Know how | In search of lost knowledge

During the pandemic, freelance journalist Eugénie Émond traveled across Quebec and eastern Canada to meet seniors. They spoke to him about their past, their present, their learning, and they revealed to him a part of their know-how. She has compiled their portraits (and their valuable advice) in the beautiful book Know how. Interview.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

The 20 elders you profiled all explained to you the a b c of one of their skills: stringing wood, predicting the weather, cooking bread or broth, sewing the bottom of pants, cutting a plant … Beyond their know-how, what did these encounters bring you?

What I wanted, first and foremost, was to meet older people to paint portraits of them. Even before their know-how, I was looking for stories, and I wanted to see how their past story could fit into their present. […] Since I met them, these people follow me on a daily basis. When I see something, or when something happens to me, I think of Molly, what she would have said, what she would have done. What these people have in common is a latent optimism which ensures that, in the face of adversity, in the face of life, they have a posture, an attitude. These are big, big lessons.

Your portraits are not watered down. You talk about the hardships that seniors have gone through. Lean periods, boarding schools for Aboriginals, illiteracy, uprooting, separations, the vagaries of married life… Does the knowledge of elders also come from these ordeals?

It comes almost entirely from adversity. […] When you tell a journalist about your life, at 85, 90, you recount the pivotal moments, when everything changed and you took another direction. It becomes tests, milestones. I am thinking, for example, of Thelma, 101, who lived in Halifax with her daughter Marilyn, whom she had abandoned when she was young. Thelma had a form of amnesia for the ordeals she had been through, and I like to think that for her it was a matter of survival.

You have taken a great interest in seniors, both in your studies (you have a master’s degree in gerontology) and in your career as a journalist. You write that you are often asked the reasons for this interest. What does this astonishment of people convey?

It is first of all a curiosity, which is not ill-intentioned, but which translates a form of uneasiness, of ignorance. And that proves that we have lost that link, that contact. Why wouldn’t I care? When I started as a journalist, I went to live in a residence for seniors in Lachute to shoot a documentary. Everyone was laughing at me. What are you going to do with the little old people? For 15 years, things have changed all the same, but we don’t see each other that much.

What are we depriving ourselves of by not being around each other?

In my twenties, I had anxiety, and it calmed me a lot to have access to elderly people. I think we deprive ourselves of putting the things we experience into perspective. We can learn a lot from them. Annette and André bought land in Saint-André-d’Argenteuil 45 years ago, and Annette had to do a lot of things to make ends meet. It was inflation at 20%, interest rates… Today, we may be approaching a recession, and it is important to take a step back to better understand what is happening to us and react better afterwards.

Your interest in old age comes from a very special friendship with a certain Madame Clémence… Who was Madame Clémence?

Madame Clémence was a great friend, whom I had met when I was doing my documentary series in Lachute. I slept in his residence. In the evening, I went to have a drink with her and confided my doubts, my fears. She was so warm and friendly. She said to me: “In Lachute, you always get good luck. It was there, moreover, that I met my current spouse. In all the choices I made, even during my delivery, I thought of her. He’s kind of become my guardian angel. And it was above all a friendship. I laughed a lot with her. My daughter’s name is Clémence, and it’s because of her.

You write that she even taught you how to live, grow old and die. It’s not trivial.

That’s what it does, the proximity to seniors: I think we end up playing down old age and, by extension, death. One day, I went to visit Madame Clémence in the hospital, and I noticed that she was dying. It was an experience and I am very happy to have lived it. It calmed down a lot of things for me. I know today that it can stop now, and that it is also correct.

Know-how – Stories, tools and wisdom from our grandparents

Eugenie Emond

Cardinal

280 pages