When he was twelve years old, the person who answered the census described my great, great grandpa as a French-speaking Roman Catholic person.1 As he grew up, I wonder whether that dual identity became even more firm and important to him, perhaps as a rebellious response to massive societal changes where he lived.
Isadore Azilda Doucet was born in 1869 in Ile Verte, fourteen years after the seigneurial system was officially abolished in Quebec. His home in the Témiscouata Valley on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River east of Quebec City was a key outpost for English-speaking Anglican Lords who purchased manors for colonial purposes and later became Quebec’s most important industrialists.
Researcher Maude Flamand Hubert describes the process underway during great great grandpa’s lifetime as follows:
Dans la première moitié du xixe siècle, l’accession à la propriété seigneuriale constitue encore la voie privilégiée afin d’acquérir ce statut socioéconomique tant convoité. Ce brassage s’effectue tout juste à la veille de l’abolition du régime seigneurial, en pleine période d’essor de l’industrialisation et d’une économie capitaliste de plus en plus orientée vers les marchés. Selon le modèle proposé par Serge Courville, comme de nombreux noyaux paroissiaux issus d’une colonisation seigneuriale timide, L’Isle-Verte prend véritablement son élan dans le deuxième quart du xixe siècle (Courville, 1990, p. 26).
In the first half of the 19th century, accession to seigneurial property was still the privileged way to acquire a coveted socioeconomic status. This mixing took place just on the eve of the abolition of the seigneurial regime, in the midst of a boom in industrialization and an increasingly market-oriented capitalist economy. According to the model proposed by Serge Courville, like many parish centres resulting from a timid seigneurial colonization, L’Isle-Verte really took off in the second quarter of the 19th century (Courville, 1990, p. 26).2
Reminders of the old system remained throughout great great grandpa’s lifetime. The area in which he lived once formed part of the Sieur Charles-Aubert de la Chesnaye manor, which was purchased by Alexander Fraser from Lord Caldwell on August 2, 1801.
Eight different waterfalls and a series of salt marshes attracted visitors to the largest settlement in the region, which served as a natural amphitheatre at the head of the Temiscouata Valley. It became a key military post during the wars of independence and the War of 1812.
Alexander Fraser died in 1837 and passed his manor on to his son, Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm died five years later, passing the region on to his brothers William and Edward.
Lord Elgin baptized the largest settlement in the area “Fraserville” in 1850.3 Settlement rapidly increased over the following decades, with schools, courthouses and communication services established. Canada’s first Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald lived in the town during the summers throughout the late 1800s.
By 1870, when great great grandpa was only a year old, the Grand Trunk Railway Company opened a terminal in the town creating a dependence on railways that would last for the following 150 years.
By the time he was 17 years old, the Témiscouata Railway connected his city with New-Brunswick. A big pulp and paper mill opened up shortly after.
Doucet lived in Fraserville Town when he turned 22 years of age, and at that time, he still defined himself as Roman Catholic and French-speaking.4 I don’t know what he did for a living, although perhaps he remained on the family farm, given my grandmothers’ farming life two generations later.
There were many other job opportunities around him, but between 1850 and 1919, the city saw large increases in its anglophone population. Perhaps they were the ones to get the well-paying forestry, paper mill and railway jobs.
By the time great great grandpa died on January 4, 1905, the community he lived in was commercial, secular and an industrial powerhouse. Yet the original Francophone farming community continued to thrive. The city reverted to its original name, Rivière-du-Loup, in 1919 and 98% of the current population speaks French.
Caption for Photograph
1880 Mill at Rivière du Loup by the Baroness Agnes Macdonald of Earnscliffe (1836-1920) on September 7, 1880, watercolour / aquarelle : watercolour / aquarelle on wove paper, http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=fonandcol&id=3007587&lang=eng, accessed on May 30, 2023
Sources
1Canada Census, 1881, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MVND-LJS : 2 March 2021), Isidore Doucet in household of Alfred Doucet, L’Isle-Verte, Témiscouata, Quebec, Canada; from “1881 Canadian Census.” Database with images. Ancestry. (www.ancestry.com : 2008); citing Alfred Doucet, citing Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
2Flamand-Hubert, Maude. Louis Bertrand à L’Isle-Verte (1811-1871): Propriété foncière et exploitation des ressources. PUQ, 2012.
3Société d’Histoire et de Généalogie de Rivière-du-Loup, https://www.shgrdl.org/rdla.htm
4Canada Census, 1891, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MW5P-9L1 : 4 August 2016), Isidore Doucet, Fraserville Town, Témiscouata, Quebec, Canada; Public Archives, Ottawa, Ontario; Library and Archives Canada film number 30953_148224.
