Old Québec by the author
Ah, the memories we writers carry from all our Decembers Past: how those who loved us would spend hours preparing special foods only eaten at this time, presents, decorations, catching up on family gossip, watching favourite seasonal movies. For me, I especially loved the stories, the family memories.
Now, as my father loses his grip on his memories, his stories, I will catch and hold them for him.
Our family seat is Québec City, and to me it remains the most perfect place in Canada in which to celebrate the holidays. Everyone puts up lights, so you have thousands of sparkling stars as an honour guard lining the streets on the way to Midnight Mass. I can feel the warmth of the bodies in a packed church and hear the soaring sweet voices of the choir filling the rafters with ancient carols.
Afterward, more mundane sounds: season’s greetings and kisses, young children’s’ high voices carrying over the cacophony; coats, purses, keys and boots shuffling, zipping, jingling and tapping in readiness for heading home.
Outside the cocoon-like snow muffles all sound and you stop and take a breath of clean cold air and it is good after the miasma of various perfumes, slightly wet wool, alcohol, peppermint, moth balls, chocolate and cigarette fugue.
Then it’s packed into various cars and back to Oncle Normand’s for the unwrapping of presents, the eating of tourtière, the cuddling of new babies, the drinking of various beverages, the telling of tales. Ah, stories. This is where I come in.
One of my favourite French Canadian folk tales is La Chasse- Galerie, about homesick lumberjacks (or sometimes they are Coureurs de Bois) who make a deal with the devil so they can get home to see their loved ones. There’s a version written down by Honoré Beaugrand, published in 1892, but it has older European antecedents.
It goes like this:
¨Long ago, one New Year’s Eve, there were a number of woodcutters working in a very large forest. They worked hard, very hard! But they were lonely for their families during this time when so many were at home with theirs. Finally Baptiste blurted out what they were all thinking: “I want to go home today and see my family!” There were murmurs of agreement, but one of the lumberjacks asked : “How can we go home today? There is more than two meters of snow on the road, and the snow is still falling.”
“Who said we were walking out of here?” asked Baptiste. “I am going to paddle out in my canoe.”
Now, the men all knew that Baptiste had a canoe with paddles out back of the camp. What they didn’t know was that Baptiste had made a pact with the devil. If the devil would make the canoe fly wherever Baptiste wished, the lumberjack would not say Mass for an entire year. However, if Baptiste did not return the canoe before dawn of the day after he used it, the devil could keep his soul. Baptiste and his friends got into the canoe, and he muttered the magic words: “Acabris! Acabrax! Acabrum! The canoe rose in the air and the men began to paddle their way through the night sky to their home. Their families were so glad to see them! They celebrated long into the night, drinking and dancing. It was close to dawn when the men realized they had to return the canoe to the lumber camp by dawn or forfeit their souls…¨
That is a happy story, isn’t it?
I will leave the conclusion of this story to your imagination (or you can look it up if you’re curious and don’t know it). As a kid, I am afraid I always missed the stern moral to this and focused more on the romantic aspect of the lumberjacks’ love for their families. That they would do anything to be together. That is a happy story, isn’t it?
My dad’s stories are fading. If I could use the flying canoe, (without the curse) I would fly him to join once again with the family members whose pasts and present are edging each day farther away from him. And while we flew through the air, I’d gift him back so many of his stories. Because that’s what we writers, we storytellers, do.
May you gather many stories with your kith and kin these holidays.
And Happy New Year…(without the curse).
La Chasse-galerie by the author
