A Letter to Antoine

Antoine, my dearest Antoine,

    Like parts of a jigsaw puzzle, I now have your life's story complete. Some pieces will be missing forever, their places blank, filled in only by my imagination.

    I know that you were a coureur de bois, which during the French Regime meant someone who traded without a license.   It is not difficult for me to imagine you running the rapids, standing in the stern of a three-man canoe, guiding your craft down the white water through a passage no more than several feet wide.  One false stroke or too weak a turn of your wrist at the critical moment would mean disaster.  You signal your companions, there is no time for thought as your canoe speeds into the eddying rush.  Faster and faster you go, your eyes trying to absorb the rushing scene, the rocks, the big green cone of water, the tumultuous rising and sinking of the foaming waves.  The smooth-running pools suddenly open into great gurgling chasms and you give your paddle a convulsive twist, stabbing air instead of water.  Your craft speeds ahead through the raging rapids and down a chute with the power of a thundering stampede of horses.  Did you have a sense of dizzy, breathless intoxication?

    My obsession with you started in 1967, Canada's centennial year.  Like others in the village of Pine Grove in Vaughan Township, Ontario, our family took part in community projects.  Caught up in centennial fever I wondered how many generations there were of my husband's Canadian ancestors.  Who was the first Leduc to arrive in New France?

    Consulting the Quebec National Archives, I traced back nine generations and found you, Antoine.  Your name jumped out at me from the 1666 census of Cap-de-la-Madeleine, near Trois-Rivieres.  I began tracing your movements and activities.  I visited the farm at Cap-de-la-Madeleine where you worked.  I learned about your earlier departure from Normandy.  marvelling at your daring, I decided to search further and document your life.   

    Back at the Quebec archives I found unpublished documents and notary records---boxes and boxes of files.  Soon, part of seventeenth century Canada lay in fragments before me on the table tops.  I held my breath as the past moved under my fingertips.  Although only one side of each quill-written page was filled, the archaic French writing was difficult to read and sometimes I automatically turned over a page hoping it would spill unexpected data.

    Eventually, Antoine, documents from various archives provided vivid glimpses of your life.  I strolled through your fields at harvest time and poked my nose into your granaries.  You once bought a three-year-old pregnant black cow on credit, paying 20 livres for three consecutive years.  Your homestead at Grondines, upriver from Quebec, was 80 arpents (approximately the same as today's acres) in size, and you were obliged to pay 40 sous in silver and two capons each year as your seigneurial dues.

    I now looked upon you as a dear friend, no longer just a name in some corner of the archives.  Visits to the areas where you once resided gave me an understanding of you and the century in which you lived.  You farmed in several settlements on both sides of the St. Lawrence River, but you were restless and several times cancelled previously made contracts with seigneurs.

    It became clear to me that you had a taste for adventure.  You made your own birchbark canoe and learned to paddle it up and down the waterways with matchless prowess as you turned to the fur trade.   On journeys to distant Indian tribes, in which hardships and thrills were about equally combined, you bartered merchandise and eau-de-vie (brandy) for furs.   Squatting, legs cramped, and surrounded by bales of goods or furs, you paddled hour after hour from dawn to dusk, pausing occasionally to smoke your pipe.  Gnawing hunger, paralyzing fatigue, the mute cruelties of nature at its harshest all failed to kill your zest.  Blithely disregarding restrictions, you became an outlaw as you voyaged and traded under the threat of fines, imprisonment, and even death.

Like many of your contemporaries, you were among the most colourful figures in Canadian history, but you have remained unknown to all but a few.  You were illiterate and history tends to overlook those who left no written account of their exploits.  But you brought romance and colour to this land.   I want to acknowledge that, to do justice to your memory, and I want to thank you.   You are an unsung contributor to our culture, an obscure hero who fought battles, interpreted for Indians and Europeans and, as an ardent canoeist, helped to bring half a continent into a modern age.

    It has often been a tedious task delving into the past.  Yet, I know that it was you, and the likes of you, who opened up this continent, reaching as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.  I want to know how you lived, what you hoped for, what you feared, what it was like to live in your time---I want to add your adventures to the pages of history.  You did things few people today would think of doing.

    Being raised a Catholic, I read with interest about the political involvement of the Catholic Church in seventeenth-century New France and how you were affected by the feud between Governor Frontenac and Bishop Laval.  The weakness of the Governor when it came to controlling the coureurs de bois and stopping the barter of eau-de-vie was the result of the government's dependence on the fur trade as its chief source of revenue.

    You did certain things of which I would not always have approved.  Edicts were proclaimed against you, your partners, and the merchants who furnished your supplies.  Ordinances were made against persons who knew of your whereabouts but would not inform the authorities.   But deterrents and penalties counted for nothing compared to the attraction of adventure, and you continued your illicit traffic in furs and brandy.

    Eventually, the authorities gave you an ultimatum:  either you married within two weeks after the arrival of the ships that carried the filles du roi (girls sent by Louis XIV to populate the colony) or you were not allowed to leave the settlement.  That is when you decided to get married, choosing Jeanne in 1671, an orphan, for your wife.  Like the 8oo or so other filles du roi, her journey was financed by France's royal treasury.  I identified with Jeanne when I learned she had embarked for this distant land knowing little of what to expect.  Almost 300 years later I, too, had set out on a similar journey, at government expense, crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Queen Mary with a thousand other Canadian war brides.

    In the course of time you became father to three children.  Then, in 1682, you sold two bulls and made a will leaving 500 livres (an amount equal to the price of 3 small cottages) to your wife.  Were you planning another voyage?  Indeed!  But this time your voyage was legal and I did not have to  worry about bout your being caught.  Governor Frontenac was now granting fur trading permits to 25 seigneurs each year.  They formed partnerships, equipped canoes and hired men.  The notary record revealed that you were to set off with five others for the Great Lakes.  You and your companions each had permission to carry a musket, one white blanket, a hood, four shirts and a pair of leggings to trade for profit.

    I became familiar with the early fur trading routes, and discovered that, in order to avoid twenty portages along the Ottawa and French River from Montreal to Georgian Bay, you had paddled to Lake Ontario.   You and your comrades stopped at Teiaiagon (now Baby Point in Toronto) where you were attacked by the Senecas--but kept your scalps!  Continuing, you had to portage along the east bank of the Humber River because it was crammed with beaver dams.  You reached Georgian Bay and the island of Michilimackinac.  Singing folk songs to the dip of your paddle--forty-five to forty-eight strokes a minute--you had covered thousands   of lieues. (equaling three kilometers).

    One day, as I gathered this information, a kind of tingling ran through my body.  I knew I was at the intersection of two stories--the vertical story of the past and the horizontal story of the present.  I needed to look at the map of Teiaiagon again to confirm what my intuition had already told me.  You had traveled along the Humber River which ran right behind our home in Pine Grove, Ontario.  Now you had really come to life for me.   

    I had problems finding your birthplace, Antoine.  Believing that you were born in Louvetot, near Caudebec-en-Caux on the banks of the Seine River, I  visited there; but their records showed no trace of you or your relatives.  I kept writing letters to France.  No longer searching for an elderly ancestor, or a friendly neighbour, I was now searching for an infant--my child.  Finally, after several years, I learned from the archives' director in Rouen that there was another Louvetot in the region, a hamlet with only a few homes.   Situated halfway between Dieppe and Rouen, this Louvetot had, years ago, been amalgamated with a neighbouring village called Grigneuseville.

    Recently the square in front of the church was dedicated to you and now bears a plaque with your name.   Afterwards, French authorities had the church renovated and declared a historic monument.

    In the summer of 1994, fifty (of the thousands and thousands) of your North American descendants went on a pilgrimage to Louvetot.  As we gathered under a calm gray sky in front of the church, strong gusts of wind made us gasp for air.  Was it your spirit, Antoine?  Were you giving us a sign?  Later, at a festive dinner attended by more than a hundred guests, I was honoured for my research accomplishments and presented with a plaque.  I had never imagined that this reunion would take place.

    According to the history books you died on one of your voyages.  But where?  Had your comrades erected the usual wooden cross to mark your resting place?  When would I be able to put you to rest?

It was the summer of 1687.   Nearly 3,000 men converged in the sheltered harbour of Irondequoit Bay on Lake Ontario.  You and your companions were trading a Michilimackinac when you received Governor Denonville's orders.  The Governor, bringing French regulars and militia, arrived the same day as contingents of Christian Indians and coureurs de bois approached from the west.  The timing was perfect to attack the enemy Senecas, who quickly retreated.

    Afterwards you returned to Michilimackinac to pick up your furs.  You were eager to get home before the weather changed.  From Georgian Bay you entered the mouth of the French River and battled the current as you were pursued by wandering Senecas.  Did you slip on the bare wet rocks as you portaged at the rapids?  Or were you attacked by the Senecas?  I will never know.

    Antoine, it has been many weeks since I looked at my manuscript, but recently I have picked it up again.  I am in awe at the sheer bulk of research material that I have collected about you.  Now that I know about your death, I must set down those elements essential to completing your tale.  I will try to recapture your inner world and fill in the remaining gaps to finish the last pages of my story.  Even after it is done I shall always remember the years we spent together.  I will miss you.

    Yours truly,

    Adrienne Leduc

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