Windows accompany our lives, punctuate them, bright or shadowy depending on the light, seasons and our moods. Mediation between interior and exterior, they embody openness or confinement, escape or refuge. Along her recent paths, our collaborator Monique Durand opens a few windows overlooking here or elsewhere, very contemporary or reminiscent of History. Second of seven articles.
Spring 1657. From her window in Puyravault, did she see the sun rise in graduated steps splashed with gold on the forests and beyond on the vines which belonged to the lord of the place? Did she hear the talkative magpies with bluish wings singing their farewells to her? It was her last morning in France, she was going to embark for distant New France, she, Ozanne Achon, 24 years old. She takes a last look at her life before, because it will only be an after.
Pspring 2022. I watch the sun slowly rise towards the window from where Ozanne saw his last day dawn over the countryside of Aunis, once the smallest province of France. No more vines or forests today, but vast fields full of water. I am in Puyravault, in Charente-Maritime, in the flesh of this rural France of small stone villages and birds, war memorials and medieval churches. The air is sweet. It smells of mushrooms, wine cellar and dog pee. It smells of beloved France. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small yellow butterfly flutters across the landscape. My Quebec winter heart cracks.
Spring 1657. Ozanne lived in an outbuilding of the seigniorial house of Puyravault with his family, engaged in the domain of Lord De Hillerin. From dawn until dusk, she collected wood, drew water, helped her mother with domestic chores, cut, dug, uprooted, lifted, transported. She had heard, it was in the conversations, of the fact that King Louis XIV, faced with the starving population of New France, where there were six men for one woman, encouraged single girls to go and marry there.
Thus between 1663 and 1673, just a few years after Ozanne’s emigration, nearly 800 young women, those who were called the King’s Daughters, would leave to swell the ranks of the colony. Orphans and poor for the most part, coming mainly from the Paris region, they would embark with a royal dowry against the commitment to marry and give birth within two years of their arrival in Quebec.
Ozanne was not a King’s Daughter, but a Marriageable Girl. Distinction little known. She left without dowry and without formal commitment, an independent entrepreneur, in a way.
Spring 2022. ” Come in ! Line Lhoumeau owns the outbuilding that housed Ozanne and her family. The house has changed little, with its thick walls, beams and openings dating from the time of the seigneury. Strange time travel. We believe we see Ozanne crossing the scene with his wooden clogs, his mop and his buried dream of departure. Line and its predecessor of the XVIIe century have somewhat become sisters. “The beneficent soul of Ozanne bathes my house. »
A plaque bearing the words PARVIS OZANNE ACHON is affixed just next to the seigniorial residence, opposite the Church of the Holy Trinity where Jany Grassiot, my guide in Puyravault, who is passionate about the history of the King’s Daughters, introduces me. . “Ozanne attended services in this church. She saw the altarpiece, right there, built in 1640, and dipped her fingers in that holy water font. »
“You know, Ozanne had a miserable life here. She did well to try her luck elsewhere. Go find out why, Jany, 65, a retired civil servant, has always had her body in France, but her heart in Quebec. “I would have liked, like Ozanne, to go there. But life didn’t let me. »
Embarkation for New France
Spring 1657. Her backpack filled with small effects, she crossed the 20 kilometers that separate her from the port of La Rochelle in a cart, after saying goodbye to her mother, who was crying, but had encouraged her to leave servitude for somewhere else, she hoped. , better. “At the time, here, it was ‘Ride or die’”, says Jany.
Ozanne was leaving a country ravaged by religious wars. La Rochelle and its surroundings were a Protestant pocket in a Catholic France. The city was just recovering from a siege which had decimated two thirds of its inhabitants, those who are called Huguenots, starving, taken in pincers by the royal troops. Open to the Atlantic and trading with the markets of northern Europe, La Rochelle had been largely conquered by the ideas of Luther and Calvin. For centuries, it will challenge the authority of the kings of France.
Spring 2022. I get lost in a long café au lait on the bay of the port of La Rochelle. We fought so much in these places for religion. So many dead people watching us from who knows where and perhaps saying to themselves “all that for that”, jealous of my peaceful café.
In a dream, I see Ozanne, daughter of buckets and faggots, walking away. Had she ever seen the sea? On board the schooner The bull, his French life melts into the horizon at the same time as the Tour de la Chaîne and the steeple of the Saint-Sauveur church, which now houses a memorial dedicated to Quebec. La Rochelle is no more than a vaporous profile. Ozanne Achon de Puyravault will soon give way to Anne Tremblay, wife of Pierre Tremblay, from Côte-de-Beaupré, east of Quebec.
The morality of emigrants
“When I tell Quebecers passing through here the epic of the King’s Daughters, I put the facts in perspective. Marion Givelet is a specialist in the history of these emigrants. “Contrary to certain received ideas, they were not prostitutes. They were recruited in a planned manner and chosen for their ability to adapt. I sometimes had the feeling that some visitors to Quebec had drawn from this adventure, rather than pride, a feeling of discomfort. »
We have long wondered about the morality of this female emigration to New France, “tossed about in a debate between factual realities and perceptions”, writes the specialist of the Société of Sherbrooke’s history Marie-Ève Gingras. But have we not always questioned the morality of women? The fact remains that the purpose of the expatriation of these pioneers was begetting.
The “King’s Daughters” operation, quite unique in the history of settlements, proved to be a great success. Seven hundred and seventy young women gave birth to 4500 children, multiplying by three the population of New France in 10 years! Ozanne Achon, who arrived a few years before the King’s Daughters, is considered the mother of the 180,000 Tremblays living today in North America, including a high concentration in Quebec, where Tremblay is the most common name.
I see her cradling her old age in front of the window of L’Ange-Gardien, on the Côte-de-Beaupré, where she lived with Pierre. Behind her, a wood stove humming with heat, a life of hard work and plowing, victories and defeats, 50 years in New France, 12 children, 58 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. In front of her, a fine snow dusting in the frozen tiles. Ozanne is at peace. She rocks before the window of her posterity.
She will be buried in Quebec on Christmas Eve 1707, at the age of 75.