Silence has become a rare currency. Noise leads us everywhere. Through her recent paths, our collaborator Monique Durand leads us into the rustling of silence, a balm for our bodies and minds in these noisy times, a common good to cherish and protect. Fourth of eight articles.
Southern Saskatchewan, last May. I came here for a quote from Aragon: “Life is oats and the wind crosses it1. » This sentence seemed to me to be made of silence. And I wanted to see the oats, the barley and the wheat sway gently in the winds of the plain. But also for Gabrielle Roy, how could it be otherwise, born in the Manitoba plain, whose entire work and genius are linked to this space. “And, from one day to the next, here we are lost in so much silence and under so much sky2. »
And then I came here because of the epic of these French Canadians who were going to colonize the lands of the West. An epic also shrouded in silence, that of a little-known history. During the first quarter of the 20th centurye century, more than 10,000 French-speaking Canadians, many of whom had first emigrated from Quebec to the United States, came to settle in the Saskatchewan plains. My paternal grandparents, Leopold and Marie, were among them, the former leaving from Quebec, the latter from the United States. Saskatchewan had entered Confederation in 1905 and the government offered virtually free land to settlers who would settle there. Villages such as Gravelbourg3Ponteix, Laflèche and Willow Bunch were formed, most of the time at the initiative of Catholic missionary priests. A French-speaking population thus saw the light of day in southern Saskatchewan.
This epic of French Canadians and Franco-Americans in the Prairies is closely linked to that, equally little known, of the Métis. I will return to these stories, oh so complex.
For now, I’m sailing toward Willow Bunch. The ocean of the plains begins as soon as you leave the Regina airport. We drive south on Highway 6, a straight line that disappears into the horizon, where the slightest curve is an event. To the left, flat country as far as the eye can see, to the right, flat country as far as the eye can see. No village, no restaurant, no rest stop in sight. Here and there, islands of greenery that hide a home that you can guess belongs to the owner of the surrounding acres of land. No humans visible. A harvester in the distance, raising clouds of dust.
Surprise! Suddenly the plain becomes undulating. We walk along the curious Willow Bunch Lake, about thirty kilometers long, a portion of which, there, in front of me, is completely dried up, white with salt. A dead sea in the middle of the desert. I think of the other one, the one that adjoins Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, already glimpsed in less tormented days. The Dead Sea, with its extreme salinity, where you can float while reading your newspaper. But at this moment, I prefer to float in my thoughts, far from the newspapers that have been peddling misfortune for months.
The homeland of the giant Beaupré
The village of Willow Bunch suddenly appears, like a curtain rising on a stage. It was once called Willow Bunch, where 1,500 people lived in its heyday. Today, 245 people live there. An oasis of green hills and trees in the middle of the boundless apron of the plain. I look for the willow stands. Not a single one. But a gas station, a motel, a restaurant, a grocery store, a church, no school.
And, literally eating the profile of Willow Bunch, a former Grey Nuns convent turned museum stages the history of the place and its giant. Yes! The giant Beaupré. A legendary and tragic figure, Édouard Beaupré was born there in 1881 to a French-Canadian father, born in L’Assomption, Gaspard Beaupré, and a Métis mother, Florestine Piché. The eldest of 20 children, he died in 1904 in Saint Louis, Missouri after being exhibited and exploited as a circus animal. The Beaupré-Piché couple had taken refuge here during the Red River Métis Rebellion in 1870.
Other celebrities from the area: the Campagne sisters, who formed the folk musical quartet Hart Rouge and performed on stages throughout Quebec, Canada and Europe for several years.
First night under the Willow Bunch sky. Crazy scents come out of the earth. Are they oats, wheat or barley? No, I will learn that it is rather canola, a type of rapeseed of Canadian origin, which takes its name from the contraction of the words “Canada” and ” hello “, for oil. I will sleep under the starry vault of the plains, in the scent of canola.
*****
May 20. On this Queen Victoria Day holiday here, patriots in Quebec, I head for the old village of Horizon, a little off the Ghost Town Trail. It is a section of Highway 13, along which are located some thirty villages that, in the upheavals of History and the rural exodus, were abandoned. And why Horizon? Because the writer Gabrielle Roy set the scene there for a magnificent short story about a character, Sam Lee Wong, a Chinese immigrant who came to settle in this hamlet “engulfed in silence.” […] The wind kept blowing in, encountering nothing that could break its momentum.4. »
I search for a long time, turning around, going back and forth on endless dirt roads that follow one after the other. No Horizon in sight, and yet so much horizon. Suddenly, a small blue and white chapel appears at the top of a hill, like a lost Madonna, while, on the other side of the road, a decrepit grain elevator lies in the landscape, a collapsed cathedral. Horizon, founded in 1912 with the arrival of the railway, had already housed a school, a post office, a café. It lost its splendor and its status as a village in 1973, returned to “the indecipherable silent country5 “I try to imagine what life was like for these immigrants, like Sam Lee Wong, who came from all over the world, many from Ukraine, to improve their lot. What has become of them? Their ancient traces ripen on the plain like wheat.
It’s just windy here.
After Horizon, we head to Grasslands National Park, further south, near the Montana border. This park, far from roads and air corridors, a vast wild prairie of 900 square kilometers, is said to be one of the quietest places in North America. I stop there. A hen harrier glides above the grass. I advance with muffled steps, I stop breathing, I try to capture the silence of the site, as one would capture a butterfly in a net.
Matthew Mikkelsen6a specialist in acoustic ecology, recorded the soundscape of the park, which was officially created in 2001. “When we achieve a noise-free interval of 15 minutes or more, we can call this place exceptional.” The ecologist is part of the Quiet Parks International foundation, which has set itself the mission of encouraging the establishment of quiet reserves around the world.
I return to Willow Bunch, my eyes glued to the gas gauge: I am almost out of gas. On this May 20 holiday, everything is closed, including the few gas stations. Then, mystery, I don’t know how or why, a woman, in my field of vision, at the entrance to the village of Rockglen, holds a gas pump in her hand. Miracle! Teresa Gee, my savior! We talk. “Silence, for me, is this country inhabited by birds, deer, thunder and lightning. It soothes me. Here, it’s windy, that’s all.”
Arrived safely at my destination. After all this silence, a little sound would be nice. I enter the Jolly Giant (yes, the Jolly Giant), a bit like the heart of Willow Bunch, where there is a small crowd. A folk musician with a cowboy hat shouts his lost love while strumming his guitar. The fries are good. And the beer.
1. Aragon, quoted by Sylvain Tesson in With the fairies2024.
2. Gabrielle Roy, A garden at the end of the world1994.
3. Gravelbourg, founded in 1907 by Quebec priest L.-P. Gravel, is home to a thousand inhabitants, a quarter of whom are descended from the first French-Canadian settlers. The place shines thanks to the French-language Mathieu College. But the main institutions of the Saskatchewan Francophonie are located in Regina.
4. Gabrielle Roy, A garden at the end of the world1994.
5. Gabrielle Roy, A garden at the end of the world1994.
6. Quoted by Benoît Livernoche in the digital stories of Radio-Canada Info, April 2022.