Inaugural Lecture of the Season 1880-81, BY J. M. LEMOINE, President of the Literary and Historical Society, THE SCOT IN NEW FRANCE, 1535-1880. Before opening as President the winter course of lectures, I have a pleasant communication to make. Since we last met, His Excellency, Lord Lorne, has honored this Society, by becoming its Patron, during his term of office. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,-In a paper headed "The Component Parts of our Nationality," we strove some time since to place on record, the results of our researches in Canadian History, calculated to dispel some of the prejudices, entertained as to the origin of the first settlers on Canadian soil. We felt a sincere pleasure in laying before an enlightened public, the evidence which reliable historians furnish, as to the birth and formation of the nationality of the majority, in the old Province of Quebec, in order to demonstrate that the colonists sent out by the French Monarchs and French Companies, unlike those of St. Christophe and other French Islands, were singularly free from blemish. These ethnological studies, superficial as they may be, we intend to prosecute, with respect to other factors, in our nationality: this evening we have selected one branch of the subject, which though less familiar to us, is quite as worthy of your attention: the Scottish element in and round Quebec. A mark of distinction, as unexpected as it was unsolicited recently bestowed on your humble servant, by the Ethnographical Society of Paris,* renders still more appropriate he imagines, the selection of an Ethnographical subject, like the one which will engage our attention this evening; without further preamble, we will venture to discuss this subject. Under the title "Les Ecossais en France," &c., there appeared, some time since, a French work, in two robust quarto volumes-the result of twenty-five years of conscientious research by a French savant, Monsieur Francisque Michel. It purports to recapitulate, among other things, the career on French soil, &c., of Scotchmen, ever since the days of Wallace, ambassador to France, down to modern times. Monsieur Michel, of a certainty, has succeeded in investing, with deep interest, the enquiry he has originated. With your permission, we will, to-night, attempt to investigate a cognate portion of his subject, from an ethnological point of view, using the light he has thrown on the aims and aspirations of Scotchmen in old France, to follow the footsteps of their compatriots in New France! we mean, in the present Province of Quebec-heretofore, that of Lower Canada. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,-It shall be our aim to point out to you the traces left by Scotchmen, in Canadian history, Mr. LeMoine, the bearer of a Diploma, as "Délégué Régional" for Quebec, of the Institution Ethnographique de Paris, wore, for the first time, the Insignia of this learned Society. in and round Quebec, from the dawn of Canadian history to modern times. In those sanguinary passages-at-arms, by land and by sea, which have made of our town and its environs, classic ground, oft' shall we meet with the brawny descendant of Bruce and of Wallace, fearlessly brandishing dirk or claymore in the busiest part of the fray, "Let us do or die" his motto. Sandy, full fledged, is a many-sided individual. A man of war-we will also find him a successful tiller of the soilleading in the mart of commerce in the bank parlor-at the head of powerful trading ventures-in the wilds of Hudson's Bay-in the Editor's sanctum-in the groves of "Academe"-in the forum-in the Senate; more than once "the observed of all observers"-at the top of the social ladder his sovereign's trusted representative. For all that, we dare not promise you, for the frugal, selfreliant Scot transplanted to the green banks of the St. Lawrence, such a seductive portraiture such a glamour of romance as surrounds the persevering and oft', adversity taught soldier successful diplomat-scholar-artist, &c.,to whom Monsieur Michel introduces his readers, on the vine-clad hills and sun-lit valleys of the Loire, the Garonne, and the Seine. The arena of the Scot in Canada is more limited ; less attractive, the prizes rewarding success; less far-resounding, the clarion of his fame on Canadian soil. With every desire to enlarge our canvass to its utmost, we must be content to rest our enquiry, at the arrival on our shores of the first Europeans, in 1535,-that hardy band of explorers sent out by Francis I, and who claimed the soil by right of conquest, from the véritables enfants du sol, the Hurons, Iroquois or Algonquins, of Stadaconé. A crew of one hundred and ten, manned Jacques Cartier's three vessels the Grande Hermine, the Petite Hermine, and the Emerillon out of this number, history has preserved the names of eighty-one persons. * Were Cartier's followers all French? One can scarcely arrive at that conclusion, judging from the names and surnames of several. You cannot mistake, where William of Guernesey Guillaume de Guernese, " hailed from. There is equally, an unfrench sound about the name of Pierre Esmery dict Talbot."Herué Henry," seems tous an easy transmutation of Henry Herué or Hervey. We once knew at Cap Rouge, near Quebec, a worthy Greenock pilot whose name was Tom Everell; in the next generation, a singular change took place in his patronymic; it stood transformed thus: Everell Tom. Everell Tom, in the course of time, becaume the respected sire of a numerous progeny of sons and daughters Jean Baptiste Tom-Norbert Tom-Henriette Tom, and a variety of other Tom. An ingenious Quebec Barrister, in a curious paper, read at the annual Concert and Ball of the St. Patrick's Society at Montreal, 15th January, 1872, has pointed out much more startling transformations in some unmistakable Irish names, to be met with in the Church Registers. "Who could guess, asks John O'Farrell, that 'Tec Corneille Aubry,' married at Quebec, on the 10th September, 1670, was an Irishman? Yet the Register leaves no room nor doubt upon the subject; he was the son, says the Register, of "Connor O'Brennan," and of Honorah Janehour, of St. Patrick's (Diasonyoen), Ireland, his real name being "Teague Cornelius O'Brennan." In this connection, I may mention that, when I was pursuing my studies in the College at Quebec, our Rector was the Rev. Dr. Aubry, a worthy and pious Divine, and one of three brothers in the Priesthood in Lower Canada, and the uncles of two other young Canadian clergymen. Dr. Aubry, until quite recently, lived in the firm belief that he was of purely French extraction; in fact, if * The remainder having died, chiefly from scurvy, during the winter of 1535-6, on the banks of the River St. Charles. (See Appendix, Letter A.) my memory serves me right, he used playfully, at times, to pull my little ears for being, as he used playfully to say, such a wicked little Irlandais. Now the researches of Father Tanguay, in the musty old Church Registers of Lower Canada have revealed the astounding fact that Dr. Aubry is, after all, a countryman of our own, an Irlandais, a lineal descendant of that Teague Cornelius O'Brennan; another of this decendants is Parish Priest in the town of St. John's, near this city, Montreal. Who, again, I ask, but one able to answer the sphinx, could fancy that Jean Houssye dit Bellerose was an Irishman. He was so nevertheless; was married here on the 11th October, 1671; and as the Register attests, he was born in the Parish of St. Lawrence O'Toole, Dublin, and he was the son of Matthew Hussey and of Elizabeth Hogan, his wife, both Dubliners and both under the protection of that Irish saint, O'Toole. If I mistake not, Mr. Bellerose, the member for Laval, can trace back his pedigree to our friend Jack Hussey, from Dublin. Thus also we find Jean Baptiste Reil, married at Isle du Pads, on the 21st January, 1704; he is surnamed "Sansouci," which we may translate either "careless" or "De'il may care" as we please; this "Reil" is described in the Register as having been a native of St. Peter's Parish, in the City of Limerick, in Ireland; from the closeness of the dates, 1698 and 1704, from the singular nick-name (sansouci) he bore with his comrades, and from the consonance, "Reil" and Rielly, I should be inclined to think that our Isle du Pads friend was Jack Rielly, the de'il-may-care, all the way from Limerick, and that he must have taken and given some hard knocks under Sarsfield. This "Riel" or Rielly, as he should be called, is the direct ancestor of "Louis Riel" of Red River fame; and this fact may serve to account for the close friendship subsisting between Riel and O'Donohoe."--(O'Farrell's Address, 1872.) It only remains to our antiquarian confrère to present Senator Bellerose and Louis Riel, with a shamrock on each St. Patrick's Day, so that they may not forget their newly fledged nationality. Another of Cartier's companions rejoices in the name of "Michel Herué," this mightily sounds in our ears like Michael Harvey, one of the Murray Bay Harvey, of Major Nairn; amidst these now silent and shadowy discoverers of 1535, several names impress us, as not being French. None remained in Canada, except those whom scurvy or accidental death struck down in their ice-bound quarters at Stadaconé,-opposite to where our city now stands. |
