Behind a whole part of the United States are the traces left by adventurers, coureurs des bois, artists, entrepreneurs, lumberjacks, Franco-American, Creole or French-Canadian métis travelers whose names have sometimes been altered and history obliterated. At the time of the American presidential elections, the series Destins Américains invites you to follow the trail of some of the characters of a forgotten Franco-America.
It was a curious and solemn procession that, on the morning of July 14, 1933, headed to the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery. The man they were preparing to bury was dead, completely dead, but 42 years earlier… He died in the United States, where he had lived, since his adolescence, most of his adult life. The day before, his body had arrived by train, in a convoy from Boston. In Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the coffin was slipped into a hearse. Direction Montreal. The duty of the time describes this arrival of the remains of Calixa Lavallée.
A crowd in their Sunday best, including distant relatives of the deceased, rushes to see the coffin pass. Brass bands play, at a slow tempo, theO Canada, the anthem we owe him. The Red Ensign, the flag of the British navy, is hoisted high. It serves as the official standard. The red and white maple leaf, which we now recognize as the Canadian flag, would not be adopted until much later, in 1965.
In front of the coffin, the speeches delivered to the glory of Canada waltz in a jumble of patriotic images that go in all directions, until they summon the memory of the patriots of 1837-1838. The speeches follow one another. They flap in the air like flags in the wind. A ceremony takes place at Notre-Dame Church.
The waltz of symbols
From this expatriate musician who was Calixa Lavallée, the O Canada is about all that popular memory has retained. Everyone knows – or at least knew – that this national anthem is due to him.
Do we know, however, that the Oh Canada was sung in public for the first time on June 24, 1880, on the occasion of a large congress of French Canada held in Quebec? The song was commissioned especially for this occasion.
It was a conservative, Judge Adolphe-Basile Routhier, who was entrusted with the task of writing the lyrics for this song, rather than a more liberal spirit like Louis Fréchette. The Crown’s representative, Lieutenant Governor Théodore Robitaille, decided to turn to Routhier, while mandating Calixa Lavallée for the music.
Originally, the anthem was titled not O Canadabut quite simply National song. It was performed for the National Congress of French Canadians on June 24, 1880. The song was sung during the banquet held at the skaters’ pavilion, a brand new building, located next to the Saint-Louis gate. There is today a monument erected in honor of the historian François-Xavier Garneau.
The anthem would not be associated until much later with the 1er July, Canadian Confederation Memorial Day. Moreover, the Oh Canada did not become official as the pan-Canadian national anthem until June 1980, a century after it was first sung, in a completely different political context.
An expatriate
Downstream from Montreal, inland along the St. Lawrence River, near Verchères, there is a village called Calixa-Lavallée. In 1842, our man was born there. He was the son of a lumberjack, a blacksmith and a gunsmith who would become a violin maker. Father Lavallée was what one might call a man of thirty-six trades. He was the one who taught his son the basics of music.
At that time, this hinterland of Verchères where the Lavallées lived was not even yet known under the name of Sainte-Théodosie. This explains why the biographical notices give Verchères, the chief town of the area, as the birthplace of Callixte Lavallée, later called Calixa.
The village of Calixa-Lavallée, 507 inhabitants in 2024, has always been quiet. The surrounding area only comes to life once a year, in July, for the agricultural fair. People have been coming here from all over, for over 150 years. This year, the Calixa-Lavallée Agricultural Fair takes place on July 5, 6 and 7.
If you go there, keep your eyes peeled. At one of the exits from the village there is a plaque. It recalls the life of the musician. His name renamed the village in 1974. Nothing remains of the walls of the original Lavallée house. They fell long ago, consumed by fire. This house was located on the Rang de la Beauce. In an old form of French, as Rabelais observes, it is possible to say “I find this beautiful.” The modern equivalent of “I find that beautiful”. In Calixa-Lavallée, the rang de la Beauce contains in any case a large concentration of beautiful ancestral homes.
Calixa Lavallée was still a child when her parents moved their lives to Saint-Hyacinthe. He studies at the seminary. He plays in the marching band. He is the parish organist. A gifted musician, he stood out. A butcher acts as a patron and finances his musical education. Lavallée goes to the theater. He discovers the scene. And then, like thousands of French Canadians, he looks elsewhere, in the distance, on the other side of the border…
A life in the United States
Calixa Lavallée left Canada at 15. He is going to live in the United States. Small, thin, with clear, lively eyes, a mustache with drooping tips planted in the middle of a long face: this is how the man appears who poses in a few portraits of him sketched in the United States. As the musicologist Brian Christopher Thompson, his best biographer, has shown, adventure calls to him, as does the hope of experiencing a better or, at the very least, different life.
Lavallée joined, as a musician, a troupe of minstrels, a type of satirical show then in vogue. He was not the only Franco-American to join this type of show. He found himself with people named Théodore Gustave Bidaux, Charles Duprez and Robert Langlois. Their knowledge of French allowed them to achieve more success, particularly in Louisiana.
Within the troupe, Lavallée soon assumed the musical direction. Here he is, going on tour, in the big cities of the United States. The artists of the minstrel show in which he participates, all whites, make up as blacks. They exploit the codes of a deeply rooted racism to get applauded. Calixa Lavallée has already experienced representations of this kind in Montreal. At the time when he briefly pursued studies in Montreal, the musician even found himself integrated into these shows.
During the 1850s and 1860s in particular, the minstrel shows attract a large audience throughout the North American continent. The public loves it. He asks for more. Lavallée is going on tour. He tours big cities, meets artists and musicians. His life, without a doubt, is in the United States. During the American Civil War, he even wore the blue uniform of the armies of the North. He enlisted in a Rhode Island regiment. For his war effort, he was retired from the United States Army.
Murder in New York
If Lavallée returned to Canada, it was only very briefly, to start again with renewed vigor, after having played with one of the best violinists of his time, a Belgian named Frantz Jehin-Prume. Lavallée would marry in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he married Joséphine Gentilly. Lowell was a Franco-American center. It was the city where Jack Kerouac would be born in 1922.
The Lavallée couple settled in Boston. Then Calixa became, in New York, the director of the Grand Opera House. James Fisk, the owner of this elegant room, is a colorful Wall Street financial baron. Money is coming out of his ears. Soon there is this speculator murdered, in the middle of the street. Nothing is going well for Lavallée. His New York life turns into a mess.
If Lavallée returned to Montreal, it was to leave again immediately, this time for Europe. There he would perfect his musical culture. On his return, he gave a few recitals with the best musicians of the time. To earn a living, he became choirmaster of the Saint-Jacques church, on Saint-Denis Street, where UQAM is today. He was also the organist of the Saint-Patrick church.
To welcome the Marquis of Lorne, the new governor general, to his duties, the Canadian government commissioned a cantata from him. Lavallée composes. He plays. He teaches. But money is tight. He is returning to the United States for good.
What do we know about his last years? He played in Cleveland, in Detroit. He defended the interests of American music teachers by becoming, in Indianapolis, the president of their association. To earn a living, he held a position as choirmaster in Boston. Ill, he was soon to die. He was only 48 years old. His friends would collect money to send a little money to his family, for the benefit of his widow. Raoul, the only one of his children who survived him, would continue his life in the United States. Perhaps in 1933 he was not even aware, it is said, of the transfer of his father’s remains to Canada.