On Province Island, so aptly named, golden pheasants, at least those that hunters do not deign to eat once killed, are offered “to works of charity”. It’s a detail. One detail among others floating in the wake of this report from Montreal Journal dedicated to Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon’s hunting parties. Thus, to contribute to feeding the poor people, our well-booted lords throw in front of the barefoot their surplus game. What generosity!
Hunting was often, since the Middle Ages, reserved for the nobility. the Case of Conscience Dictionary of the Abbé de Pontas, a 17th century book used by the guardians of the established order, specifies that hunting is reserved for the good pleasures of the king and the nobility, under penalty of heavy fines. Their private outings in the woods constitute, in the face of society, an affirmation of their power as much as a form of exercise supposed to sharpen their warlike skills. From there emanate all sorts of legends of poor devils forced to whistle, at night in the sky, to hunt in packs in order to feed people. With us, the legend of The hunting gallery is only a derivative, a phantasmagorical transposition projected between the steeples of the lords of the Church, of a vast quest for freedom conducted in the face of the exclusivity of feudal powers.
During the French Revolution, when privileges fell, people made themselves ill by swallowing a lot of meat for the first time. In the New World, the practice of hunting was immediately freer. She found herself, by the same token, invested with a political charge which led the old powers to curse those who set off for the woods.
The hunt, in certain circles, retains its air of the Ancien Régime, with all the decorum needed to comfort its participants in their overhanging position. On Province Island, on Lake Memphremagog, regulars like Pierre Fitzgibbon don’t dress up in Austrian clothes for nothing. Thus dressed in their Sunday best, they set out to seek, in the territories of the imagination, the satisfaction of their domination.
Some of the birds they bring into cages from Ontario sometimes escape. Pheasants in freedom, it happens to cross some, on the border with Vermont. Do these birds seek to reach the white mountains to hear them sing The melody of happinesslike the von Trapps of old, those real Austrians in exile?
In this curious colonial theatre, Austria cannot suffice. On the shores of Lake Memphremagog, a multimillionaire erected, a few years ago, condominiums supposed to recall Holland. He was inspired by the buildings of Amsterdam, those built along the canals. Pretending worthy of colonized Elvis Gratton, we had heard grumbling here and there.
The shores of Lake Memphremagog have at least one real Robert Gratton, former head of Power Financial, the flagship of the Paul Desmarais family. His vast estate, which has been under construction for years, covers 65 hectares at Pointe-Belmere. There grew a gigantic Italian Renaissance style mansion, with vast gardens worthy of Versailles.
Shareholder of Île de la Province, also living in the area, Paul Desmarais Jr. has just donated $250,000 to restore the church in Magog. In other times, this lord would have had his bench there. Around the lake, Desmarais already held in 2016 various properties for a value of at least 48 million, the whole equivalent to the surface of at least 1455 American football fields. His domain has been expanding for years. In 2017, Desmarais was refused the construction of 4 meter high embankments along the public road. He wanted, he pleaded, to isolate a sheep farm, just to spare these poor animals the stress caused by the noise of the road. A very delicate attention for animals that he did not yet own, noted the Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Territory!
Residents can distinguish, in the distance on the lake, the Island of the Province and its huge boathouse. In summer, this is the immediate horizon for boaters on Stanley-Weir beach. Do you know Judge Weir? It was he who translated into English the national anthem, the O Canada, the work of another judge, Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The “land of our ancestors”, when one walks in these corners, seems in any case to belong entirely to a small family. There ” gang du lac”, as we say in Magog.
“I have been with this world for twenty years. It’s good knowledge,” said Pierre Fitzgibbon. The minister does not only know the area because he goes hunting every year on this private island. In 2018, he sold his nearby cabin for almost a million. A second home he had bought a few years earlier from Christian Dubé, the current Minister of Health.
The cabins in the area, those of the quality people that Mr. Fitzgibbon frequents, often sell for even higher prices. For several years, the number of millionaire properties sold around the lake has been steadily increasing. In 2018, reports the local weekly, Pierre Fitzgibbon acquired land on the shores of Sargent Bay, on the Austin side, at a cost of $1.4 million. Was he planning to build a simple pavilion there capable of welcoming, in all modesty, his friends to eat, without ceremony, shepherd’s pie with pheasant?
It is indeed the same Pierre Fitzgibbon who, in recent days, without blushing, affirmed this: “Me, I talk a lot about sobriety. To know what is happening in the world, we are not sober in our consumption. The Minister is above all well placed to speak of the excessiveness of the great lords. He’s been in it for so long. No plans to give it up. And without seeing anything reprehensible in it.