Chapter1. My Childhood on the Ile d'Orléans

Chapter 1

My Childhood on the L’Isle D’Orleans, Québec, Canada

Born in NYC

I was born in Washington Heights at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, NYC, NY. My mother lived with her grandmother, Sarah Baker, along with my father, in a brownstone on 179thstreet in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge. My parents lived in an apartment that took up the first floor, my grandparents on the second floor, and my great-grandmother lived on the third floor with my Uncle Arnold.  My maternal grandmother, Marian, passed away before I was born.

Since both of my parents devoted their full attention to advancing their careers, my primary caretaker ended up being my great-grandmother, Sarah Baker, who was eight-six years old at the time. She also looked after my older brother who was a few years older than myself. When I was three months old, my father’s mother, Alice, who we called Mémé, traveled from Québec, Canada to visit Manhattan, New York City. My aunt and uncles came along as well. In later years, my father’s sister, Diane, told me that they saw that I was not flourishing as a newborn when they visited. Mémé told my parents that it was too much for Sarah to take care of two little ones at the age of eighty-six and so I went up to Québec at Six months old. 

Leaving for Canada

My parents decided that my older brother and I would return to Québec with Mémé to live with my two uncles and aunt there. My parents were to send money to support us, but they did not send it on a regular basis. I lived with my father’s family in Quebec for over five years. My first language was French, the French that was spoken in the 16th century at the time of French playwright, Moliere. 

In Quebec, French Canada, we lived in several house and wound up in an old house bordering St. Famille and St. François village on the Île d’Orléans. The house was owned by the Nadeau family, an old family from that area. My Mémé and Jean Nadeau were a couple, my grandfather Joseph having left the family some years ago, and Meme’s second husband, Mr. Guerard had left too.  My Aunt Diane and two younger uncles were twin boys from Mr. Guerard. Sadly, I never met my grandfather. 

Although it was not optimal to be away from my NYC parents at such a young age and in Quebec, being away from my parents was what saved me as my parents were not around. 

I have some very special childhood memories that last an entire lifetime. The historical patriarch of father's family was Nicolas Gendron, who had immigrated in the 1640s from Île de Ré, an island off the Atlantic coast of France. Gendron’s wife, Marthe, came from Reims, France. They were the first couple married at the church in St. Famille on the Island of Orleans (L’Isle D’Orleans) in the mid-1600s. 

On the First Nations side of our heritage, our Wendat patriarch ancestor was Nicolas Arendanki, who was killed in action at the destruction of Huronia in 1649 by the Iroquois. Jeanne Otrinohandet-Otrihouandit (1630-1654), Nicolas’ wife, and daughter Catherine escaped first to Christian Island, and then took refuge on the L’Isle D’Orleans. 

Life in rural Québec, Canada

We lived in an old house with two chimneys and three floors that was built from fieldstones and was located on the border of the parish of St. Famille and St. Francois.  The house was three stories high on a parcel of land that stretched from the Chemin Royale Street to the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The first floor of the house was semi-submerged into the earth to provide additional insulation from the cold. This was where we had our living room and kitchen. My uncles cut firewood for the large walk-in fireplace and the wood burning stove in the kitchen. The second floor had bedrooms and the attic had alcoves and space where my brother and I slept in the warm months in spring and summer. There was an orchard in the back of the house with over fifty apple trees. The orchard stretched from the house on Chemin Royale down to the St. Lawrence riverbank. Apple seeds and trees were introduced to Acadie (Nova Scotia) in 1633 by the French. These apple trees were a blessing. When I wanted a snack, I would go out to the orchard and climb the tree for some apples. My grandma made apple pies from these apples. Everything was natural and there were sometimes a few tents of worms in the apple trees that my uncles would manually take down. A few worm holes or bird bites in apples was not bothersome, I ate around these.

About St. Famille village, founded in 1661. The Huron Wendat call the island “Minigo” (meaning “Enchantress”) because of its charm. Chemin Royale road circled around the island, which is forty miles around. There are six villages in all: St. Famille, St. Pétronille, St. Pierre, St. Laurent, St. Jean, and St. François.  

Our cow, “Bootsy”

My recollections between the ages of four and six on the Isle of Orleans are vivid. There was the time that my Uncle Henri and Uncle Gaston brought a milk cow home. I asked Uncle Gaston where the cow came from, and he said that we had “borrowed” her. They put our new milk cow in a small shed filled with hay that is still located near the house. 

We named this cow “Bootsy” because she was temperamental around children and would kick over the milk bucket when my brother and I were in her shed. Bootsy kicked me with her hind leg when I tried to milk her. I was told to wrap my small hands around the udder to squeeze milk into the pail. She flattened back her ears in disapproval and kicked over the bucket and the small stool I was sitting on. 

During the time Bootsy lived with us, she provided milk for the entire family. After we had her for two years, she disappeared one day. I asked what happened to her, and Uncle Henri said she had become “beefsteaks.” I liked to believe that she had been returned to her original owners. We also traded milk for other provisions from our neighbors in a bartering system. My older brother and I were tasked to walk to our neighbor’s farm and trade a pail of milk for eggs. Further down from the farm was the Blouin Boulangerie bread and patisserie store (it is still there today). Often, we were told to pick up a sack of flour there and return home. 

It took a long time to walk on these errands because the Blouin Boulangerie where we delivered a pail of milk was about a mile away. It was a long dusty walk. At the neighbor’s farm, our first stop with a pail of milk, there were cows, chickens and roosters. My brother Jan became frustrated with our routine and long trek several times a week. He concocted a plan to steal a chicken from the neighbors, his thinking that a chicken would lay eggs at home. 

One day, we arrived at the neighbor’s farm and my brother managed to chase around a rooster and trap him in our empty milk pail. We had just delivered a pail of milk. We walked back home along the main road Chemin Royale with the rooster squawking in the pail the whole way. After we arrived back home, we put the milk pail upside down over the rooster in the backyard, trapping it underneath. The rooster squawked so loudly that Uncle Henri heard the noise and commotion all the way inside the house. He came outside and saw the milk pail and lifted the pail off the rooster. The rooster was fighting mad. Uncle Henri grabbed the rooster out of the pail, secured his legs together with some rope, and then insisted that we all walk back to the neighbor’s farm to apologize and return the rooster. At the farm we did apologize and went back to delivering a pail of milk a few times a week until Bootsy no longer was in our shed. We also brought eggs back home after each delivery. We learned the hard way that roosters do not lay eggs.

Living off the land

After the long and brutal cold winter, we looked forward to the summer when Mémé would make tarts, pies, and beignets (small donuts with jam inside sprinkled with powdered sugar) to sell to tourists. The tourists would stop by our little table positioned on Chemin Royale in front of our house. Chemin Royale is the main road that circles the island. Although Mémé made the tarts and pies to sell, she also made confiture (jam) that she sealed in glass jars with wax and lids. She had a very large pot of oil in which she cooked the beignets, which are small round donuts filled with confiture.  My brother and I were tasked to pick strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries around our house and at our neighbors too. They were in abundance around the island and today the Island is famous for their fresh berries and delicious apples. Meme gave each of us a basket during the summer and early fall and were told to go into the fields around the house and forage for berries. When we returned to the house with our baskets, Mémé would note that my brother’s basket was full of berries, but that mine was almost empty. I ate most of the berries while out foraging. She never seemed upset though. While picking berries we wandered off sometimes onto the farms near the house. ON such an occasion, one day my brother and I came across two magnificent horses in a pasture. One black and the other white. My brother Jan tried to approach one of the horses who was startled and reared up. A farmer came out of the house next to the pasture with a rifle and shouted at us to get off his land. We were frozen in fear on the spot. That is when I felt my Uncle Henri’s arms around my waist. He lifted me up in one arm, and my brother in his other arm, and ran off down the road back to our house. It was then that I became aware that my uncles watched over us when we wandered off.

The rainbow

A cherished memory I have is of a rainbow arched over the St. Lawrence River that streamed through the attic where my brother and I were sleeping. It was in the early morning when the rainbow appeared because the house was on the Island and close to the riverbank. When I woke up and saw the rainbow in the attic, I jumped out of my bed. I ran through the different colors in the room, watching the colors change on my arms and legs.  

My brother woke up when he heard me running around, and we both ran around the room together. I looked out the attic window to the front of the house and saw that the rainbow had ended on the steps right at the front door. We both ran out of the attic and climbed down the wrought iron circular stairs to the front of the house. In the open doorway of the house, I saw Uncle Henri. He laughed and enjoyed the sight of the rainbow. It lasted about ten minutes before fading. He told us the legend that there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. We did not find any gold that morning, but interestingly, both my brother and I became artists.

Winter and the Spring thaw

The winter on the Island was severe. Snow would accumulate almost up to the roof of the house. I recall that we drove down to Manhattan, Washington Heights for Christmas for a week or so to visit my parents. On the island we stayed inside and moved our cots to the first floor where we slept in front of the big fireplace. There was plenty to eat and salted or canned meat had been put away in the shed outside where it was kept cold. One winter I recall my uncles prepared to go into the cellar to see what was down there. The cellar was a no-go zone as there were river rats down there. The St. Lawrence river rats were big, very big and scary. If cornered, they would put up a fight. Both of my uncles went down into the cellar, and I heard a lot of shouting and a ruckus when they finally appeared at the top of the stairs going down. They slammed the door to the cellar shut and said that the there were many rats down there. I had seen river rats along the banks of the St. Lawrence river which was at the end of the orchard. I rarely wandered over to the riverbank. In the cellar they had found a bottle or two of wine. At the dining table we had a big glass bottle that held about two to three gallons (eleven liters) of wine. My brother and I drank a watered-down version of the wine at meals. The family bought the wine in big bottles.

About the St. Lawrence river, it is the third largest river in North America starting at Lake Superior and ending in the Atlantic Ocean. It is immense coming in from the Great Lakes and ending at Atlantic Ocean estuary north of the Island. One can see whales, dolphins, sturgeon weighing hundreds of pounds, and salmon among other fish and wildlife on the St. Lawrence. The river starts to freeze from December/January to March. When the river starts to thaw is when one hears loud cracking noises throughout the day and night. The ice on the river breaks up in spring; big chunks of ice looking like small glaciers coursing down the river. I could hear the ice breaking up at all hours at night from the house, and during the day. Until 1935, the island was originally accessible only by ferry or by an ice bridge during the winter. In  1935 the Taschereau Bridge, now called the Île d'Orléans Bridge, from Quebec City to the Island was built.