, Duane Thein, edited a most interesting 91-page book, still in print, about the near-tragedy in 2005 (see cover, above). Father Goiffon lived on to re-tell the story many times. He died in 1910.
I survived, somewhat more comfortably than Fr. Goiffon, the Halloween blizzard of 1991. I was living in Hibbing MN at the time, and it was said we got over 30 inches of snow which, after the wind, became the hard-pack flakes famous for igloos and fun for kids to build snow caves and forts.
For adults, such blizzards are usually the pits, even if in comfort (last night in a grocery store line I was chatting with the guy behind me who said the liquor store line had been even longer….) Yah, I’ll hear the high-pitched whine of the snowmobiles shortly, but mostly we’re house-bound.
In Hibbing, we were immobile for what I remember to be several days. There was nowhere to go, and no way to get there. Immobility for we in the mobile generation is difficult.

After the Halloween blizzard in Hibbing MN 1991


Growing up in North Dakota, I became accustomed to blizzards – two or three of them a winter, it seems.
Unlike today’s blizzard, which was pretty accurately forecast, in those days in the 1940s and on, wise sages had to read the skies and we had to act prudently to avoid being caught in a killer out in the country. You knew those mean storms were out there, but you didn’t know exactly when they’d hit or how bad they’d be.
But if you were indoors and had enough food and fuel, you were okay.
Afterwards, you could walk on the rock hard snow banks, and the kids would work harder than they’d ever work doing chores, digging snow caves and building snow forts and doing all the things kids can do when presented with a new opportunity.
I think of the Elgin ND Blizzard of February, 1965 – a bad one. But it is just another example. They happened every year.
I write in the early stages of this one, so I can’t project what it will be like a few hours from now.
It appears to be of relatively short duration, but if it gets windy, watch out.
So far, nobody’s out for fun. Those who are out are busy.
Today we’ll put up the Christmas tree….

Christmas Tree 7 p.m. December 11, 2010, first view


Happy Holidays.
UPDATE: Some responses to the above post:

From Mel Berning, Eureka CA, who recalls a storm he lived through in rural Berlin, North Dakota, right after WWII.
“There were lots of memorable blizzards in N. Dak. but only one remains in my
mind. Dad and Mom came to the Dakotas in 1906 and i remember dad telling about
blizzards so severe you couldn’t see anything but dark lightness in the height of
the storm even during the daylight hours. As a wise kid I discounted these wild
stories as a flight of fancy until one day in deep winter I experienced just
that.
My brother Gus and I decided to get the chores over quickly and do them at 4:30
in the afternoon. It was in the winter of [19]46?? and Gus was home from the
service at the time and staying on the farm with us. To get on with it we went
into the summer porch and lit our kerosene lantern in preparation for the trip
to the barn, a distance of about100 feet. We stepped out of the porch door and
the wind blew the lantern out, I turned to my older brother and hollered lets
hold hands till we get to the barn, surprisingly he gladly complied and we
stumbled blindly on through the howling snow hand in hand. Fortunately I had been
to the barn so often that we collided with the side of the barn and felt our way
around to the door. I kept hoping one of us had matches to relight the lantern
because it was dark as ink. We slid open the barn door, stepped inside, and lo
the lantern was still lit. neither of us could see it in the blinding snow and
it surely was a relief to have light.
Another winter story if you would, We had a 2 week snow with constant blizzard
conditions. As can be expected, dad was out of tobacco and we were running low
on groceries when the storm suddenly stopped and a Chinook [wind] came up from the
south. The temperature rapidly climbed to 50+ and my neighbor and I started to
plow our way to the store in Berlin [about five miles away]. By 3:00 o’clock we were able to reach the
plowed highway and returned home. We both picked up our grocery list and headed
back to Berlin to buy the family groceries. After doing the shopping we decided
to go to the Oasis, the pool hall, have a beer and shoot a game of pool, We
barely got to break the racked balls when some one came in and said it was
snowing out side. We hung up our cues and headed for home. The blizzard was
back and the temperature was dropping rapidly, we got to with in 2-1/2 miles of
home when we hit a new drift on the road and it was home from there on foot.
When I got home dad and mom were very relieved and by that time the thermometer
was on the minus side of 10 below. Several people and some stock died in Dakota
that night.
From Myron DeMers, Fargo ND, who grew up in rural Grafton, ND:
When you mention blizzards and I see so many people outside using snow blowers right now in Fargo, I remembered asking dad years ago if they did a lot of shoveling “in the old days”. His answer surprised me. He said “yes and no” because with all the farmyard traffic, horses, sleighs etc the snow would pack down and most of the winter was spent riding on top of the snow rather then shoveling it. He said the only problem was Spring when it became a muddy mess but by then you were so happy to see Spring, the mud was “clean mud”. Merry Christmas, Myron
From Ellen Brehmer, Grand Forks ND, who grew up in rural Langdon, ND
I hear your supposed to get ‘a bit’ of snow & wind. We are breathing a great sigh of relief because this one will miss us. We’re just sinking into the depths of 20 to 30 below, and that’s not wind chill. We do have the wind so I’m sure the old snow will drift some. It’s always fortunate to be home when the storms hit.
One winter possibly late ’50’s we had to walk a mile across the field in the evening because the car got completely stuck and flooded trying to break through a snow drift on Schnieder’s corner. That’s 1 1/2 miles from home. We walked over the hard pack at an angle so it was probably only a mile – I’m here to tell you that my thighs were very very cold. I’m pretty sure that it was [siblings] Pat, Jerry, Marilyn and myself who walked behind Dad. We had been to some church thing or something. Nothing else got that cold, we all had scarves and mittens and boots, plus we were moving – the front thighs took the beating. So guess what gets cold first for me when I’m shoveling, yup the thighs.
From Mary Busch, Minneapolis, who grew up in ND and northern MN:
Your dad loaned my parents the car to drive to the Carrington Hospital [14 miles away] where I was born during a bad snow storm. (being a geographer-could we find info about that storm?) Late in her life mom revealed I was nearly born in the car. I always wondered about the very flat section of my head—-…
Growing up in Rugby North Dakota, we walked everywhere.
I valued my turquoise fluffy wool coat purchased in Herbergers in Grand Forks ND. The Little Flower School costume was skirts with white cotton socks with metal clasps tied to elastic garters holding them up… rubber boots over shoes and maybe pants… I remember the metal clasps near your skin burning and leaving red marks on cold days. It was a six block walk.
I craved excitement and would walk to the high school to watch Basketball games- Paul Prestis [Presthus?] became a star….It was so cold and about a mile there.
My parents STORED meat in a locked wooden box by the back door….a homemade freezer.
My dad had a complicated ritual involving army blankets to start the Plymouth in cold weather…We often visited relatives for vacations.
A geologist guest in the 1990s was raised in Siberia and commented that Rugby was exactly like Siberia in climate and geology so we had shared similar childhoods.
My dad would take us out ice fishing in very cold weather. We walked back into northern MN lakes, built a fire and drilled our holes. I kept my Rolliflex camera under my jacket so it did not freeze. I often brought guests home to Babbitt and recall an amazed despairing New York City gal, when I explained and demonstrated the toilet opportunities in subzero wilderness.

#294 – Dick Bernard: Naming a mystery man in a photograph, 72 years later.

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Pearl Harbor Day I posted a piece about my Uncle Frank and his service and death on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
The day went on and late in the afternoon came an e-mail from a name I’d never heard before. The e-mail included two photos of my Uncle Frank in Long Beach CA on November 10, 1938. The writer of the e-mail identified himself as the son of the man, Max Calvert, who was posing with Uncle Frank in the photo. His Dad, Dave said, was then the secretary for Admiral Kimmel on-board the USS San Francisco. Kimmel was at that time commander of the Pacific fleet and professionally suffered in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
I have my pictures fairly well organized, so I took out the package labeled “Frank Bernard” to see if there were any matches. You can see the results for yourself, below.
The first photo of each pair is from Dave Calvert; the second is from my family file.

Max Calvert and Frank Bernard Nov. 10, 1938 Long Beach CA


Same setting, date, place from the Bernard files

Max and Frank from the Calvert album Long Beach Nov. 10, 1938


Same setting, Frank with his Dad Henry Bernard, from the Bernard album


Again, the first photo is from the Calvert album, the second from the Bernard album, third, Calvert, fourth, Bernard.
Before December 7, 2010, Dave Calvert, a Californian, and I had never heard of each other.
How did Dave find me? He had the pictures, and he knew that Frank was a casualty on the Arizona, and on this particular Pearl Harbor Day he decided to see if he could find any evidence of family of this long ago sailor who was friends with his sailor Dad in 1938. He did a simple google search and several pages in found reference to my family history website. From there he managed to get ahold of my e-mail address and the rest is history.
The miracle of the internet.
Some days later, he says, he still has ‘goosebumps’ over this essentially chance meeting and our sharing of essentially identical photographs from 72 years ago. I share his sentiments exactly.
I couldn’t label that photograph with the unknown man though I knew that the picture had been taken in 1938 from a developers mark.
Now, thanks to someone who took the extra step another piece of the family tapestry has been identified.

#292 – Remember the Maine; USS Arizona; Never Forget; LPD 21 USS New York

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December 7, 1941, my Uncle Frank Bernard was minding his own business on the USS Arizona, berthed at Pearl Harbor, HI. Without doubt he was awake at the time a Japanese bomb destroyed his ship and snuffed out his life. 1176 shipmates also died that day. Frank was definitely at the wrong place at the wrong time. Every year on this date, no doubt today as well, I will see a photo or a film clip of the Arizona blowing up.
I am the only one of my siblings old enough to have ever actually met Uncle Frank; the last time at the end of June, 1941, in Long Beach, California.

Bernard Family Reunion at Long Beach CA late June, 1941. Frank is in the center, Dick, 1 1/2, is next to him.

Frank had served on the Arizona since 1936. Though he seems to have been engaged to someone in Bremerton WA, he likely intended to be a career man in the Navy.

Frank Bernard, Honolulu, some time before Dec. 7, 1941

Wars are never fought without reasons, or consequences. They are collections of stories, often mythology masquerading as fact. One war succeeds the last war. That’s just how wars are.
Frank’s Dad, my Grandpa Henry Bernard, 43 years earlier had enlisted to serve the United States in what he always called the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. He was very proud of this service, which lasted from the spring of 1898, to the summer of 1899. The pretext for this war was the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor. Whatever actually caused the explosion was blamed on the Spaniards, and led to an outpouring of patriotic fervor in the U.S. “Remember the Maine” was the battle cry.
Grandpa’s unit, one of the first to the Philippines, never actually fought any Spaniards – he and his comrades were hardly off the boat near Manila when the Spanish surrendered. His battles were with the Filipino “insurgents” who were glad to be rid of the Spaniards, and just wanted the Americans to go back where they came from. That war is now called the Philippine-American War – a term Grandpa wouldn’t know.
In Henry’ company was his future wife’s cousin, Alfred Collette. Some years after the war, Alfred returned to the Philippines, becoming successful, later marrying and living the rest of his life in the Philippines.
After Pearl Harbor, the first major conquest of American territory by the Japanese was the Philippines…. Alfred was imprisoned at the notorious Santo Tomas. During the final battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945 his second child, named for my grandmother Josephine, was killed by shrapnel from either the liberators or the Japanese. She was only four years old, in her mother’s arms. Her two siblings witnessed her death.
Seven of Uncle Frank’s cousins in Canada, all from the same family, went to WWII, three in the Canadian Army, four in the U.S. Army. One of the seven died in combat. Others from my families served as well, as did neighbors. Most survived; some didn’t.

Alfred Collette, 1898, Presidio San Franciso CA

Henry Bernard, middle soldier, in Yokahoma Japan, enroute home1899

Which brings to mind the USS New York LPD 21.
On Thanksgiving day came one of those power point forwards celebrating the launch of the Amphibious Transport Ship the USS New York, a ship partially manufactured out of the wreckage of the World Trade Centers September 11, 2001. The internet is awash with items about this ship, commissioned in November of 2009.
A key caption of the powerpoint said that the New York’s contingent was “360 sailors, 700 combat ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft”, apparently roaming the world at the ready to do battle with the bad guys wherever they were. The transport has “twin towers” smokestacks,
I could see the attempt at symbolism in the power point: “don’t mess with the U.S.”. The boat plays to the American fantasy that we are an exceptional society, more deserving than others.
But, somehow, I failed to see the positive significance of this lonely boat, roaming the world, looking for opportunities to do battle against our enemies.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of geographic knowledge to know how immense this world is, and how tiny and truly insignificant is a single ship with about 1000 U.S. servicemen, no matter how highly trained and well-equipped they might be.
It seems we have better ways to use our money.
Uncle Frank was technically a peace-time casualty – War wasn’t declared against Japan until after he was dead. He and his comrades at Pearl Harbor who also died were only the first of hundreds of thousands of Americans, who joined, ultimately, millions of others who became casualties of WWII. A few of Grandpa Henry’s comrades were killed on Luzon, and till the end of his life in 1957 in Grafton ND there was an annual remembrance at the monument in front of the Walsh County Court House.
The triumph of war is what we seem to remember.
The horror of war is what we best “never forget”.
Peace takes work, lots of it. Let’s work for Peace.

#280 – Virgil Benoit: On French-Canadians, English and the American Revolutionary War

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During an animated conversation on Sunday, some new friends, long-time residents of Long Island NY, and for a number of years residents in Salt Lake City UT, asked a question about an aspect of French-Canadian history, which I then rephrased for Dr. Virgil Benoit of the University of North Dakota, an expert on things Franco-American. His Initiatives in French – Midwest is a fledgling but important organization to celebrate the French heritage in the Midwest.

Dr. Benoit re-enacting an important French-Canadian trader at old St. Joseph (Walhalla) ND 2008


I asked Dr. Benoit: “Is there a simple reason why the French did not support the Americans when, in the Revolutionary War period, the fledgling U.S. was interested in throwing the English out of power in Quebec?
I know nothing is simple, but perhaps there is a general answer.*”
Dr. Benoit responded almost immediately, and his succinct commentary is well worth sharing, and is shared with his permission.
Hi Dick,
“The Quebec Act of 1774 [Q Act] is often cited as the event which encouraged French-Canadians [F-Cs] to not revolt against the British in Canada in 1776. The Q Act gave F-Cs the freedom to practice their religion, customs and language.
The Q Act was a first in British governance towards its colonies. But the British were only a small minority in Quebec at the time. Maybe they felt they had to do it that way. They also knew they could lose the other thirteen colonies in North America and have no foothold in the New World. The F-C. also had no support from France by 1776. They also were afraid of being swallowed up by the neighboring anglo-saxon protestant culture, i.e. the new United States. As it were the Quebec Act gave them more protection as a defeated people than the unknown relationship with a nation-to-be.
With the defeat of 1760 [of France, by England at Quebec] the F-C society lost its upper class. Its leaders with political contacts went either back to France or had been lowered in status to common folk as far a political or social influence was concerned. The one class that rose quickly to exert influence in Quebec at this time was the clergy, which turned out to act very conciliatory toward the British. They [the clergy] interpreted the new situation stemming from the Quebec Act as one that guaranteed protection. They felt that as a conquered people the French-Canadians should be careful and appreciate that they had religious freedom as well as privileges to use French and customs as before the conquest in 1760. Over time, the clergy tied the privileges of religion and language together, saying that to keep French was also to be true to the Catholic faith.
These two “freedoms” became the clergy’s motto for keeping French-Canadians together, so to speak. The clergy fought migration to urban areas, such as Quebec City and Montreal which were very British and Protestant up until WWI. In short, the surrender of New France by France led to the seemingly paradoxical situation you are asking about. But the French of the former New France did not side with the Americans. It happened as you see because the common people of the former New France saw little hope, and their choice not to fight again was reinforced by the clergy. The common folk had fought the British invasion of 1760, but were in the end greatly outnumbered on the battle fields. They lost and along with the defeat, strategy (contacts with the homeland) and courage were also lost.
It would take the French Canadians until the 1970s to work their way back to a Quebec society that could be called contemporary to its counterparts in the world. Bravo. They did it. There was the Revolution of 1836 against British dominance in Quebec. It was stopped. There was the war’s act of Trudeau against Quebec in about 1968. It did not last. In all the rest of time and in all other arenas of civilized society the Quebec people have worked through parliament to regain equity with those who invaded and took their country away in 1760.
A final observation, invading armies can make war, but they can’t kill culture. It will surface and come back. In Quebec, not only has culture survived wars between gigantic superpowers and brutal scrimmages on the home front, but a rich government has been put into place and the country is dynamic today. Best to you.”
Virgil
* – At the time of the American Revolution, the French had already been established in what is now Quebec for 168 years. The founding of Quebec as a French Colony dates to 1608, with the major development beginning after 1630.

#255 – Dick Bernard: Au Revoir to Five Sisters

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The call came on Friday. It was unexpected only because I didn’t think I’d be in the communications loop.
Sister Victorine Long CSJ had passed away at Bethany Convent in St. Paul. She was 90. Her niece said she had a folder of assorted photos and letters for me – items which Sister Victorine had kept over the years.

I went to Sister’s funeral on Saturday, and her niece, Sister Lillian, gave me the folder which brought back many memories of not only Sister Victorine, but four of her colleagues at Bethany who had preceded her in death.
The six of us were occasional friends, sometime correspondents, infrequent lunch companions at Bethany, which is the home for elderly and disabled Nuns of the St. Paul Province of the Congregation of St. Joseph of Carondolet (CSJ). These are the Nuns who founded the College of St. Catherine and St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul and many others. They are a remarkable Order among many Orders.
For me, the relationship began in the early 1990s when a CSJ, Sr. Mary Henry Nachtsheim, CSJ, and I got to know each other in a French-Canadian Club, La Societe Canadienne-Francaise du Minnesota (LSCF). Sr. Mary Henry and I served on the Board of now-defunct LSCF. I doubt she had a lick of French blood, but she had a passion for things French, and her career was teaching French at the College of St. Catherine.
Before she died in 1995, Sr. Mary Henry introduced me to Sr. Ellen Murphy, CSJ, a remarkable poet, born and raised on a farm at Bachelors Grove ND. (See the poem at the end of this writing.) Hidden behind Sr. Ellen’s Irish name was her French-Canadian mother whose maiden name was Normand, and who grew up in the same community as my Grandmother, Oakwood ND. Sr. Ellen had a great interest in things French-Canadian. As she grew older, she took up residence at Bethany.
In turn, she introduced me to Sr. Ann Thomasine Sampson, CSJ, a resident of Bethany, and at the time I met her an historian completing a fascinating history of some of the powerful women who led the CSJ’s (“Seeds On Good Ground”, 2000).

Sr. Ellen Murphy and Sr. Ann Thomasine Sampson at Bethany Convent St. Paul MN July 1997


Ellen began to organize occasional and elegant formal luncheons for the three of us in the Bethany dining room. We had fascinating conversations about many things.
Ann Thomasine shared Ellen and my French-Canadian heritage, and while we never talked about it specifically, most certainly her family name, Sampson, while rooted for her in Minneapolis, also migrated to Oakwood, a community near Grafton ND.
Early on Wisconsin native Sr. Magdalen Schimanski, CSJ, joined the occasional table get-togethers. Like the others, Magdalene had been a CSJ for many years, and she, too, was a resident at Bethany. I knew her primarily in connection with the Art Department at the College of St. Catherine, which she had headed. Her art hangs in the reception parlor at Bethany and in our home as well. While she was not of the French-Canadian cloth, we all had a great deal to talk about in our every now and then lunches.

Sr. Magdalen's art at Bethany Convent, St. Paul MN


Sometime in 1999, Sr. Victorine Long joined the table. Word apparently had gotten around that a North Dakota native was lunching with the other Nuns. Not only was Victorine a North Dakotan, but she had grown up at the same time and same rural countryside (near Berlin ND) as my Aunt Edith. They were four months apart in age. Victorine, 79 when we met, had most recently been a medical professional in Jonestown, Mississippi during her “retirement”. Like the others, she had a quiet and very accomplished careerVictorine Long002.
Life went on, as did age, and my friends, all of whom had joined the CSJ order in the 1930s, slowly became more and more disabled. Sr. Victorine organized our last luncheons. Sr. Ellen was second to die in about 2004; then Sr. Ann Thomasine. The last time I visited Sr. Magdalene she was waiting for the release of death from her physical maladies. I walked down the hall that day and Sr. Victorine had no idea who I was – for her, her mind failed before her body. Sr. Magdalene passed away last year, and now Sr. Victorine is gone, and the luncheon table is empty for now.
When I viewed Victorine in the simple pine box at Bethany Chapel Saturday, I revisited and remembered some wonderful conversations with some wonderful ladies. I wonder how they’d comment on happenings today. They were far more than one-dimensional.
They are all at peace.
If I Am There
Sr. Magdelen Schimanski CSJ
in Sisters Today, March 2000, p. 90
Spring will go
and summer come.
Who will care
if I am there
when leaves fall
and then snow
softly covers all?
Saint Catherine’s Wood:
Reflections On An Autumn Scene
Sr. Ellen Murphy CSJ revised, 1994
We looked in wonder from southwestern slopes,
facing the wind, facing the guardian wood
where every shade and shape of leaf was moved
to catch our ears with murmurs, hold our gaze
with bronze, gold, crimson, russet leaves
the windswept boughs let fall
within our old and ravaged,
dear and criss-crossed wood. But then –
it’s true –
Progress brings need to dig and dump and plough
now here, now there – where ecosystems grew
fresh revelations of the Love we knew:
the bottle gentians, lupine, ferns and moss,
the owl and thrush, the moth and butterfly –
a myriad of those shy and gentle lives that must
thrive upon trust – all there on common ground
like you and me. Their lives a providence
of earth and sky and love and mystery.
Some trees are bent with burdens not their own.
Some stand tall and open as a prayer
that hasn’t yet received its sure response. Their
dignity, their strength will come to life
through temporal loss. Their life’s austerity in ways
like Monks whose spirits thrive through Lenten days.
What if today from every compass point
the Angels of the Earth called out, ‘Do not impair
the sole protection of the ozone layer. Do not unsheathe
the suns life-fostering rays; do not pollute
the vital air you breathe; your temporal light
that gives you such delight. Love meant all these to be,
with sheltering trees, the mainstays of your life.’
What if an Angel called to all of us in time
a louder, more peremptory ‘Wait! O, do not harm
the land, the sea, the trees! And then revealed
that God, our Love, will now make all things new:
our ravaged planet and polluted air, our ruined
ecosystems’ ecospheres. The stones
that tell our earths history, the song-birds’ bones.
All that we mourn for in our Guardian Wood.
All of creation that He looked upon
and found so good.

#249 – Dick Bernard: Beginning a family history

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Monday I mailed the family history of my Dad’s French-Canadian family.
It is a weighty tome. Its 500+ pages read 3 lb 9.4 oz on the post office scale. It represents my efforts to condense 400 years of several families French-Canadian history in North America. More info: here and here.
Whether the book turns out to be a ‘weighty tome’ in an intellectual or even family interest sense remains to be seen. Other ‘scales’ will measure that, and I have no control over them. I did my best, collecting information over the last 30 years, and during the last year attempting to organize and make some sense of it. Being a family in 2010 means, already, that I have sent books to California and New Jersey and Montreal and Winnipeg and Santa Fe and many other places. The family is hidden in plain sight, everywhere. Like a bunch of needles in a haystack.
Mine is an ordinary garden variety kind of family, like the vast majority of families who have built every nation and community in every era in history.
I built this history around the families of my Grandma and Grandpa’s root families: on one side, Bernard and Cote; on the other Collette and Blondeau. (I did a similar history of my mother’s ‘side’ some years ago.) My French-Canadians came from an era where French-Canadian married French-Canadian, and above that, lived in a French-Canadian culture in a French-Canadian community, speaking French. When my Dad was born in 1907, the fairly rigid ethnic boundaries were breaking down in northeastern North Dakota, but even so, when Grandpa died in 1957, a majority of the 116 names (usually the wife, it seems) who signed the book at his funeral in Grafton, North Dakota were French surnames, and some of the non-French surnames I know had French maiden names. That is how it was, then.
I like to think – again, the critics will be the judge – that this document I labored over for the last twelve months approaches the status of legitimate history.
Such histories are difficult for common people to do.
My roots families were farmers and grain millers and sometimes small merchants, and for the most part not very educated in the formal sense. There were no journals to quote from; no treasure trove of family letters found in somebodies attic; no scribes recording their daily activities.
Still, once one is identified as having an interest in the history of the family, information begins to accumulate, and it did, in my project. I gratefully acknowledge at least 37 people who had at one time or another over the 30 years provided information of one kind or another. And I was lucky in that this family had some sense that photographs might be useful in documenting its members.
Importantly, I could use stories about the French-Canadian experience gleaned from a newsletter I edited for over 15 years. There are about 50 of these in the book, presented as they were presented in the ‘cut and paste’ days of the 1980s, forward.
And now it’s done…at least for me. I shipped the several boxes that constitute the archives off to the University of North Dakota library, ready for some unknown researcher in the future.
I noted, in all of this, that people of my generation – I am 70 – are truly the final keepers of what can legitimately called ‘the old days’, before television, computers, rapid transportation and the like.
If memories are to be carried on, it is people like myself who are well advised to take on the task, now, before memory fails.

Dick Bernard and Family History Book September 28, 2010