Antoine Gérin-Lajoie
Antoine Gérin-Lajoie (1824 - 1882) was a poet, a lawyer, a publicity agent and a Canadian novelist.
Secretary during his youth of the former Prime Minister Morin and, from long years, conservative of the library of the federal Parliament, was born, with Yamachiche, on August 4th, 1824, and he died, in Ottawa, on August 7th, 1882, at 58 years. He is the author of the Canadian novel Jean Rivard, Ten years of history of Canada, like also of the popular song a Canadian wandering. The Gérin family was originating in Savoy.
The first come to Canada, Jean Gérin, was sergeant in the troops of Mount-calm (1755-1760). " It had beautiful mood always as well, it was told, as his/her old army mates had called it the joie." It is from there that this name made up of Gérin-Lajoie came, which remained in the family and which the author of Jean Rivard owed immortaliser. Jean Gérin tells Lajoie, after the transfer, Maria, with the autumn of 1760, in Yamachiche, and it is established there, on a ground, at the edge of the large river. Thirteen children transfer the day with his hearth. The seventh, Andre, were in his turn the father of eleven children.
Those, the sixth, Antoine, groom, in Yamachiche, on July 14th, 1821, in Marie-Amable Gélinas became, him also, the father of a many family, that is to say of seventeen children, of which ten lived until the adulthood. It is the elder one of this blessed family of the sky, Antoine, second of the name, born in 1824, qu ' it is question here. Of wire father, since 1760, all those named had resided on the same good, had lived the same house and had piously preserved the same traditions. Gérin-Lajoie were thus of brave men and good inhabitants, estimated of all, the honor of the parish.
In connection with their name, Antoine wrote on January 16th, 1861 with his young Denis brother, later Mgr Gérin, priest of Saint-Justin: " Our true family name is not Lajoie but Gérin. Our ancestors in France were never known under this name of Lajoie. It is our great-grandfather, Jean Gérin, whom one has the first called Lajoie, because it was always merry and content. In my last years with College of Nicolet, our director, Mr. Abbot Ferland (the author of the History of Canada which bears its name), always my name Antoine Gérin-Lajoie wrote, and I continued to write it thus. But, if I started again my life, I would sign Antoine Gérin quite simply… "
In fact, Mgr Gérin, his/her brother, and Mr. Leon Gérin, his son, become president of the Royal Company, constantly signed very short Gérin. On the other hand, another of its sons, Mr. lawyer Henri Gérin-Lajoie, of Montreal, continues, and its family after him, to bear the two names coupled one with the other. Antoine Gérin-Lajoie made his traditional studies with Nicolet. Fortunately endowed, it gained in its classes of nice successes. It was characterized there especially by its taste and its aptitudes for the letters.
At 18 years, he wrote an interesting tragedy, in three acts and worms, the young person Latour, who was represented on the scene of the college and which was considered to be worthy, in the continuation, to appear in the National directory of Huston, published as one knows in 1848-1850, and republished, in four volumes In-octavo, 1893. He also composed, being still schoolboy, of small poems of circumstance and the ditties.
He was in rhetoric in 1842, when, one day of autumn, the high-windows of the house nicolétaine, one saw passing to far, on the large river, sinks it boat which carried in exile, towards the ground of Australia, the condemned political ones of the " troubles" from 1837-1838. Immediately, it had the idea to write some verses, on a known air, languorous and melancholic person, like exhaling the complaint of the deportees.
" The lament was made up in less than one hour, wrote Benjamin Suite in 1892. The following day, all the college resounded of its accents. It was a powder trail by all Low-Canada. Our people vibrated with the sound of these words impressed of sadness, because it was the expression even of the thought or the feeling populaire."
One remembers the first verses, they are, indeed, today like yesterday, in all the memories:
A wandering Canadian,
Outlaw of his hearths,
Traversed by crying
Foreign countries.
If you see my country,
My unhappy country,
Will say to my friends
That I remember them…
At the summer of 1844, after a court travels in the United States, Gérin-Lajoie fixed itself at Montreal to study the right. But it was poor and it was necessary to live. It entered to the newspaper Minerve, in the capacity of corrector and translator. It made there soon drafting. In 1845, he became the secretary of the company Saint-Jean-Baptist, which reorganized, and, in 1847, Morin (Augustin-Norbert) made its secretary of it.
Meanwhile, he studied his code. September 20th, 1848, Gérin-Lajoie was allowed with the bar. However, as the baffles of the palate did not try it more than those of the policy, it was not long in accepting a situation of civil servant. In 1849, it was employed with the public Ministry of Labor. In 1850, it passed to the office provincial referees. In 1856 finally, it was named with the Bibliothèque of the Parliament, which sat then, alternatively, in Quebec and Toronto. It is in Toronto that he married, on October 26th, 1858, at 34 years, one of the girls of Etienne Parent, celebrates it journalist, in this time under-secretary of State, and whose, for this reason, the family was in the High-Canada, where the government sat.
The following year, the government having returned to Quebec, Gérin-Lajoie followed there with its young woman. It is then, in 1860, qu ' it was, with Larue and Taché, one of the founders of the Canadian Evenings, and that, two or three years later, with other friends, it launched the Canadian Hearth. Its novel, Jean Rivard, appeared in these two publications, the first part, Jean Rivard clearer, in the Canadian Soirées in 1862, and the second part, Jean Rivard economist, in the Canadian Hearth in 1864.
In 1867, the government being fixed at Ottawa, Gérin-Lajoie came to live there with its family. Always attached to the federal library, it organized the services of them and drew up the bibliography for the French part of it. It is about this time, between 1867 and 1870, qu ' it wrote its important work on the establishment of the government responsible Ten years for history of Canada (1840-1850), which was published, after its death, in 1888, by the care of the Abbé Casgrain. Struck of an attack of Paralysis in 1880, Gérin-Lajoie languishes a few months, and he died, in Ottawa, on August 7th, 1882. He was 58 years old.
With the Former Canadians of Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, the Jean Rivard de Gérin-Lajoie is well, at least at that time, the book which paints best the life and manners of the Canadians of formerly. " The reading of this book, writing Mgr Camille Roy, will replace under your eyes a whole series of habits and practices which from go away. It will make you like it, not only because it is an excellent handbook of social economy, but also because it is like the reliquary of old disappeared things. And, if you take account of the size of the intention which inspired it, of the good-naturedness and of the simplicity of the execution, of the salutary influence also that it can have on the spirit of the people, you estimate that this novel, in spite of its defects of composition and style, is almost the equal one of that which about same time published Mr. de Gaspé, and, in your library, you will undoubtedly place Jean Rivard beside Old Canadiens."
One more once brought closer, in lately, the Jean Rivard de Gérin-Lajoie of Maria Chapdelaine of French Louis Hémon. " For us, wrote on this subject Mr. Pierre-Georges Roy in 1924, the true Canadian novel, it is the Jean-Rivard de Gérin-Lajoie. With triple point of view of the style, action and general invoice, Jean Rivard are undoubtedly lower than Maria Chapdelaine. But in all the book of Gérin-Lajoie a breath of patriotism reigns which is replaced in the novel of Louis Hémon by a species of fatalism which is certainly not Canadian, nor chrétien."
In the same way, Ten years of history of Canada is a work which indicates, in its author, an acute sense of the observation, much of reflection and a patriotism of the best quality. There is, in a style perhaps a little left and rough, a strong study, serious and documented, on one of the most animated periods our political history, that which goes from 1840 to 1850.
The verses of a wandering Canadian hardly have flight of poetry, and, on their six feet with the rhymes uniformly male, these poor towards do not have anything extraordinary good. Their merit, it is to have translated, at a given moment, the major feeling of all the patriotic Canadians. And it is there, undoubtedly, which made them so popular. They were worth in Gérin-Lajoie, in any case, of delicate pleasures of author.
One day, tells a chronicle of the Public opinion (February 1872), that the author of a Canadian wandering passed in a poor and deserted street of a suburb of Toronto, it intended to sing its ballade by a soft voice of young girl, who fell from the open window of a high floor of a rather modest house of pension. It was touched by it to the tears. Another time, in Ottawa, as it walked on with Benjamin Suite on the hill of the Parliament, it is the powerful voice of a " man of cage" , a beautiful tenor voice, who brought to him, of bay of Outaouais, which is with bottom, vibrating stanzas of its lament. This time still, affirms Sulte, it cried about it.
On Sunday, September 14, 1924, took place, in Yamachiche, a pretty religious holiday and arts person, by whom one had wanted to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Gérin-Lajoie in August 1824. There was solemn mass with the parish church, sung by its nephew, regretted the Abbé Gélinas, of the seminar of Three-Rivers, with sermon of circumstance, by the Camirand abbot, of the seminar of Nicolet, whose Mgr Camirand was general vicar.
In the afternoon, one meets, under the presidency of the old priest of the parish, Mgr Charon, at the native house of Gérin-Lajoie, which counts two centuries of existence, in the row of the Small Grounds, at the edge of the St. Lawrence, on the way of Montreal-Quebec. The worthy widow of the patriotic writer, died for forty years, had been there, still alarm in spite of her 84 sounded years, surrounded by all her family and a beautiful assistance of friends or admirors of that which one celebrated the memory. Speeches were made by Mr. Pierre-Georges Roy, by Mgr Camille Roy, Mr. Edouard Montpetit and Mr. C. - J. Magnan. It was one moment of glory. It marked, as in a posthumous aureole, the memory of an eminent Canadian who deserved his fatherland well and of his compatriots.
Works
- political Catechism or Elémens of the public law and constitutional of Canada, put at the range of the people, 1851
- Jean Rivard, the clearer, 1874
- Jean Rivard, economist, 1876
- Jean Rivard: scenes of the real life, 1877
- Ten years in Canada of 1840 to 1850,1891
- the Centenary of Gérin-Lajoie, 1924
- Canadian Letters of formerly, 1939
- the Latour young person, 1969
Reviews and newspapers
- Dawn of Canadas
- Minerve
References
AUCLAIR, Elie. Canadian Figures , Montreal, 1933.