The Month of La Francophonie and International Francophonie Day with Catherine Leroux

In addition to being Women's History Month, March is The Month of La Francophonie (also called Francophonie month), a time to celebrate French language and culture. March 20th, which I have missed by a day, is International Francophonie Day, again celebrating the language and, also, supporting language diversity. The date corresponds with the anniversary of the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation in 1970 in Niger, formed to work toward Francophone cooperation. 

This year's theme for International Francophonie Day is Je m'éduque, donc j'agis (look I got the accent marks in!), which means I educate myself, therefore I act. This tends to be my personal mantra (in the sene of a repeated statement rather than a sound to aid meditation), anyway, and it seems hugely appropriate for the times we live in, whether you're talking language or anything else. 

I have observed La Francophonie Month a couple of times here at Original Content. This year I read the L'Avenir by French Canadian author Catherine Leroux. And I read the English language version, The Future, translated by Susan Ouriou, because my French reading involves picking out words here and there in, say, the intro paragraph of a magazine article. Reading a novel is way beyond me. 

A Couple of Preliminary Thoughts

The French cover is much better 

Some people have raised the question of reading works in translation. Have you read the original, at all, if you've read a translated version? Or are you reading the translator's version? I can't answer that. I'm just saying I'm aware that reading French in translation raises that question.

In Ghost Empire: How the French Almost Conquered North America author Philip Marchand writes that at some point French Canadians were viewed (by nonFrench Canadians, I guess) as being jolly, fun-loving folk. This was never my perception of my Franco-American family. Many of them died young and that's not including my uncle, Joseph Elie, who lived four hours (I do a bit of genealogical research) and his three siblings who didn't even make it that long. There was a cousin who survived his military experience in Korea only to be killed on the way home when his military plane crashed. Growing up, I heard stories about aunts or uncles coming home from family funerals, answering a phone, and hearing the voice of the recently deceased or harp music. My father and his Franco-American buddies he'd grown up with would sit at the kitchen table and talk about how the Bible says the world will end ("Soon") and where the next war would be fought ("Here.)

My point being, I was well prepared for the dark world of the French living in Fort Detroit, The Future's setting. (Couldn't manage the accent mark there.)

The Future as a Dystopian Novel

Having read Ghost Empire and knowing how far south French explorers and settlers made it onto what would become the United States also set me up to find the basic premise of this both alternative history and dystopian fiction very believable. In the world of The Future, Fort Detroit is a French city, having never been taken over by the British or ending up with the Americans. A character explains that Poles, Irish, and Italians did come to Fort Detroit because they could practice their Catholic religion there. But the Catholic churches, schools, and hospitals encouraged them to learn French, and that was why French survived there, even after Ontario banned French education in 1912. (That really happened, though the ban was lifted in 1944.)  Nonetheless, I don't know how invested American readers reading this in English will become in the French aspect of the book. While there certainly is a very specific culture in Fort Detroit, I don't know that English readers will recognize anything particularly French about it, though some of the characters speak in particular way. "How d'ya explain them leavin' the Francophones in peace for the next hundred years?" The children have an even more distinct manner of speaking that may be a French patois, in terms of its structure. (That's a wild guess.) If we were French readers reading this in French, however, we'd have no doubt we were in a French world. 

But there are many other fascinating things here for us English-speaking folks.

Fort Detroit has fallen on very hard times. Houses are abandoned. People with money who got out, got out. There is not much police presence or help from them. Things are so bad that someone runs a bus tour "Decouvrez les ruines de Fort Detroit." We see this kind of thing for traditional real world old forts all the time, but this bus drives/tears through the area where are characters live. These people are left to band together to help each other.  A former musician now runs greenhouses and gardens. A nurse runs a clinic in his house.

It almost seems post-apocalyptic, except there was no apocalyptic event here, which is a fascinating part of this story. Economically, things start going bad in the 60s when the WASPs and Americans are doing well, but everyone else lived in slums with immigrants "coralled in districts that were built too fast and went up in flames at the slightest spark." Blacks were banned from living outside their own district.  "White Francos had more freedom to move around, but like the other proles, they lived among the rats and got saddled with the dirty jobs." There were strikes, demonstrations, and a rebellion. The rich left with their businesses, and the poor were left with unemployment, pollution, a bankrupt city. Oh, and drugs. Lots of drugs.

This is the kind of thing that could really happen. I'm sure some would argue that there are places where it is happening.

The Children of The Future 

I didn't realize that the bulk of the people we see in the first section of The Future are older, until we got to the second section, where the children are. In Fort Detroit, many children are orphaned by drugs and some really bad parenting, and they escape to live together in a park within the city.  They have their own, you might say, administrative structure, with their own manner of speaking. Social services is another thing Fort Detroit doesn't have, and these kids are free to live or die as they will. We (by which I mean I) slowly realize that this children's world has been leaking into and out of the adult world of the city that we've been reading about.

I found this section difficult at first. There are a lot of kids, and they all have strange names. There is a sense that there is a Lord of the Flies thing going on here or a lost boys (in this case children) of Peter Pan. There's some magical realism here, too, something I'm not usually very fond of.

But I was won over by these very young people who in many ways are stronger than the grownups in the city.

The Mystery of The Future

Gloria, our protagonist, has come to Fort Detroit because her daughter, a drug addict, was murdered there after which her grandchildren disappeared. Gloria is there to look for those girls who, for all she knows, are dead, too. It is her foray into the children's park to look for them that eventually brings the children and adult worlds together. 

En Conclusion  

The Future is a somewhat demanding book, in the very best sense of the word. Leroux has written other books I'm now interested in, and she's won awards for her translation of other writers' work. 

I may have a favorite French Canadian writer now. 

 

"We Talk French Here." A John the Baptist Day Post.

Today is the real John the Baptist Day, a holiday in Canada celebrating francophone language and culture. (It's observed in other French countries as well.) I say it is the real John the Baptist Day, because our family, which has only been observing it for five or six years, did so on Saturday, not the real day, with a cookout. 

Mes pauvres galettes

Part of our celebration of French culture was the Galettes a la Melasse Moelleuses a L'Ancienne I made. From a French recipe. Which I did not translate, except for the occasional word. Like moelleuses, which means "soft." I threw away all but three of those cookies yesterday. I have no idea how they tasted, because I have a gluten free batch for me. Next year I want a bonfire. I've heard that's a very John the Baptist Day thing to do, and we could try making s'mores for dessert. That whole scenario might go over better. 

John the Baptist Day was quite an event in nineteenth century Montreal. Not so much the south of New England today or maybe anywhere else in the U.S. How little interest is there in this holiday? There's Not Going To Be A St. John The Baptist Day Parade This Year, Eli is among my very least read pieces on the Medium platform. People on bed rest won't read this thing.

Some John the B Day Reading

As part of my personal John the Baptist Day observance, I've been reading The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories by Roch Carrier, a French Canadian writer. Carrier is a prolific author, including work for children. I haven't finished this book yet, but these stories may be children's stories (a child narrator, certainly), similar to the Soup books by Robert Newton Peck. Both portray child life in the past, though my superficial reading about the authors suggests Carrier's writing may be more authentic. (Excusez-moi while I pause to say I've always had major issues with the claims that Peck's nonSoup book, A Day No Pigs Would Die, is autobiographical or even semi-autobiographical, because of the Shakers-in-Vermont element. In short, they weren't.)

An encyclopedia.com article says (and I've seen this elsewhere) that Carrier is best known for writing le conte, or very short stories, which is what the stories in the collection I'm reading are. When I first saw this, I thought, Quoi? Are we talking French Canadian flash fiction? The encyclopedia.com article says of his work, "In a few hundred words a grotesque situation is exploited, a miniature moral is drawn, and an ironic commentary on human foibles is neatly and forcefully made." I would add that there are also sometimes some minor fantasy elements. Flash fiction? Northern magical realism?

The miniature moral aspect of some of these stories is my least favorite part. However, I'm liking the way the stories are set in a French-speaking world in an unspecified past. I'm not interested in anything like nostalgia, but the issue of the parents' concerns over English being taught and what the Anglais who runs Eatons will think make these things pop for me. 

The story The Hockey Sweater is supposed to be a huge deal in both French- and English-speaking Canada. I may have to read it again. So far What Language Do Bears Speak?, which I quote in my post title, is my favorite. 

Since I'm focusing my own writing on short work now, reading these short stories and reading about le conte has been, and will continue to be, thought-provoking. I like to think it could have some impact on my work.

UPDATE: When I promoted this post on X, I saw how beloved the short story The Hockey Sweater (there is also a picture book version) is and how well-known Roch Carrier is in Canada. So I decided I should try to figure out how to pronounce his name. I stumbled upon the man himself speaking, explaining how it's said.