All summer long, we will be offering you forays into libraries across Quebec to discover their little-known treasures, on unusual themes. This week, we are exploring the archives centres of ten regions of Quebec, where 70 kilometres of unpublished documents trace the history of Quebec. Incursion into the archives of the Outaouais region.
In the black and white photo, about a hundred women and a few men look at the camera in front of the Allumière Canada Match in Outaouais. But who is the one hamming it up a bit on the right? Or that other one, her hands carefully placed on her crossed legs, in the very centre? Recently, the Outaouais regional archives centre, with the city of Gatineau, put out a call to the public to establish a list of the names, first names and years of work of the matchmakers and matchmakers who worked at the Eddy Match, the Allumière Canada Match and the Allumière Fédérale Match.
In fact, this year, the Outaouais is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the first lockout, followed by a strike, of the match workers of EB Eddy, these women of the region whose income supplemented that of the men, who worked instead in the seasonal wood industry.
These matchboxes have marked the history of the Outaouais, but also the history of Quebec in general. And the approach of the Outaouais Regional Archives Centre and the City of Gatineau clearly shows what role archives can play in our lives.
“We talk more often about Donalda Charron, the first woman to chair a union in Quebec, who is the best known, but there are others,” says Jacinthe Duval, head of the National Archives centre in Gatineau, which is part of the BAnQ network. “They ultimately lost their jobs. And the company also left in the end, because it no longer had the support of the population.”
Unlike libraries, archives centres collect photos, documents, etc., that have never been published, and therefore exist in only one copy. In the network of 10 regional centres of the National Archives, scattered throughout the province, we also find all government documents and court archives.
“There were a lot of labour movements in Outaouais, it’s a working-class region,” notes Jacinthe Duval. This archives centre has inherited significant funds relating to labour movements, but also to the wood industry, and the advent of theatre in this part of the country.
Forgotten professions
In one photo, three men stand on a log, gaffs in hand. The photo was taken on the Petite-Nation River in the Outaouais region in the 1920s and comes from the Chénéville Festival Committee collection. It is a souvenir of log driving, a once-ubiquitous trade on Quebec rivers that has now been forgotten. In another photo, part of the James MacLaren Company collection, a smiling lumberjack is washing his clothes in a tub outside in the middle of winter.
The writer Francine Ouellette used these archives extensively to document her series of novels. Firewhich goes upstream of the Haute-Lièvre, the epic river of the Outaouais, and traces the history of the region. In a capsule from the Fabrique culturelle, she tells of following the story of Jos Montferrand, who became the foreman of the “cageux”, the men who floated the square timber, an assembly of logs, on the rivers to take them to Quebec.
“The regional centres and those of BAnQ complement each other,” says Andrée Bastien, from the Outaouais regional archives centre. “We collect the funds of people who have distinguished themselves at the regional level. The BAnQ national archives in Gatineau are interested in people from Outaouais who have had an impact throughout Quebec.”
Forgotten conflicts
The history of the James MacLaren Company in Outaouais is also that of a deadly labour conflict, where two men from the union’s executive committee, Thomas Bélanger and François Thériault, were killed in 1906, probably by private detectives hired by the company. However, the MacLaren Company was acquitted of these murders.
For more information, it is possible to consult the archive centres, which also hold the judicial archives and the details of the major trials recorded there.
“From what I can see, the documents from the MacLaren trial are located in our Quebec City centre, where they can be consulted. [Fonds E17 ministère de la Justice — Dossiers civils et criminels]. On the other hand, we have here the prison registers in which we can find information on the prisoners in this case (or these cases, rather). We also have all the company’s correspondence, relating to the events before, during and after the strike. We can see, among other things, the hiring of the detective firm that was to protect the company’s facilities during the events,” says Jacinthe Duval.
Some trials recorded in the archives date back to the time of New France.
“For the trials, we will make a selection,” explains Valérie D’Amour, director of regional archives centres for Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. “We will not have all the trials, but for the trials that we keep, we keep them in full. We have the docket books, which are the summaries of all the cases.”
BAnQ’s archives centres also record everything relating to government archives.
“There are different scenarios. For the BAnQ national archives, the first source of archives is by transfer. That’s what we receive from ministries and public bodies. The state archives, finally. The ministries, in particular, have an obligation, under the Archives Act, to transfer them to us,” adds Valérie D’Amour.
BAnQ archives centres are located in Rimouski, Gaspé, Trois-Rivières, Saguenay, Rouyn-Noranda, Sept-Îles, Sherbrooke and Gatineau. The centres in Montreal and Quebec City are larger and employ more staff.
Genealogical research
It is in Montreal that, for example, the personal archives bequeathed by Pauline Marois and Janette Bertrand are stored, as well as by a host of other important figures in the history of Quebec.
“It can encompass the entire life of an individual,” says Valérie D’Amour. It can include personal correspondence, youth photos, and information about the public life of individuals.
But genealogical research tops the list of requests for consultation at BAnQ’s archives centres. “We have very relevant information for this research,” says Valérie D’Amour. The centres hold civil status records, on births, marriages and deaths, which can be filed as legal evidence in court, in cases of divorce for example. On the BAnQ website, the Advitam application allows you to navigate through digitized archives. But you still have to know how to use it, to probe the countless documents listed by BAnQ.
In paper alone, there are 70 kilometers of documents, arranged vertically, recorded there, not to mention photographs, videos, and architectural drawings. All of it tells the story of Quebec, even in its forgotten episodes.