In contrast to Paul Emile, who grew up with at least four dozen or more aunts, uncles, and cousins in his St Laurent neighborhood—plus many more in the city and the countryside—we knew the Pepin family in Montreal only by photos, letters and the occasional visit. I just barely remember hearing our father speaking with his mother by phone in French up until her death in 1959 when I was 9 years old. 

Aunt Lucienne was very close in age to Paul Emile—the second in the family of five surviving children of Albert and Blanche Pepin—and she remained close to him all of his life. We know that she and our Tante Aline also provided him family support at some critical junctures. She entered the convent to become a Holy Cross teaching sister in 1930 at the age of 18, taking her final vows in 1937. Her religious name was Soeur Marie de Sainte-Amélie and her life of service is recorded in the order’s Salle de l’Héritage [pdf].

She taught girls at upper levels 7-13 and learned English well enough to read and write quite well. We received many letters in both languages from her over many years. By 1962 she took on administrative duties at different school and college locations until she retired in 1990.

Kenneth and I visited her in 1978 and had a wonderful  conversation with her. She was a vibrant host and made us feel that she’d known us all of our lives. After our father died in 1982 she continued to write our mother for several years. She was pleased to see Rita and Tony at their visit in 1991, soon after their marriage, but they report she was likely suffering from dementia at that point. She died in July of 1995 at age 83 and is buried in the sisters’ section at the Pavillon St Joseph, not far from our father’s gravesite in the Saint Laurent cemetery.

We have many photos of Aunt Lucienne but one of my favorites is of her with her upper-level students Nominingue in the period of years 1948-1958. I suspect she was a terrific teacher. Her handwriting was just about the most beautiful I have ever seen.

The third child in the family was Ernest, who married our Aunt Marguerite in 1940. Their wedding photo is to the left. We heard a good  deal about their children Lise, Jacques, Jean-Guy and Francine, whom we have visited with in both Canada and the USA.

We remember our father telling us that Uncle Ernest had worked as a street car conductor in Montréal at one time. He died too young at 56 years of age in 1972, the year our parents and the three youngest in our own family moved up to Lake Falls in North Carolina.

Aunt Marguerite was the fourth child, who stayed at home to care for family members until she entered the convent of the Sisters of Jeanne d’Arc, where she worked as a librarian and was  known by the name Soeur Thérèse d’Avila. She died after a long illness of unspecified cancer in 1986 at age 67 and is buried in Ottawa.

The youngest was Aunt Thérèse, whose first husband died very young—at age 41 in 1960. Therese worked as a librarian to support her surviving 5 children—Pierre, Andre, Pauline, Jean-Claude, Michel—while Aunt Marguerite helped with the children. She married a second time in 1963 and we remember Uncle Henri from our visit to the Montreal Expo in 1967, the first and only visit all of us together as a family made to Canada.

Aunt Thérèse certainly made an impression on all of us children with her flamboyant welcome and her brilliant laugh.

I can’t be sure exactly what our father’s siblings thought about their youngest sister. Whereas most of them seemed relatively subdued, Thérèse was always the most outspoken in the room—downright brash, but with a deeply sensitive, joyous warmth that was singular. It was hard to believe she could be so irrepressible given that her first husband, a studious schoolteacher, died young at age 41 and left her with five children to raise in an era where women did not work outside the home. She learned how to work for a living, as well as raise all those children—with the help of our Aunt Marguerite—and later how to care for an increasingly frail second husband.

A few years back I got the chance to visit Tante Thérèse on my own and this time my French was well practiced so I could better understand both her stalwart declamations as well as the subtler feelings she expressed.

I remember her insisting that I take her bedroom to sleep in while she went to a smaller bedroom in the family home at 950 LaPointe. She liked to work puzzles late into the night—cheering herself on much like teenagers these days play video games—and she was afraid she’d keep me awake if I wasn’t sleeping in a room far away from the living room. The next day she helped me identify many of Daddy’s photos from long ago.

When I looked at some notes on the family that Aunt Lucienne had sent to my mother about the Pepin family, I saw that Lucienne had added a note to the listing of her mother, Blanche Labelle’s many sisters: “All of them were very funny.” Aha, now we know where Thérèse—and a couple of our own siblings among Paul Emile’s children— got their high spirits.

Tante Thérèse lived far longer than any of her siblings—until age 88 in 2009. I like to think it might be because of that laugh.

Our father had many photos that he carried around with him for all of his life. It is possible that quite a few of them are of family members, but almost none are identified so I am collecting these together into the one category of family and friends.

In fact, of course, many of them are probably both friends and family at the same time. The relationships can be complicated. For instance, the sisters Charbonneau were children of Henri Charbonneau in Ferme Neuve, who was also related to the Labelles, and one of them married a member of the Bigras family—Blanche Ida Bigras was the wife of Uncle Edouard, Albert’s brother, and Marguerite Charbonneau later married into the Bigras family as well. A Papin great aunt married into the Meloche family and then one of the next generation married into the family as well.

The photo of one cousin dated on the front with “Sept 1934”  is identified in our father’s handwriting on the back as “Mlle M. R. Champagne, cousine Montréal 23/5/36.” Lucienne provides corroborating information on her listing of the Labelles that this cousin is Marie-Rose Champagne, daughter of Grandmother Blanche’s sister, Rosa Labelle, who married P. J. Champagne. Like Marie-Rose, there are quite a number of photos of some very attractive young women, sometimes in pretty spiffy vehicles.

Recently, we found a group photo of many of the cousins with Paul Emile in what was likely a pretty typical gathering on Sundays and holiday celebrations when many of them were children of close to the same age. At this point, he is still the tallest but in later years his younger cousins are often taller. The photo has obviously traveled hard and will need a lot of restoration work:

Otherwise, photos feature hunting and camping trips, for the most part, with the occasional group assembled in the yard of a home or farm. It may seem excessive to include all of these in this chapter, but if they were worth carrying around all these years perhaps there is also a chance that others may recognize some of the principals, sooner or later.

[Slideshow coming.]