Je m'appelle Annette

ANNETTE PICHER HOUSTON
West Lebanon NH

Text of presentation given to International Womens‘ Club

The IWC presents international theme luncheons monthly. For the French Canadian Luncheon, October, 2013, Annette's home-made tourtiére pie was featured along with her talk about rediscovering her being French Canadian to the core.

Hello, everyone. My name is Annette . In polite French one would say: Bonjour, tous! Je m'appelle Annette ...
And in “Canuck" , the language of many French Canadians, we would say: Bonhour, tous. He m'appelle Annette, moi.
What does it mean to be French Canadian here in New Hampshire in today's world? Do I look any different from anyone else? Can you tell?
This is the question I asked myself as I researched my own French-Canadian background. With a Scottish name like Houston, one might never know that I grew up in an industrial city heavily populated with emigrants from French Canada. Can you even detect that French was the language I first learned?
My family's story is not different from thousands of emigrés from Canada, who came to New England looking for jobs. How many of you claim some French-Canadian ancestry in your background? You don't have to be ashamed of it any more. Time was, Canuck was a dirty word! But nowadays people are beginning to appreciate more the contributions made by the industrious people who came to New England to settle back in the 1800's. Many mills were built along New England's swift-flowing rivers. The mill owners built houses to accommodate the families that came to find work: men worked at the heavy jobs of keeping the machines running, and young girls and women worked stringing the looms and keeping the threads moving along to make cloth. Mothers stayed home to care for the home and their younger children.
Indeed, my grandmother, Clementine, raised her family of 22 children. Despite the fact that her girls never got past the 8th grade in school, and had to work in the mills from dawn to dusk, bringing home their paycheck, and getting 25 cents weekly to spend on a movie and a treat, Clementine took in laundry to pay for each of them to go to Beauty School, so they could have a different job from working in the mill.
That was my mother's story. My mother worked as a beautician many long years, and as a result she was able to send her kids to college. albeit with much scholarship aid and jobs on the side for all of us.
When I was asked to talk about French Canadians I did not think I knew much - which is true, but the more I read about French Canadian history and culture, the more I realized that my upbringing mirrored that of many other French Canadians who settled the New England states, many of them around Manchester, NH, and northern Vermont..
Originally, from the 1600's, the preponderance of French Canadians settled between Quebec and Montreal, with other colonies in the Gaspe´, Newfoundland, and Acadia. Although most French men came to Canada to trade with the Natives for beaver pelts, eventually, some came to settle along the river fronts and to establish homesteads.
IN WATERVILLE, MAINE, THE FRENCH CANADIANS CLUSTERED AROUND THE LOCKWOOD COTTEN MILL IN AN AREA CALLED "DOWN THE PLAINS"...

PICHER FAMILY/HISTORY
One such settler was my ancestor, Pierre Picher, who came from Faye La Vineuse in Eastern central France in the 1600's and became a hatter by trade…I can see that he might have used those same beaver pelts to make the treasured beaver hats - Beavers short haired undercoats repelled water wonderfully, so the beaver pelts were much sought after, and most were shipped back to France and England, brought to the ships by the Coureurs de Bois, who ventured far and wide to trade along the rivers -even down the Mississippi and onto the Great Lakes.
Pierre is a man of legend back in Faye La Vineuse - if you're a Picher and you go to France and visit there you will be treated like royalty and taken to every house in the village to be introduced and have a glass of wine. They even have Picher reunions - sadly, I've never been, although my brother and his wife did twice.
Seems like Pierre, when he came to Canada, left a wife behind, so he could go to establish a foothold before sending for her. Quelle domage! His brother, who arrived in a later voyage told him his wife and children had passed away in an epidemic in the village. He of course, soldiered on and in due time, married a Canadian woman, started a family with her, and they had established themselves along the banks of the St Lawrence, right in the middle of town.
Alas! A ship bringing more settlers, supplies and trade goods for the Indian trade, also brought new that, Oh, No! His wife was not dead! She was alive and well! What a dilemma - and more so because at that time, bigamy was punishable by death! Most of the French who settled in Canada were Catholic, of course, and the local priest was the authority they turned to in a crisis. What to do?
The priest had to tell him to quit his wife in Canada, and to return to France to fetch his "real" wife or be labeled a Bigamist...and suffer the consequences!
He, of course, complied. On the ship on the way back over, however, something happened to his wife. Did she fall overboard? Was she pushed? Did she die a natural death?
At any rate, Pierre was absolved and continued his formerly happy life with wife number two - they had sons who prospered and established home sites and businesses in Quebec and Montreal.
Our family history has a gap, After Pierre and his family. My sister-in-law, Bunnie Picher, is feverishly tracing genealogy records and will ultimately triumph and fill in the gaps!
She has traced my grandfather, Gedeon Picher, to Biddeford, Maine, where he grew up and became a photographer. His father has relocated the family there from Massachusetts, where he originally settled. I believe he was the first Picher in our family to come from Canada. This would have been in the mid- 1800's. A family photo shows him and his siblings, with a great hulk of a woman, his mother, who looks as though she might have been Native American - indeed, many Native Americans were integrated into French Canadian families.
My Picher Grandfather moved to Waterville, a city with a localized French Canadian neighborhood, called "down the plains"- the rise along the banks of the Kennebec River. He established himself, and raised his family of twelve children. He branched out from photography, started a plumbing and heating business, where my Dad worked all his life.
Catholic nuns established parochial schools all over New England, and some took in boarders, such as the youngest of my aunts. She boarded there though it was only two miles away, and only came home on Sundays. My father and his brother had been sent to a convent in Jackman near the Canadian border after their mother died. My grandfather realized that they weren't getting a good education and hauled them out and sent them to public schools. Unfortunately he died just as he had been elected mayor of the city, leaving his eldest daughter Clara - she was 18- to run the business and raise the rest of the children, as his wife had died before him. Often the unmarried daughter stayed in the family to care for aging parents.
My Aunt Claire, or Clara, sent three of the girls to nursing schools in New York. Becoming a nurse was a good job for a woman, and there was no charge for the training. Two others married young and had families. The men worked in the family business alongside my aunt, except for one who started a laundry business.
It must have been in the blood, so to speak, that this family carried on many French Canadian traditions, Folks relied on the parish Priest for support and advice. Church was important, never missing mass on Sundays and Feast Days.
Children of local French Canadians all went to parochial schools in that generation, but my mother sent us to the local grammar school - having to teach me English before I could go there. But we still had to go the catechism once a week. We were borderline accepted by the other kids in the neighborhood who all went to Catholic schools. We would talk in whispers about the other people in town who were not Catholic... we were never to set foot inside their churches for the fear of going to H-E-L-L.
Everybody all blended in by high school, though, except for some who were sent away to boarding schools. Our education evened out, and most of my age group in my
French Canadian neighborhood ended up as engineers, bankers, teachers, beauticians, scientists and skilled mechanics. Not all of us married other French Canadians: about half, maybe. The man I married was half French. His mother, a petite lady who made and decorated hats and worked as a saleslady all her life, was shunned for marrying "an Anglais." She never taught her children French - although my husband picked it up quickly when we started to go together. He especially liked to visit in my house - my mother and father made everyone "feel to home" "I'm to home and I want everybody else to be to home", my mother always said....my mother baked pies so when we came back from the movies, or whatever, she would have something good for us to eat.
FRENCH FOOD Welcoming others to your home is a French Canadian trait. Food always says "love" so much love was spread around as people came to visit.
As I grew up, all the French-Canadian families ate hearty, but, except for holidays, unvarying meals: a good breakfast with eggs and toast, Crepes or pancakes, hot cereal, or cold cereals, egg-on-toast, coffee or tea.
For lunch and dinner, thick soup, or meat and potatoes, bread and butter with vegetables usually a dessert; pudding, with fresh berries or fruit in season (at other times, whatever was available from home canning).
Soups were made of vegetables (cabbage, peas) or barley using beef or other bones and meat scraps.
Blood sausage (boudin) from the local grocer was considered a delicacy. " When pigs were slaughtered, the blood was kept for sausage (boudin) made by combining the fluid with milk, mixing it with salt pork, onions, and seasoning, stuffing it in natural casings, and cooked in hot water for fifteen minutes.
Everyone abstained from meat on Fridays and, during Lent, on Wednesdays as well. Adults also fasted the forty weekdays before Easter.
The Canadian tradition was that at Christmastime special platters were prepared: pork pate´ called cretons, beef, chicken, or veal ragout or stew, roast beef, pork-and-spice pies called tourtieres , fritters, called croquettes or croquignoles, and raisin and sugar pies. When the family returned from Midnight Mass at two o'clock in the morning, an elaborate meal was served, called le reveillon. These traditional dishes were served in plenty.
As their name imply traditional dishes were prepared in characteristic fashion but, being handed down orally from generation to generation, varied a great deal from one family to another. There is, therefore, no set way of making and serving this food. Regions have their particular ways of making these foods, as do families
The reveillon at the Picher Family household in Waterville had lots of food served and free-flowing liquor as well, so the party was jolly. We kids, when we were old enough to go to midnight mass, could also attend the family party. I still remember walking home in the crisp late-night air, on snowy sidewalks.
In Canada, the feasting lasted until dawn. A Buche de Noel, a cake shaped and decorated to resemble a Yule Log, was often served on that day.
Jan 1st was a church Feast Day, as well as New Year’s Day.- At home ( after services) "after a round or two of drinks during which informal toasts were exchanged with everyone, a hearty and joyous meal was served. This generally consisted of roast beef or turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, pickles, beets, and onions, tourtieres, croquignoles and desserts.
The holiday season ended with Epiphany, (la Fete des Rois) on January 6, commemorating the coming of the Magi. On this day the statues of the Wise Men made their appearance in church. At the evening meal or during the veille, the Twelfth Night Cake (le gateau des Rois) was served. A pea and a bean were baked inside the cake. Whoever got the slice with the pea was proclaimed king; the bean, queen; and each was crowned with a colored paper diadem. The king was expected to kiss the queen.
Candlemas Day: On Candlemas Night, French Canadians often had pancake parties (veille de crêpes), for eating flapjacks on this occasion was said to bring good luck.
Mardi Gras parties included Card playing, dancing, singing, storytelling, and partaking of elaborate meals... crêpes were popular, and of course, tourtieres. Commonly served drinks included moonshine called bagosse and a mixture of whiskey and wine called caribou.
At our home, 200 miles south of Quebec, say, and a hundred years later, our family still ate heartily at all three meals every day because Dad worked hard.
My mother liked to roast two kinds of meat on Sundays, and we used the roast all week to make up lunches and dinners, adding many fresh vegetables and potatoes to complete the meals. We weren't so different from everyone else in that mothers canned vegetables in the summer to last all winter. Everyone picked wild berries in season, and other fruits were canned or made into jams, too.
Some other French Canadian foods I remember eating were ragout - mostly a stew similar to regular stew, but for thickening you browned flour in a frying pan until it was mahogany colored. The browning gives a distinctive flavor to the ragout.
My husband's uncle, who worked as a lumberjack in Northern Maine, would send down on the train rabbits he had trapped- and were solidly frozen by the Maine winters. They made a great ragout!
I read that many French Canadians like "sugar pie- think of a pie with a caramel filling. - Yum, but although my mother made many great pies, we never had Sugar Pie or Raisin Pie, another French Canadian delicacy.
I did see my Aunt Clara make a French dessert, though, which was to make a boiling sugar or maple syrup, into which you dropped eggs to poach them, and then ate them with some of the syrup.
I never saw recipes for any of these dishes -the recipes were handed down orally from generation to generation.
So much gets lost over time. My daughter, who is a fabulous cook, could certainly make a tourtiere, as she has eaten them every year, as I continue to make them. My sons, however, did not marry French Canadian women, so....they follow their wives’ traditions, except when they come home; Mom makes them some of their favorites. All the foods that were grown at home or trapped & hunted to be cooked at home centuries ago, I can now find in the grocery stores and specialty markets.
Some grocery stores now carry tourtiere pies at Holiday time - especially in Maine, along with cretons. Probably blood sausage as well. I ate it years ago - but would I now? I don't think so, although I can remember the taste, and I did enjoy it then. Tastes do change.
MISHIMA Traditions are too soon lost, as generations become assimilated into the culture of their surroundings. My kids learned French in school. Could they speak "Canuck"? No way. They did not hear it every day, as I did. It was as natural as water to hear "good French" as the priests spoke it in church, and the Canuck. or patois, that everybody else spoke daily. We understood them both. We knew the differences, especially since we were taught Parisian French in school.
I learned that I am not so different from thousands of French Canadian descendants - I hope I struck a note with some of you who have French Canadian ancestry in your background.
I remember reading a book by a Japanese writer, Mishima, in which he said we are all part of the flow of history. Even though we feel we are an individual, we are all part of a larger flow in time.
Thank you for listening to my story today. It was a treat for me to tell stories from my heritage. The Library found me many good references.
I add my thanks to all the people who helped prepare this delicious French Canadian luncheon - the people who cooked the pies, salads, appetizers and dessert. All the food was very delicious!
In parting, here's some authentic Canuck French - forgive me those of you who learned Parisian French in School... It's the same, but different.
He veux dire merci a tout le monde pour avez m'ecouter auhourdui. C'etait fin pour moi a raconter des histoires de ma famille.
He vouz voirez en Novembre!

Bio:
ANNETTE PICHER HOUSTON

Born and grew up in Waterville, Maine; attended Colby College majoring in Art; became an art teacher after being married, living in Germany for three years with Air Force husband, Ken, and having two of their three children there. Taught art in Waterville and Fairfield Schools twenty-five years before moving to Newport, Maine, as a Gifted and Talented Program Consultant in 1989.

Moved to West Lebanon, New Hampshire, in 2010, where she continues to teach art to Seniors, paints and creates art quilts, and enjoys being a member of the International Womens‘ Club and the Northern Light Quilting Guild.

The IWC presents international theme luncheons monthly. For the French Canadian Luncheon, October, 2013, her home-made tourtiére pie was featured along with her talk about rediscovering her being French Canadian to the core.