The stories told about my grandmother Madeleine are many and varied and mostly colourful. The most colourful and varied of these are those she told herself. I heard a lot of them before she died because she told us all stories when we were growing up and later I asked for more. I’m writing these… [Read more…]
August 17, 2011
Alphonsine and Pierre’s thirteenth and last child was my great-grandmother Florence. Her twelve siblings had dark hair and eyes and strong features from their father. They were tall and strong-looking. Florence had dark hair but was built delicately, had a finer complexion and pale grey eyes. There were rumours about this last baby. The most… [Read more…]
July 6, 2011
The next step in my plan for writing this book based on my grandma’s family is to spend a few months in the USA and Canada pounding out a first draft. I can’t in good conscience write about a place unless I know what it smells like and how the air feels. Reading and photos and videos will… [Read more…]
May 4, 2011
My grandmother’s grandmother was married at sixteen, widowed by thirty-five, and remarried by forty. Take a moment to catch your breath. Her second husband’s name was Leandre. My grandma always gave me the impression that Alphonsine found him annoying but livable. He was a well-off merchant in the town nearest to the farm she had… [Read more…]
April 5, 2011
One of the things delaying my working on my grandma’s biography is that I’ve had trouble with the idea of writing about a real person. I have trouble with what’s true, what’s important, how to tell a story that other people actually remember bits of. Once I transcribed that first lot of tapes of my… [Read more…]
March 2, 2011
This post is the second in a series I’ve started about my Quebecois family history. (The first one is here.) At this point, I’m planning on posting once a month. It will probably be ten or fifteen posts in all. It is partly preparation for novelising some of the stories I know and partly because… [Read more…]
January 24, 2011
It occurred to me recently that I come from a long line of storytellers. There are no published authors or poets or journalists in the family tree, just people who tell stories, some true, some less so, mostly greatly embellished. We like to tell stories about each other to each other and everyone has a favourite tale.
September 14, 2011
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