The Quebec Anthology: 1830-1990

"Part II of Children of My Heart" 1979

Gabrielle Roy Translated by Alan Brown PART II OF CHILDREN OF MY HEART Gabrielle Roy was born on Rue Deschambault, in St. Boniface, Manitoba, on March 22, 1909. Her father wasa colonization agent for the federal government, responsible for bringing immigrants from the east and Europe into Saskatchewan (her short story "Ely! Ely! Ely!" describes this period). Upon the death of her father in 1927, she entered the Winnipeg Normal School and taught in St. Boniface until 1937, when she went to England to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1939, with the impending war, she returned to Canada, settling in Montreal and working as a journalist, first for Lejour, then for La Revue moderne. During this time she wrote her first and bestknown novel, Bonheur ^occasion (1945; The Tin Flute, 1947), about the effects of the Second World War on the workers of Quebec. She became known as a clear-sighted realist, a writer who was very aware of the lives of quiet desperation lived by Quebec's urban poor. This reputation was enhanced by her next novel, Alexandre Chenevert, Caissier (1954; The Cashier, 1955). But with her next book, Rue Deschambault, she returned to her semi-rural roots in Manitoba, and in most of her subsequent work she delved ever more deeply into her past as a Manitoban of Quebec descent, and as a teacher. Gerard Bessette has called Rue Deschambault a work of "fictionalized memoirs," and the same may be said of La Montagne secrete (1961; The Hidden Mountain, 1962), and La Route d'Altamount (1966; The Road Past Altamount, 1966). Although Cesenfants de ma vie (1977), translated by Alan Brown in 1979 as Children of My Heart, has also been called both memoir and novel, it transcends genre 298 GABRIELLE ROY classification, just as its author transcends regional analysis. Alan Brown's fascination with Roy's work has spanned four decades: his essay "Gabrielle Roy and the Temporary Provincial" appeared in the first issue of the literarymagazine Tamarack Review in 1956, and he retranslated The Tin Flute in 1984. The following story is Part II of Children of My Heart, and whether memoir or fiction it is a superbly selfcontained story, and arguably Roy's most fully realized work of literature. As Hugo Macpherson has noted, "Gabrielle Roy feels rather than analyses, and a sense of wonder and mystery is alwayswith her." Gabrielle Roy died in Quebec City in 1983. "Children of My Heart" is reproduced from Children of my Heart (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979) and was originally published under the title "Ces enfants de ma vie" in Ces enfants dema vie (Montreal: Stanke, 1977). Reprinted by permission of Fonds Gabrielle Roy and McClelland & Stewart Publishers. CHILDREN OFMY HEART 299 he school to which I was appointed that year could, I suppose, be called a part of the village, though it hung back at the very end, separated from the last houses by a good-sized field in which a cow used to graze. Despite this gap, there was no doubt that I belonged to the village—a dreary place with its poor houses, most of them in unpainted wood, already decrepit before the last board was nailed; and its tiny chapel, built out of antagonism to the next village with its rich and fancy church. But it was out of antagonism, too, that the priest from the rich parish had never set foot in the little chapel, which was graduallycrumbling from neglect. From the school windows I could see the bleak railway station, like all those built at the time, with its grain elevators , its water tank, a caboose that had been sitting on the ground for years. Everything was painted in that hateful oxblood colour that had no life or sparkle; but very likely because it was lifeless, it was durable and money-saving. The main street predominated, of course, treeless and too wide, a melancholy dirt road, plaintive and dusty as the main streets of almost all the villages of the Canadian West in the first year of the Great Depression. It was a village of retired farmers, bitter or acrimonious, with barely enough to live on, old folk, homebodies, little businesses just scraping by. There was nothing in the place to give you courage or confidenceor hope in any tomorrow. But I had only to turn the other way and everything changed; hope came back in giant...