West to Grande Portage

By Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

On his sixteenth birthday, Phillipe Chabot is told that his brother-in-law has hired him on to his band of Voyageurs. The paddle west from Montreal to Grande Portage is the lifeblood of the fur trade, and will either transform or destroy a young habitant trying to make his mark.

 

As they paddle away from the shores of Montreal, the lives of family and friends are left to fate, fire, love, and the hope that their Voyageurs will return with the fall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9780228630432

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

I began my writing career with a short story, progressed to travel and historical articles, and then on to travel books. I called these books my Backroads series and in the seven of them I described what there is to see and do along the back roads of British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, and Alaska. I have now switched to fiction writing and am proud to be one of Books We Love Ltd published authors. Through BWL, I have had three mystery novels, Illegally Dead, The Only Shadow In The House, and Whistler's Murder published in a boxed set in what I call the Travelling Detective Series. In my fourth novel, Gold Fever I combine mystery with a little romance.I was born in New Westminster, B.C. and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. I married soon after graduation and moved to a farm where I had two children. Over the years I worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator and nursing attendant. During that time I raised my two children and helped raise my three step-children.I love change so I have moved over thirty times in my life, living on acreages and farms and in small towns and cities throughout Alberta and B.C. I now live on an acreage in the Port Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island with my husband, four female cats, and one stray male cat.I belong to Crime Writers of Canada, Federation of B.C. Writers, the Port Alberni Arts Council and the Port Alberni Portal Players. My short story, A Capital Offense received Ascent Aspirations Magazine's first prize for flash fiction in 2010. I have since turned that story into a stage play and presented it at the Fringe Festival in Port Alberni in 2014.

Book preview

Chapter One

Montreal 1766

It was still dark in late February when fifteen-year-old Phillippe Chabot and his younger brother, Jean-Luc, left the warmth of their house and headed out into the cold winter air to do the morning chores. Their breaths immediately vaporized around them. To keep warm they wore coats made from deer skins which came down over their breeches, and their footwear was high moccasins. They hurried as they poured the water over the milled grain then dumped the slurry into the troughs for the pigs in the pig pen and the chickens in the coop. Jean-Luc checked for eggs while Phillippe went and forked hay over the fence for the cows. By this time, their father, Louis, was in the barn with the milk cows. They joined him and each one milked two cows, setting their wooden pail aside when it was full.

It was dawn when they turned the milk cows out of the barn to join the others and carried the pails of milk into the house. They set them in a corner so the cream could rise to the top. They removed their coats and hung them up by the door.

The kitchen and common room combined took up most of the space on the ground floor of the house. Black pots and pans, and large kettles were stacked on shelves built into the wall beside the huge fireplace, which was along most of one wall in the kitchen. On the other side of the fireplace a cupboard held dishes. A table and chairs sat in the middle of the room. In one corner was a spinning wheel, a loom was in another. On a small cupboard beside the door was a bucket of water, a wash basin, and a towel. A lamp hung from the ceiling. Anyone going outside at night took it with them, leaving the fireplace to supply the light in the house.

The only other room on the ground floor was Phillippe’s parent’s bedroom. Phillippe and his brother slept upstairs until the weather got too cold. Then they brought down their beds and put them in a corner of the room, where they now sat, neatly made.

Phillippe’s mother, Bridget, was baking a sipaille on a grate over the fire. It was a casserole of layers of meat, fish, vegetables and herbs separated by pastry, and was perfect for a large family gathering.

Come, eat, Bridget said, dishing up their breakfast of hot wheat pancakes and bread. On the table were a pitcher of milk and bowl of sugar.

The four sat at the table. After Louis said grace they each covered their pancakes with the milk and sugar and ate.

Phillippe lived on a farm which had been in the family for three generations. In the 1600s, to populate the country known as New France, seigneuries were granted to prominent men, most of whom lived in France. The Saint Lawrence River was the main means of travel in New France so the land along the riverfront was divided into long, narrow strips which were the seigneuries, or farms. When the seigneurs came over to live in New France, they brought peasant families to work plots of the seigneuries.

The average plot size of land was twenty-seven acres. This was enough for the peasant’s family to live in relative comfort with their livestock. They did not have the man or animal power to work more land than that in any case.

During the winter, the outside chores consisted of feeding the livestock and getting firewood from the pile. The women spun wool, sewed clothing, knitted socks, mended worn clothing, dipped candles, and made soap, rugs, and quilts. The men made furniture for their homes, repaired anything broken, or did some woodcarving.

Education was for the elite who would become the professional and trades people in commerce. The only teachings the children received was from a parent who had been educated and since many peasants were mainly illiterate, there was not much learning from generation to generation.

Luckily, Bridget had some schooling and she taught her children the rudiments of spelling, writing, and numbers.

Life on a farm was not easy. Each peasant, or habitant, as they liked to call themselves, had to make enough money through the sale of his grain and vegetables to pay his rent and give tithes to the church. He also had to produce food for his family for the year, and have enough grain seed left over for the next year’s planting. The seigneurs had mills on the land so the habitants could grind the wheat or oats they grew for their own use. The habitants, though, had to pay for the use of the mill.

The peasant usually could not hope to own his own land. Many young men went into the fur trade to earn extra money and some were able to buy land and farm it on their own. Their sons also entered the fur trade to earn money for the family or for their own land.

Phillippe’s grandfather had come over from France as a peasant on one of the seigneury. Wanting his own land, he joined the fur trade and saved every cent he earned. He found land for sale a half day horse ride from Montreal that the seigneury had not cleared nor had found habitants to work. He bought it, cleared it and planted wheat, oats and a huge garden.

The large house, which had been built at the beginning of the century, was made of stone picked off Phillippe’s grandfather’s land. The walls were thick and lime had been used to fill the cracks between the stones. But because the lime absorbed moisture from the rains, the outside walls were covered with wood sheathing. The roof, made of overlapped boards had a steep pitch to it to keep the snow from building up during the winter. A long ladder was built from the edge of the roof to the peak beside the fireplace. Many a time Phillippe had to climb onto the roof to put out a fire in the chimney, which had also had wood around it to protect the lime.

There were four windows, one on each side of the house. When the house was first constructed, greased paper was used to let the light in. Glass for house windows was not available in New France until the 1740s and now each window had twelve small panes in it. There were two dormer windows in the roof for the rooms upstairs. Phillippe had heard stories about when the attic had been used by his grandfather to store grain before his father, Louis, and Uncles Etienne and Pierre were born.

Phillippe remembered his grandfather as having a long white beard and a gravelly voice. He sat on his knee and listened to tales of his life back in France and his few years in the fur trade. This had planted a seed in Phillippe’s mind. That seed had sprouted into a full desire from listening to his Uncle Pierre’s stories of his adventures paddling west to trade with the Indians.

Phillippe’s grandmother, who had come from France as a maid and then met and married his grandfather, died before Phillippe was born. His father described her as a small woman who really was not made for the rugged life to which she had come.

Phillippe’s father, being the oldest son, inherited the farm when his father died. He had cleared more land and increased his crop output until the family was one of the wealthier farm families in the area.

* * *

It was early morning when sixteen-year-old Jeanne Chabot walked the silent street to the Hotel-Dieu, Montreal's hospital. To keep out the cold she had on a cloak that hung to six inches above the hem of her ankle-length dress. The cloak was lined with fur and was warm in the coldest of weather. Her arms stuck out of the arm holes and she had a muff to keep her wrists and hands warm. A large hood sat on the top of her head, framing her face and resting on her shoulders. On her feet were laced boots that reached half way up her shins. She liked the heels on her boots because she could dig them in the snow to keep from slipping.

Jeanne entered the two-story stone building and hung up her cloak and muff. She walked down the long hall past the offices to the kitchen. It was just getting light outside and it was time for the morning meal. The institution was operated by nuns and she worked a few hours every day assisting them to deliver the food to each patient and help feed the ones who needed it. She especially enjoyed looking after the sick children.

Hello, Sister Angelique, Jeanne said as she entered the kitchen.

Hello, Jeanne, The elderly nun said, as she dished hot gruel into bowls from a large pot. How is your sister, Marguerite?

She is still too tired to get out of bed. I think it is the cold weather. When spring comes she will be better.

It will be nice to see her smiling face here again.

Jeanne helped put the bowls of steaming gruel on the trolley and she pushed it to the stairs. The two of them held their long skirts in one hand and used the other to carry the cart up to the second floor where the patients waited.

There was a room for the men and one for the women. A third smaller room was for the children. There were few adult patients today, only four in the women’s ward and three in the men’s. It was the children’s ward that always seemed to be full.

They went to the women’s room first. The room was long with a row of single, four-poster beds along one wall. Each one had a canopy and curtains to close for privacy. A large mural of Jesus, standing with his arms raised as if inviting them to join him, was painted on the far wall. In one corner was a desk where the nun who supervised the ward sat.

Three of the women were lying in bed while the fourth languished on a settee. Jeanne carried a bowl of gruel to the woman on the settee. Do you need some help eating? she asked, setting it on a cupboard beside her.

I do not feel hungry.

You must eat something.

The woman shook her head and turned away.

Jeanne felt sorry for the woman. She had given birth to a baby girl four days ago and the baby had died within two hours. Since then the woman had not eaten. Even when her husband came to visit her, she could not be brought out of her melancholy. Jeanne left the bowl and as she followed Sister Angelique into the men’s ward, she could hear the children crying for their supper.

The men’s room was also long with single beds but there were no canopies or privacy curtains. Once the men were served she hurried into the children’s ward to help Sister Angelique feed the little ones. Some could eat on their own but most were too small and had to be fed. And they were not prone to wait patiently for their turn.

Jeanne did not mind the noise. This was her favorite part of the morning. She went over to one crib and picked up the crying child. She sat him on her knee and began to feed him. There was not much of a menu for the small children. They could not eat the food of the older children or the adults so their meals were mainly boiled and mashed vegetables and grains.

Once the children were fed and changed, she usually played with them for a while. However, one baby boy had come in very sick yesterday and did not seem to be getting any better. Jeanne went over to his crib. She watched the small chest laboriously rise and fall as the baby took each raspy breath. Sister Angelique had tried feeding him earlier without success.

Jeanne pushed a tendril of her auburn hair back into the coil at the base of her neck. She picked up the baby and attempted to get some food into him but the little boy was not interested. He made little mewing sounds more like a kitten than a child.

Jeanne held the child close and began walking up and down the corridor. It was hard not to grow to love these little ones. They were innocent and in most cases not even able to tell where they hurt. They could only writhe in their beds and cry from the pain. It warmed her heart when she picked one up and it clung to her then settled in her arms. Sometimes she wondered how much of their crying was from fear and loneliness and missing their mothers. Most of the children in here were from poor families and the parents did not have time to come and visit them.

After a few minutes the mewing stopped and the little boy closed his eyes, falling into an exhausted sleep. As she listened to the rasping, Jeanne wished she could so something to ease the baby’s labored breathing. She bent and kissed the little forehead before lying him back in his crib.

Jeanne loved children. She hoped she would marry soon and start a family. But she was not sure who she wanted to marry. There was Florian, the older brother of one of her neighborhood friends. When she was younger she had felt a warmth whenever she was near him. She would go to her friend’s house just hoping to see him. But he, being older, had ignored her. Two years ago, when he turned sixteen and the fur trade was re-opened, he signed on with a merchant. He was gone during the summer and worked for a cabinet maker in the winter.

Then just before Christmas it was as if he had finally noticed that she was a grown woman. He dropped by to visit her at home and gave her a small jewelry box he had made for Christmas. From the stories she heard, though, he was much like many voyageurs, a drinker, a troublemaker, and womanizer.

She was not sure how she felt about Florian, especially since Andrew had been paying extra attention to her since his return from England. Andrew was William’s cousin and she had met him at her own cousin Antoinette’s and William’s wedding. He had come over from England for the ceremony then returned home afterwards. Last fall he came back to work for William as a clerk. He was studying the business so he could go west with the brigade in May to record the transactions.

Jeanne had strong feelings for Andrew but she still seemed to have that warmth for Florian. When she saw him her young heart gave a little flip.

She liked to think that Andrew was courting her and that he had been for the past six months. He visited her at home and took her for sleigh rides around the town on warm days. He had given her a necklace for Christmas but so far he had not mentioned anything about love or marriage. And the same was true of Florian. If neither of them asked her to marry him in the next three months, they would not have a chance until they came back after the trade in the fall.

Jeanne had not decided which of them she wanted to marry. She guessed it would depend on who asked her. She hoped that she would be making plans for her wedding this summer, not waiting until fall for a proposal.

Andrew was twenty and should have married long ago. She wondered if she should tell him about the measures that had been taken to increase the population in Montreal when it was first established over one-hundred-fifty years ago. Boys had to marry by the time they were twenty years of age and girls by the time they were sixteen. Bachelors were punished by being put in the stocks and then by fines if they still did not comply.

Once she was married, Jeanne knew she wanted lots of children. She just hoped she could have as many as she wanted. Families with ten or more children were financially rewarded and large families were the norm in the country. But there was only she and Marguerite in their parents’ family and only Antoinette, Phillippe, and Jean-Luc in her Uncle Louis’ family. There was talk that Uncle Pierre had an Indian wife and some children, but no one knew for sure and Pierre would never answer when questioned.

Chapter Two

Will Uncle Pierre be there? Phillippe asked, his voice hopeful. He never tired of listening to his uncle’s stories of the fur trade.

Bridget frowned in disapproval. I hope not. He is nothing but a drunk and a moocher.

Now, Bridget, Louis said. That is my brother and the boy’s uncle you are talking about.

Well, it is true. He does nothing but live off Etienne and drink in the taverns.

He works in Uncle Etienne’s blacksmith shop. Phillippe felt the need to defend his favorite uncle.

Only enough to get money for beer and wine. And I do not like the way he treats Antoinette’s husband, William.

"That