New News Blog Created, This site indexed

New News Blog Created, This site indexed

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or, conduct a search on this blog.

A new NEWS and Events blog has been created to continue this work of looking at the French, Franco-American phenomenon on the Glocal Scale...

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merci for your reading attention!

You don't know Jack about Kerouac

You don't know Jack about Kerouac
10 facts about Kerouac that just may surprise you
By RACHEL BRIERE, Sun staff

It's the 19th season of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! This weekend a poetry contest, pub tour, open mikes and films of Jack Kerouac's Lowell will attract Kerouacians of all stripes. Festivities in honor of the King of the Beats kicked off yesterday and unofficially end Sunday. (See a complete list of events below.) We all know he hailed from Lowell, but here are 10 things you may not know about the man.

1. His battle with the bottle is legendary, but most don't know his favorite local watering hole was Nicky's on Gorham Street, which is now Ricardo's Trattoria.

2. The wordsmith learned English as a second language, speaking "joual," a French-Canadian dialect, as his first.

3. He was born Jean-Louis Kerouac and changed his name to Jack before On The Road came out in 1957. He published his first novel, The Town and the City, under the name John Kerouac in 1950.



4. His father owned a small printing press, where he first got the writer's bug. He would pen stories when he was 5 in the Bridge Street shop.

5. He spent some time in the U.S. Navy and as a merchant marine and was admitted to the sick list after eight days for headaches. Doctors diagnosed him with dementia, which he shrugged off as nervousness. He received an indifferent discharge for "unsuitability."

6. Most have seen this photo of Kerouac with his cat (this newspaper has run it many times), but he had more than a soft spot for felines. He took care of as many as four at a time and believed the four-legged creatures were God-like.

7. If things did not work out for him as a writer, painting was his next choice. He dabbled in watercolors, such as Old Angel Midnight, above, and sketched like a madman.

8. He did a short stint as a sportswriter at The Sun, but was dismissed for overly flowery prose.

9. Although he is most famous for his novel On the Road, Kerouac did not drive. Friends like Neal Cassady did most of the wheel work on his cross-country treks. He didn't learn to drive until he was 34, and he never had a driver's license.

10. He lived in 14 different apartments in Lowell before he graduated high school. His mother's yen for change fueled his wanderlust.

***

From poetry to music to tours, the 19th season of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! has something for everyone:

Today

* 9:30 a.m. -- Youth Poetry Contest, Lowell High School, 50 French St.

* 4 p.m. -- Lowell Blues, Kerouac film, Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center, Market Street

* 6 p.m. -- Scroll to Lowell fundraiser with David Amram, Kerouac writers-in-residence Dave Daniel and Major Jackson, musician Frank Morey, Pollard Memorial Library

* 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. -- Mystic Out Bop Review and On The Road video festival screening. 119 Gallery, 119 Chelmsford St. $5

* 9:30 p.m. -- Ghosts of the Pawtucketville Night, led by Roger Brunelle. Meet at McDonald's on Mammoth Road

Tomorrow

* 10:30 a.m. -- Commemorative at the Commemorate, Kerouac Park, intersection of French and Bridge streets

* 12:30 p.m. -- Cairo to Kerouac, David Amram and friends, Pollard Memorial Library

* 2 p.m. -- Kerouac walking tour, Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center

* 2 p.m. -- Van tour of Nashua by Steve Edington, park visitor center

* 4 p.m. -- Open mike at Rainbow Cafe, Cabot Street

* 4 p.m. -- Lowell Blues, park visitors center

* 5 p.m. -- Kerouac Pub Tour, Ricardo's Trattoria, 110 Gorham St.

* 8 p.m. -- Poet Janet Hamill and Moving Star, Rainbow Cafe

Sunday

* 12:30 p.m. -- Amram Jam open mike, Caffe Paradiso, 45 Palmer St.

* 4 p.m. -- Lowell Blues, park visitors center

http://www.lowellsun.com/front/ci_4451278

"Deep Woods and River Roads"

Kennebec-Chaudiere Heritage Corridor Launches Audio Tour, "Deep Woods and River Roads"
MaineToday.com, ME Released 10/10/06

Waterville, ME (October 10, 2006) – The Kennebec Chaudière Heritage Corridor will celebrate the completion of a new audio tour “Deep Woods and River Roads” in Waterville on Wednesday, October 11, 2006. On hand for the audio launch will be Public Radio International’s American Routes host, Nick Spitzer, as well as several of the people whose stories and experiences were captured in the unique “listening journey” from Quebec City to Popham Beach.

In recognition of the corridor’s many vibrant downtowns, including Bath, Skowhegan, Gardiner and Waterville, the official launch of the audio tour will take place at a 4:00 p.m. reception at the Redington Museum in Waterville immediately following the 6th Annual Maine Downtown Conference.

"Before this project, the Kennebec Chaudière Corridor was merely a yellow line on the state road map,” said Erik Jorgensen, Assistant Director, Maine Humanities Council. “This project gives that line dimension and depth to a really extraordinary degree. It's a very exciting pilot, one that could serve as a model for future cultural tourism projects in Maine."

Utilizing such documentary approaches as personal and community narrative, soundscapes and audio art, the Kennebec Chaudière Audio tour celebrates the region’s cultural heritage by featuring stories, sounds, and experiences of the region. Ranging from the traditions surrounding the maple sugaring industry, guiding and boatbuilding, to the contemporary work of artists, writers and craftspeople working in the region. The 80-minute CD is a rich audio snapshot of local landscapes, architecture, people, artifacts, traditions and stories. A companion guide to the audio tour was also developed.

Early in the 17th century, the Kennebec and Chaudière Rivers served as the border between the French and English settlements. By 1819, Maine farmers established a trail along the two rivers in the hopes of developing new markets for their products. Decades later, more than one million French-Canadian and Irish immigrants made the journey, known as the “Old Canada Road,” to work on farms, logging camps and in shoe and textile factories throughout New England. Today, the Corridor is a diverse geographic and cultural region. From the northern woods of Jackman to the tidewaters of the Kennebec in Bath, this thoroughfare is rich in culture and history.

"The audio tour provides the listener with a more complete experience as they travel along the Kennebec Chaudière Heritage Corridor”, stated KCHC board member André Pied. “We hope it will encourage visitors and residents of Maine to explore the rich history and heritage of the corridor from Québec City to Popham Beach.”

Copies of the audio CD are available from Old Fort Western in Augusta, by calling 207-626-2385 or email oldfort@oldfortwestern.org. Copies will also be available at organizations and sites throughout the corridor, as well as regional businesses and libraries throughout the state. In addition, the audio tour can be ordered online by visiting www.kennebec-chaudiere.com.

Abbe Levin of Cultural Resources, Inc., served as project director. As part of the planning process for the development of the audio tour, community forums along the corridor were held in eight locations to collect information and input. Cultural Resources, Inc is a non-profit agency that works with communities on developing strategies to sustain local culture and heritage through documentation and inventory work.

The audio tour was produced by Rob Rosenthal of Shunpike Audio. A talented radio producer and teacher at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Rosenthal has produced several cultural documentary projects including the most recent “Aucocisco Radio: Ten Stories about Portland Harbor” which received first place in the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

Funding for the project was provided by the Maine Department of Transportation, Maine Community Foundation, Maine Office of Tourism, Maine Arts Commission, Maine Humanities Council, and Old Canada Road Scenic Byway.

The Kennebec Chaudière International Heritage Corridor works to identify, interpret, conserve, and promote its natural, human, and cultural resources by collaborating with communities and organizations throughout Maine and Québec.

http://business.mainetoday.com/newsdirect/release.html?id=3514

Priests' rise is called sign of change, hope

Priests' rise is called sign of change, hope


Rev. Daniel Hennessey (left) and Rev. Michael Harrington carried the heart of St. John Vianney during a procession at St. John's Seminary in Brighton. Also in the procession was Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley (left). (Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan)

By Michael Paulson, Boston Globe Staff  |  October 13, 2006
Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, declaring yesterday that ``the priestly vocation is in jeopardy," hailed as hopeful signs the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to elevate two local pastors to bishop and the arrival in Boston of the preserved heart of a sainted French priest.

O'Malley said he hopes the examples of the two priests being promoted, the Rev. John A. Dooher and the Rev. Robert F. Hennessey, and of the one who died 137 years ago, St. John Vianney, will inspire others to consider the priesthood.
O'Malley gave Dooher and Hennessey each a purple skullcap , called a zucchetto, and a pectoral cross that are signs of the office of bishop.
Then he prayed before the saint's heart, which was encased in glass inside a shiny brass reliquary and carried on red velvet at the head of a procession of white-robed seminarians and a cloud of incense on a sunny Brighton hillside.
``One of the challenges that we have in trying to reach out to inactive Catholics and getting them more involved in the church is to communicate, as these two pastors have successfully done, a sense of personal vocation to our people and, at the same time, a sense of communal mission, because it's not only the priestly vocation that is in jeopardy in today's world, but all Christian vocations," O'Malley said.
He will ask the new auxiliary bishops to help him administer the sprawling archdiocese, which reports a population of 2 million Catholics, the vast majority of whom do not regularly attend worship services.
Hennessey, a 54-year-old South Boston native, was once a missionary in Bolivia who for the last 12 years has headed one of the largest and most successful parishes in the archdiocese, Most Holy Redeemer Church in East Boston, attended largely by immigrants from Central and South America. At times the parish is so crowded that Masses have to be broadcast to the streets around the church, and it has played a major role in helping to resettle immigrants, often announcing job and housing openings from the pulpit.
Dooher, a 63-year-old Dorchester native, has been pastor for 10 years of St. Mary Church in Dedham, which the archdiocese said is home to a particularly successful program for Catholic youth . Dooher spoke yesterday of the importance of youth ministry.
But it was Dooher's history assisting at the chancery that drew criticism from leaders of Bishopaccountability.org, an organization that is compiling an Internet-based archive of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Dooher is mentioned in a 2003 report by Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly as one of two priests who in the mid-1990s met with pastors in parishes affected by abuse cases. Dooher was named in a deposition by Bishop John B. McCormack as having participated in conversations in the Boston archdiocese in 1994 about where to house abusive priests.
``John Dooher abetted a harmful and immoral coverup for the Boston archdiocese," said Anne Barrett Doyle, codirector of BishopAccountability.org. ``Now he should lead it into an era of unprecedented honesty."
Archdiocesan spokesman Terrence C. Donilon said that from 1993 to 2000, Dooher had assisted the archdiocese in counseling and supporting accused priests and ``some survivors," but that ``at no time was Father Dooher in a position of decision-making authority with regard to accused priests."
Donilon said Dooher ``has come to understand the pain experienced by survivors of sexual abuse by clergy and the need to work at all levels of the church to bring about the healing and unity necessary for us to live out our call to be one family in Christ."
Hennessey will replace Bishop John P. Boles, who is retiring, as administrator of the central region of the archdiocese, while Dooher will replace Bishop Richard J. Malone, who since 2004 has overseen the Diocese of Portland, Maine, as administrator of the archdiocese's south region. There are currently three other active auxiliary bishops in the archdiocese.
Public veneration of the heart of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, will be today from 4 to 10 p.m. in St. Mary Church in Waltham and tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/10/13/priests_rise_is_called_sign_of_change_hope/

This province really not like the others

This province really not like the others
Consider the demands faced
by Les Canadiens

Oct. 14, 2006. 01:00 AM
Toronto Star,  Canada

If you want proof that Michael Ignatieff is on the right track with his controversial policy toward Quebec, just look at the Montreal Canadiens. In particular, look at a burly young forward named Guillaume Latendresse.

Here's what you need to know about Latendresse: He's 19; he weighs a good 220 pounds, perhaps more; he played his junior hockey for the Voltigeurs of Drummondville, one of the grittiest, least fashionable towns in Quebec; he can score pretty goals; he can also deliver bruising checks.

The Canadiens drafted Latendresse in 2005, and last fall he nearly forced his way onto the team. But he was returned to the Voltigeurs. He could have played for Drummondville again this season — not many 19-year-olds thrive in the NHL. But another impressive stint at training camp put severe pressure on general manager Bob Gainey.

In the end, the choice for the final position on the Canadiens' roster came down to Latendresse or Andrei Kostitsyn, a gifted 21-year-old forward from Belarus. If the choice had been made strictly on its merits, Kostitsyn may have had the edge. But when you're talking about Les Glorieux — an old, sadly inaccurate nickname for the Montreal franchise — merit is not the only factor.

For decades, the Canadiens incarnated Quebec pride. Roch Carrier's story The Hockey Sweater captures that spirit, as does Roy Dupuis's magnificent portrayal of Maurice Richard in the recent movie The Rocket. From Jacques Plante to Patrick Roy, Aurel Joliat to Guy Lafleur, the Canadiens always had a stream of Quebec talent at their disposal. Local heroes were never hard to find.

Not any longer. In the 1980s and '90s, the stream began to run dry. This year's roster boasts 11 Europeans but only four Quebecers: a fourth-line forward, two run-of-the-mill defencemen (one of whom is injured till December) and Latendresse.

Now, if we were discussing any other middle-of-the-pack team — the Maple Leafs, for instance — it would be absurd to worry about a player's birthplace. So what if Bates Battaglia, from Chicago, made the squad while Kris Newbury, from Brampton, did not?

But Gainey has to face a barrage of daily comment from journalists and broadcasters like Réjean Tremblay, Jean Pagé and Michel Bergeron (the longtime coach of the extinct Quebec Nordiques). And much of their talk has a fiercely nationalist edge.

To some commentators, it's not enough for the Canadiens to win — they have to win using lots of Quebecers. To lose with homegrown players is sad but permissible; to lose with foreign players (Europeans, Americans and English Canadians alike) is shameful.

The other day, I decided to Google Latendresse, looking only for webpages in French. And although I knew about Latendresse-mania, the results still surprised me. Craig Rivet (a stalwart anglo defenceman) attracted 15,300 hits; Saku Koivu (the veteran Finnish captain) garnered 58,500; but for Latendresse, who had just played his first two games in the NHL, there were already 90,700 hits.

Latendresse may have broad shoulders, but this is an awful lot of pressure to place on them. He is, after all, a mere teenager who has already suffered two concussions. Now, he has to embody the hopes of the Quebec ... nation.

You see, as Michael Ignatieff understands, this is not a province like the others. This is a place with a history, a culture, a language and a sense of identity all its own. That doesn't mean it craves more administrative power. What it needs is recognition.

Today, in much of English Canada, Quebec is regarded as just another province, one that whines a lot in a foreign tongue. When Ignatieff expressed his acceptance of Quebec as a civic nation, along the lines of Scotland and Wales, the reaction in some quarters was almost hysterical.

His position is not something dreamed up after his return from Harvard last year — one of many errors about Ignatieff that lazy or malicious commentators have spread. His 1993 book Blood and Belonging includes a long chapter about Quebec, based on visits to Montreal, James Bay, the Cree territories, the Eastern Townships and Trois Rivières — where Ignatieff spent time with a Quebec nationalist named Dennis Rousseau and watched him play hockey at the local rink.

"The core of my separation from Dennis comes down to this," Ignatieff wrote: "Because we do not share the same nation, we cannot love the same state."

This is not a conclusion he enjoyed drawing. The chapter ends wistfully: "One can sit in a hockey arena in Trois Rivières on a Tuesday night, watching a young man skating his heart out, with a wild grin on his face, and wish, suddenly, that we did actually love the same nation and not merely cohabit the same state."

If Guillaume Latendresse scores in tonight's home opener, he'll surely have a wild grin on his face. And the cheering may echo across the Ontario border.

Mark Abley is a Montreal journalist who has written or edited 11 books. He is also a former reporter with the Montreal Gazette.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160689837116&call_pageid=970599119419

Monette's coming out

Monette's coming out
Hosanna was 'huge event'
 
Robert Cushman
National Post

Friday, October 13, 2006


CREDIT: NIR BAREKET
Salvatore Antonio as Hosanna at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, the role that was first played by Richard Monette in 1972. “It brought me from being a good actor to being a star actor,” he says.

For many years now the lobby of Toronto's Tarragon Theatre has been dominated by a large photograph of a man dressed, handsomely, as Elizabeth Taylor dressed as Cleopatra. It's a picture of Richard Monette in the title role of Michel Tremblay's Hosanna, as produced at the Tarragon in 1972. Hosanna, the Montreal drag-queen locked into a love-hate relationship with a rough-trade partner, is a role that Monette looks back on as "a huge event in my professional life."

And this is doubly a time for looking back, since Hosanna is being revived at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in a production by John Van Burek, the play's English co-translator with the late Bill Glassco, who directed that original production. Meanwhile Monette is about to complete a record-breaking 14 years as artistic director of the Stratford Festival; the 2007 Stratford season, of which the details were announced last week, will be his farewell.

"In my professional life," Monette says, "Hosanna brought me from being a good actor -- in some people's minds -- to being a star actor. Bill Hutt said that it was one of the few star performances he'd seen by a Canadian." Monette still wonders whether those last three words make the compliment somewhat backhanded, though I don't think he needs to worry.

"I was playing Orestes opposite Monique Mercure's Electra at Centre Stage," Monette remembers, "and she suggested that I get the script. I read it, and I wrote to Bill Glassco saying, 'Please, please, please, could I have an audition?' And because I was a squeaky wheel, he agreed to see me. I said I'd like to read it in a French Canadian accent, and he said no." Doing it without the accent, though, Monette sounded like "a New York hairdresser from Greenwich Village," so finally Glassco allowed him to try it his way. "And when I did that, it exploded. Bill told me afterwards that in his mind he'd already cast somebody else. Then he changed his mind."

Ironically Mercure, the actress who had egged him on to try for the role, was critical when she saw, or rather heard, him do it. "Monique didn't like my accent; she thought I was making fun of the accent. But I am French-Canadian, and I based it on one of my aunts; I spoke just the way she spoke but in English. Michel writes in joual, which is what my family spoke." Richard Donat ("brilliantly cast"), who acted opposite Monette, spoke in an English accent, and the contrast seemed to work.

It fits too with the play's underlying theme. Hosanna, says Monette, was "slightly scandalous to people" when it opened; it dealt, through Hosanna's infatuation with Liz Taylor, with the theme of celebrity ("which was very big then"), and also of course with gender-bending. "It was regarded as being outspoken, with gayness, salty language and nudity. But it's also a political play, with Hosanna representing Quebec -- a transvestite in other people's clothes." It's a plea for Quebec to be itself and stop emulating America, represented in this case by Hollywood.

Tremblay himself, though, told the actor: "I think what makes it work is its heart." Monette agrees. "It was shocking, but it was human. The difficulty with playing the role -- or the trap -- is it's easy to see Hosanna as getting her come-uppance because she's got a big mouth. She's a bitch, but funny. The problem is in making the character charming in the second act. But it's a fabulous role. It's got everything."

According to Monette, "Hosanna put Tremblay on the map in English-speaking Canada." It also put Monette on the map.

You can trace a straight line from his performance in Hosanna to his current eminence at Stratford. In the audience at that 1972 production was Robin Phillips, who was about to begin his own regime at the festival and, duly impressed, invited Monette to be part of it.

He had acted at Stratford before, in minor roles; one of them was Eros in Antony and Cleopatra, with Christopher Plummer and Zoe Caldwell; and it was Caldwell's Cleopatra headdress that, in a nice gesture to tradition, he wore as Hosanna. (It's one thing that makes that Tarragon lobby photo so striking.) Under Phillips, Monette played leads, starting with Hamlet, and began directing. He continued doing this, with increasing success, under three succeeding regimes, before assuming the top job in 1994

Will he miss it? "While I'm doing it, I don't think I'll miss it, but I know that when it's over, I will. At the time, every day seems an age, but it's all gone by in the blink of an eye."

- Hosanna runs until Oct. 28 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. Call 416-866-8666 or visit youngcentre.ca for tickets.

http://www.canada.com/cityguides/toronto/story.html?id=3c08fb0f-3e83-417c-aba3-4a8da84a19b2&k=78853

The sunny side of the street

Reporter's Notebook: The sunny side of the street

By Steve Desroches/ sdesroch@cnc.com
Friday, October 13, 2006
Cape Codder, MA

"I'm giving you my car," my good friend Bert said over the phone from his home in San Francisco.
    "Um, what?" I asked, gulping down three-day-old macaroni and cheese I found in the back of the refrigerator. "I can't take your car."
    "Look, when I went to visit in February your car didn't even have heat," he said. Your car is a piece of junk. And anyway, it's too late; I already shipped it. It's probably somewhere in Nebraska right now."
    I was stunned. Bert was right; my 1993 Geo Prism was a wreck. It used to be black, now was mostly rust. It had no heat or air conditioning. The radio was broken. It burned oil. It failed its last two inspections and required repairs that would certainly cost more than the car was worth. My little car that I bought the day after I graduated from college 10 years ago was on its last leg.
    Bert's offer came to the rescue. He had bought himself a Prius and wanted me to have his 2000 Grand Jeep Cherokee, a vehicle I never in a million years would have been able to buy for myself.
    After all, I'm a journalist; he's a corporate attorney. You do the math.
    Waiting for this gift from the gods turned into an interesting mental exercise. See, I'm half Quebecois and half Polish. I was born in America, but I certainly inherited some of the cultural attributes of the two ethnic groups. And those attributes are often opposing forces. My mother was the first person in her neighborhood to marry someone who was not Polish. When she took my father around to meet all the neighbors, Mrs. Repski, the oldest person on the block, asked my father if his last name was French. When he said, "Yes. French-Canadian, actually," she shook her head and said to my grandmother, in Polish, "Oh well, maybe the marriage will work out anyway."
    The birth of my sister and then me was proof enough that the marriage worked out splendidly. Nevertheless, the mixing of the French and Polish set off a culture war of sorts for my sister and me. The Quebecois side of my family seemed to always see the sunny side of life. The littlest accomplishment was reason to have a party. Family clambakes on the beach near my grandparents' home in Mattapoisett turned into a community fair as the more the merrier. There is a reason why French-Canadians make a big deal about New Year's Day. They love a party.
    The Polish side is a different story. I love them all dearly, but they have a healthy dose of the "Slovak Sorrow." It's understandable. Life for my French-Canadian ancestors was pretty good. Roaming around the woods of Quebec in a canoe hunting beaver pelts sounds great. My Polish predecessors were wondering which one of their neighbors was going to invade next. If it's not the Germans, it's the Russians. If it's not one thing, it's the other.
    Bad car karma
    Those two forces were at work in my mind. I wanted to be happy about my new car. Bert told me it was in great condition - it had leather, heated seats, a CD player and a rack for my kayak. But then I started to think, "Eh, my excise tax is going to go up. And it only gets 14 miles to the gallon. Filling up is going make me go broke. And blah, blah, blah." Every negative thought I could have filled my brain, when I should have been focusing on what good fortune had come my way.
    But when the car arrived I think I actually did a jig of glee. It's beautiful. And it has heat! I actually started looking forward to winter as I remembered that the rear defroster on my old car broke last January. I drove it around Provincetown to show all my friends and felt I'd left those negative thoughts far behind.
    But then, the other shoe that we Poles always wait for, dropped. The next morning the car wouldn't start. It turned over, but would stall. Over the next few days there were times it would start and I drove it around town, only to have to leave it in a parking lot when I couldn't get it started again. I managed to drive it down to Frank's Texaco in Orleans. Frank knew my old Geo well. Too well. So when I showed up with a shiny new Jeep, only to say it was having problems, it looked like I had bad car karma. I left the key and walked to work, completely deflated and sliding down a black hole of negative thoughts:
    "This is going to be expensive."
    "They don't make cars like they used to. This is all because of corporate greed."
    "Some friend. Bert gave me a lemon. Thanks a lot Bert!"
    The awakening
    But no sooner did I settle in at my desk, still snorting smoke, as by this point I was in a particularly foul mood, than the phone rang.
    "Can you bring down theother key," the voice from Frank's said.
    " This key starts the car," said the mechanic holding the key I brought in. " This key is what's called a valet key."
    I got a quick tutorial that the key I had been using to try and start the car was designed to prevent theft when using valet parking. It would only start the car a few times in a given time period. I felt my face grow red.
    "You didn't read the book, did you?" the mechanic asked, quite astutely, I might add.
    "Uh-uh," I sheepishly admitted. "And the last time I went anywhere that had valet parking, I was parking the cars."
    I left Frank's only having to pay $29 for an inspection sticker.
    That night I went out to celebrate. I rallied my friends to go out and toast to the fact that good things do happen, and even when bad things strike, there can be a positive side. I called the next day to donate my old car to WOMR, the Outer Cape's community radio station. I figured I should toss out some good energy into the universe since some had come my way.
    And then I decided that I would write to my relatives in Poland. Seems that now that communism is dead and buried, things should be looking up in Warsaw, no? After all, it used to take about month to get a letter to them, now I can fire off an e-mail. Yes indeed. Au revoir to the Slovak Sorrow.
    Who's got the champagne?
    
http://www2.townonline.com/brewster/opinion/view.bg?articleid=595200&format=text

In Ottawa, Hanging With 2 Canadian Favorites

Edwin Holgate's "Ludivine" depicts a young Quebec girl whose mother has recently died.
Photo Credit: Painting By Edwin Holgate / National Gallery Of Canada Photo



In Ottawa, Hanging With 2 Canadian Favorites

Sunday, October 15, 2006; P10

WHAT: "Clarence Gagnon, 1881-1942: Dreaming the Landscape" and "Edwin Holgate" at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

WHEN: Through Jan. 7.

HOW MUCH: About $10.50 (U.S.) for both exhibitions.

WHY GO: Major retrospectives on two of Canada's most admired artists are happening in two exhibitions at the same time in the same building. What a happy coincidence.

The artists were separated in age by more than a decade -- Gagnon was born in 1881 and Holgate in 1892 -- but both brought a modern aesthetic to the country's art scene through their portraits and rural landscapes. Gagnon and Holgate studied in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and they incorporated the principles of impressionism into their works.

They had their differences. Gagnon was more illustrative and conjured the romance of the Quebec villages he depicted, whereas Holgate -- as is evident in his portraits -- was less spontaneous and more focused on form.

DON'T MISS . . . Holgate's "Ludivine" (1930), a mesmerizing portrait of a young girl from a large Quebec family who had just lost her mother. The artist shows her in a state of shock as she looks out blankly. "It's really one his best paintings," says Holgate exhibit organizer Rosalind Pepall, curator of decorative arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Other standouts include Holgate's "The Lumberjack" (1924), which shows a hulking, imposing figure standing in the foreground of a landscape and illustrates the artist's attention to detail. Gagnon's "Oxen Ploughing" (1903) depicts a farmer walking behind a plow that is being pulled by a pair of oxen. It is a quintessential representation of the artist's depiction of rural Quebec.

EXTRAS: In conjunction with the two exhibitions, the museum will host a day-long symposium beginning at 9:30 a.m. Nov. 18 featuring talks (in English and French with simultaneous interpretation) by curators, critics and writers. Admission is about $26, and registration is required (613-998-8888). Young adults can check out "ArtSparks: Spins & Needles" at 6 p.m. Nov. 30; the event features a tour of the exhibitions, hands-on projects, and music and dancing in the Tour Group Lobby. Cost is about $8.75, and registration is required (613-998-8888).

Give yourself a museum break and time your visit so you can attend the 21st annual Ottawa Wine and Food Show (Nov. 3-5). The event at the Ottawa Congress Centre (55 Colonel By Dr.) will feature about 200 booths offering wine, beer and food from around the world; celebrity chefs will hold cooking seminars on the hour. Tickets (about $13.25; no one under 19 admitted) can be purchased in advance by calling 613-755-1111 or by visiting http://www.playerexpo.com/WineShow .

EATS: Get into a French Canadian state of mind at Luxe Bistro (47 York St., 613-241-8805), offering top-of-the-line steaks in the $32 to $38 range. Fish dishes, including Crispy Lobster Risotto, cost slightly less. For an Asian-inspired meal, book a table at Shanghai (651 Somerset St. W., 613-233-4001). DJs spin tunes every Thursday, and Saturday is karaoke night. The restaurant is known for its dumplings, about $6.65 per order, and pad thai , about $10.55 to $14.95.

Eating on the run? The ByWard Market (55 ByWard Market Sq., 613-562-3325), one of Canada's oldest and largest public markets, offers fast food and baked goods from all over the world. There's also some great shopping: A slew of boutiques and outdoor vendors sell fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers and arts and crafts.

SLEEPS: For convenience, it's hard to beat the Sheraton Ottawa Hotel (150 Albert St., 613-238-1500, http://www.starwoodhotels.com/ ), in the middle of the Canadian capital about two blocks from the museum. Its weekend packages start at about $106 a night for a double.

For a more intimate setting, try the Carmichael Inn & Spa (46 Cartier St., 877-416-2417, http://www.carmichaelinn.com/ ). Each of its 11 units has a queen-size bed and a private bath, as well as fine antiques. Rooms at the inn, a 15-minute walk from the museum, start at about $131.25 a night.

INFO: The National Gallery of Canada is at 380 Sussex Dr. Details: 800-319-2787, http://www.gallery.ca/ .

-- John Maynard
The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/13/AR2006101300475.html

Céline Dion to trade the Strip for nappies?

With 1 year to go in Vegas, plans afoot for another child
Céline Dion to trade the Strip for nappies?

Credits
Written by
John Egan
Published
14/Oct at 04:00
Source(s)
ExtraTV.com
Four years into her record-breaking Las Vegas show A new day... Céline Dion has disclosed plans for her post-Vegas life. Two new albums, a new home, and a second child are all on the books.

French Canadian songstress Céline Dion raised a lot of eyebrows when she took herself off the road to mount a nightly extravaganza in Las Vegas. Many doubted whether she could draw in consistent enough crowds to make it profitable. However high demand and massive profits have proved the critics wrong--and other acts are now lining up to "work the Strip."

But Céline's contract at Caesar's Palace runs out next year--what's next? In an exclusive interview she gave to the American entertainment programme Extra, Céline didn't equivocate. Her immediate future includes "French album, English album, one more year of this show. After, I hope to have another child".  She and her husband are also building a new, larger home in Florida, in which to live after their Vegas commitments are over.

Fans of both her French and English music will be thrilled: Céline's last new French album was 2003's Une fille et 4 types, though she released a double-disc best-of French language disc (One ne change pas) in 2005. Céline's last new English album was 2004's Miracle. Click here to view the interview.

Céline Dion won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland with Ne partez pas sans moi (Don't leave without me)

http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/6524

Voices.com Raises Accents and Dialects Awareness

Voices.com Raises Accents and Dialects Awareness

Voices.com, the voice marketplace, is revealing one of the hottest secrets in the industry today: how to increase the international presence of a company globally through localization.


New York, NY, October 14, 2006 --(PR.COM)-- In the international marketplace, it is very important for organizations to be able to both globalize and localize their product information and service offerings.  That being said, the information presented to their target audiences is only as effective as the means by which it is communicated.

For audio purposes, the vessel or means of communication is via a voice talent performance; in essence, a voice-over recording performed in an accent or dialect native to the people the message is being directed at, in other words, localizing (familiarizing) a message that will yield more targeted and fruitful consumer responses.

Localization is one of the easiest ways for a company to its broaden international reach and better serve current customers.

To illustrate, if someone were writing a French Canadian script for an audience located in Montreal, QC, they would make sure that the terminology used is familiar to French Canadians living in Montreal. Not only that, the writer may employ unique speech and formation characteristics indigenous to the French Canadian language and relevant cultural references to help their audience best identify with what is being presented to them.

Going one step further, a script written for a Montreal, Quebec audience would be recorded by a native French Canadian voice talent from Montreal whose voice embodies the characteristics of the people and can convey the copy in a meaningful and direct manner accessible to all French Canadian speakers in Montreal.

Voices.com is home to over 8,665 voice talents, representing over 100 languages worldwide, meeting the needs of millions of people who search for voice-overs online, particularly in language translation and localization services.  

Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli says, "Localization is conveying a message to people in a specific geographical location implementing language and concepts that they can understand.  Our voice talents are capable of bringing the world to an organizations’ doorstep with the power of localized voice-over recordings.”

One of the largest markets for dialects (or accents) today is in performing voice-overs for videogames. This industry continues to grow, encouraging international flair, which in turn requires the performances of roles speaking in specific dialects and accents.

Voices.com is able to fulfill the requirements of any voice-over project, and now finding the perfect voice to expand the global reach of an organization is as easy as posting a voice-over job or searching through the Voices.com Voice Talent search engine.

To learn more about Voices.com:
http://www.voices.com

About Voices.com

Based in London, Canada, Voices.com provides an online marketplace, facilitating transactions between business clients and voice-over professionals, employing a comprehensive suite of web-based services. Clients that have worked at Voices.com include NBC, ESPN, PBS, The History Channel, Reader's Digest, Comcast, Nortel Networks, Bell Canada, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, ING, Western Union, Ford, GM, Jaguar, US Army, the US Government and more.

###
Contact Information
Voices.com
David Ciccarelli
519-488-5575 111
media@voices.com
http://www.voices.com
#1 Voice Over Marketplace

http://www.pr.com/press-release/20103

ACQS

ACQS, Description of Conference
Preliminary Conference Program
Preliminary Teacher Conference Program
Dates/Places for future conferences
Call for Papers
Information for next conference

Preliminary Conference Program 2006

Cambridge, Masschusetts
October 12 - 15, 2006

Thursday October 12

11AM - 6PM Registration - Somerset Room

2:00-3:30 Session Plénière/Plenary Session 1
Room: Riverfront

Le Colonial et le Postcolonial au Québec

Chair: Ray Pelletier, University of Maine - Orono

Du colonial au postcolonial
Leslie Choquette, Assumption College

Pour une vision postcoloniale et postnationale
Jocelyn Létourneau, Université Laval


3:30-4:00 Pause café/Coffee Break
Room: Riverfront

4:00-5:00 Plénière/Plenary Session 2
Room:Riverfront

Humeurs d'écriture

Chair: Jane Moss, Colby College

Marie Laberge, écrivaine et dramaturge


5:30 - Shuttle bus from hotel lobby to Harvard Square. Free time for dinner

8:00 - Concurrent Event: Tournée des Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois Film Festival - "C.R.A.Z.Y." (2005, 120 min.) at Brattle Theater. Followed by discussion with the screenwriter François Boulay.
Note: Tickets for this film will be available for purchase at the Registration Desk.



Friday October 13, 2006


Exhibits and Registration (all day) -Room: Somerset

7:30-8:45 Breakfast & Special Plenary Session 3
Cosponsored by Institute for Quebec Studies
Room: Parkview

The Future of Québec Studies in the United States: Enriching a Vibrant Community - Findings and Recommendations

Chair: Christopher Kirkey, Director, Institute on Québec Studies (IQS)
Christopher Kirkey, Director, IQS
Raymond Pelletier, President, ACQS
Diddy Hitchens, President, Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS)
Kevin Christiano, Past President of ACQS
Sam Fisher, Treasurer, ACQS


9:00-10:30 Sessions
Evolutions postcoloniales
Room: Riverfront

Chair: Jack Yeager, Louisiana State University

Three tendencies in contemporary Montreal novels: the limits of the sayable
Michèle Lacombe, Trent University

Perdre la carte. Braconnages et postcolonialisme dans la littérature québécoise
Simon Harel, Université du Québec à Montréal

Québécois Postcolonial Expression: the third wave?
Eloise Brière, The University of Albany-SUNY

La pédagogie du film québécois dans les cours de français universitaires
Room: Charles A

Session organized by the Tournée des Rendez-vous du cinéma québéois
Presenter: Dany Laferrière


Haïti/Québec I
Room: Charles B


Chair: Jean-Jacques Thomas, Duke University

Du colonial au post-colonial : la révolution
Corinne Beauquis, University of Toronto-Scarsborough

Female Legacy and Narrative Chains in Marie-Célie Agnant's Le livre d'Emma
Patrice Proulx, University of Nebraska-Omaha

Le Trauma et le témoignage dans Le Livre d'Emma de Marie-Célie Agnant
Maria Adamowicz-Hariasz, University of Akron


Gabrielle Roy
Room: University A


Chair: Myrna Delson-Karan, Fordham University,

Looking for Canada: the Journalism of Gabrielle Roy
Rosemary Chapman, University of Nottingham, UK

Quand je est autre : identité et altérité dans la Détresse et l'Enchantement de Gabrielle Roy
Yvon LeBras, Brigham Young University

Discussant: Myrna Delson-Karan, Fordham University


La Langue française et québécoise
Room: University B


Chair: Julie Robert, University of Michigan

Does one have to speak French to be a Québecker?: How young francophone pupils in Québec define their language(s) and identity
Elatiana Razafimandimbimananana, Université de Haute Bretagne de Rennes 2

La part des archaïsmes et des anglicismes dans la variété du français québécois
Paul André Lagueux, Royal Military College of Canada


Session d'auteurs/Writer's session
Room: University C


Chair: Jane Moss, Colby College

Lori Saint-Martin, nouvelliste

Catherine Mavrikakis, romancière

Louis Patrick Leroux, dramaturge


10:30-11:00 Pause café/Coffee Break
Room: Parkview

11-12:30 Sessions

Americanité et postcolonialisme
Room: Riverfront


Chair: Eloise Brière, The University of Albany-SUNY

Révisionnisme, Américanité et Postcolonialisme
Claude Couture, University of Alberta

Québec: The Moderns' Difficult Dealing with French Inheritage
Anne Legaré, Université du Québec à Montréal

De l'américanité à l'américanisation : voix multiples, perspectives diverses
Maureen Waters-O'Neill, Université de Paris X



Haïti/Québec II
Room:Charles B

Chair: Patrice Proulx, University of Nebraska-Omaha

Self-fragmentation in Dany Laferrière's self-representational text, Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (1985) and Richard Rodriguez's autobiography, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)
Muna Shafiq, Université de Montréal

Metropolitan Opera: Joël Des Rosiers' and Dany Lafferrière's Urban Migration
Jean-Jacques Thomas, Duke University

Mise à l'épreuvre et de réciprocité, celle d'une rencontre entre deux étrangers - Québécois and immigrant writers
Alessandra Benedicty, Québec Government, New York


La subjectivité féminine
Room:University A


Chair: Roseanna Dufault, Ohio Northern University

Maria Chapdelaine, un roman "féministe"?
Sarah Domareki, University of Maine - Orono

Un nouvel espace femme dans l'œuvre de Louise Dupré
Anne-Marie Jézéquel, University of Cincinnati

Parody and the Woman Writer in Contemporary Quebec Fiction
Juliette M. Rogers, University of New Hampshire


Le monstrueux discursif
Room: University B


Chair: Karen Gould, University of Cincinnati

Le Libraire : un exemple du "monstrueux" dans l'œuvre de Gérard Bessette
Steven Urquhart, Université de Lethbridge, Alberta

L'univers existentiel blaisien de l'enfance: Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel
Pascale Vergereau-Dewey, Kutztown University

The Trembling Present: Trauma and Epistemology in Les fous de Bassan by Anne Hébert
Scott Lyngaas, Beloit College


Représentations de l'écrivain et de l'artiste
Room: University C


Chair: Patrick Coleman, University of California-Los Angeles

La figure du peintre dans L'Ange de la solitude de Marie-Claire Blais
Kirsty Bell, Mount Allison University

Éthique et narration dans Tu attends la neige, Léonard? de Pierre Yergeau
Pascal Riendeau, University of Toronto

Jacques Allard: l'explorateur du roman
Roseline Tremblay, Saint Lawrence University


Les entreprises culturelles québécoises et leur place à l'international
Room: Charles A
Session sponsored by the Société de développment d'entreprises culturelles (SODEC)
Presenter: Pierre Major, économiste, Directeur général Planification, politiques et communications, SODEC


12:30-1:30 Lunch Break

12:30 - 1:30 Québec Studies Editorial Board Meeting
Room

2:00-3:00 Sessions

US/Canada Relations
Room: Riverfront


Chair: Robert Gill, Radford University

Comparing Values in U.S.-Canadian Relations: How to Interest Americans in Canada and Quebec
Douglas Nord, Wright State University

Exploring Cross-border Relations in the New Historical Atlas of Maine
Stephen Hornsby, University of Maine

Dicussant: Robert Gill, Radford University


Théories du post-colonial, du post-moderne et du post-national
Room: Charles A


Chair: Jocelyn Létourneau, Université Laval

La littérature québécoise contemporaine: prérévolutionnaire, postcolonial et postmoderne?
Peter Klaus, Freie Universität Berlin

Québec in/and Theory
Jean Marie Walls, Union University


Représentations des Autochtones dans la littérature québécoise
Room: Charles B


Chair: Susan Rosenstreich, Dowling College

Yves Thériault: Le Bien et le Mal dans la trilogie d'Agaguk
Evelyne Méron, l'Université Bar-Ilan, Israel

The 'Native Informant' in Paul Bussières' Mais qui va donc consoler Mingo? or why the Québécois writer still needs a Native guide
Sandra Hobbs, Wayne State University


Le femme et le féminisme au Québec
Room: University A


Chair: Juliette M. Rogers, University of New Hampshire

Mental Disorder in Women in Quebec, 1912-1940: An Analysis of Women's Ambivalent Relationship to Culturally Prescribed Sexual Roles as Demonstrated through Expressions of "Madness"
Mary G. Okin, University of Maine-Orono

Réception de la théorie postcoloniale dans le féminisme québécois
Chantal Maillé, Concordia University



Musique et identité culturelle
Room: University B


Chair: Amy Reid, New College of Florida

"Alors que l'on est québécois": Lynda Lemay chante-t-elle le Québec?
Catherine Daniélou, University of Alabama - Birmingham

Québec Rap : The Practice of Cultural Synthesis
Christopher M. Jones, Carnegie Mellon University


Québec: The State and Diversity
Room: Charles B


Chair: Robert Whelan, University of Texas-Arlington

Transforming the Relationship Between the State and Indigenous Peoples in Québec: Analytical Perspectives on the Paix des Braves and the Agreement in Principle on Approche commune
Carole Lévesque, Centre International de Recherche Scientifique et Daniel Salée, Concordia University

A Postcolonial Remnant? The Anglophone population of the Eastern Townships
Aimée Vieira, Université de Montréal

Discussant: Andrew Holman, Bridgewater State University


3:00 - 3:30 - Pause café/Coffee Break
Room: Parkview

3:30 - 5:30 Sessions

Aliénation et cinéma québécois
Room: Charles A


Chair: Maxime Blanchard, The City University of New York

Pour la suite du monde : aliénation et libération dans Françoise Durocher, waitress d'André Brassard et C.R.A.Z.Y. de Jean-Marc Vallée
Maxime Blanchard, The City University of New York

Réflexions sur l'aliénation involontaire : Les Ordres de Michel Brault et Les Smattes de Jean-Claude Labrecque
Terry Cochran, Université de Montréal

Terroristes ou patriotes: guerre et résistance cinématographique au Québec
Brian Martin, Williams College

L'enfant dévoré: suicides, infanticides et autres mises à mort de la lignée dans l'oeuvre de Micheline Lanctôt
Catherine Mavrikakis, Université de Montréal


L'édition québécoise pour la jeunesse de 1970 à 2005
Room: Charles B


Chair: Suzanne Pouloit, Université de Sherbrooke

L'édition québécoise pour la jeunesse du colonial au postcolonial
Suzanne Pouliot, Université de Sherbrooke

Le discours éditorial sur la lecture chez Soulières éditeur: état actuel des recherches
Rachel Deroy-Ringuette, Université de Sherbrooke

Les représentations des personnes âgées dans la production albumique québécoise récente
Janine Dupont, Université de Sherbrooke

L'édition québécoise pour la jeunesse : le cas des réécritures des contes de Charles Perrault dans les albums
Sophie Michaud, Université de Québec à Trois Rivières


La séparation dans la littérature actuelle des femmes au Québec
Room: University A


Chair: Sandrina Joseph, Université de Montréal

La parole du deuil et du désir dans Ce désir toujours de Denise Desautels
Barbara Havercroft, University of Toronto

Extravagance et audace : stratégies de fuite dans la poésie récente de Denise Desautels
Alisa Bélanger, University of California - Los Angeles

Flight, Abandonment and Return in Two Recent Novels by Diane-Monique Daviau and Christiane Frenette
Miléna Santoro, Georgetown University

Rompre, puis le raconter : conversation et logorrhée dans Folle de Nelly Arcan
Sandrina Joseph, Université de Montréal


R&ecute;conciliations historiques
Room: University C


Chair: Anne Griffin, Cooper Union

Les collèges des sulpiciens français et l'affirmation des identités en Amérique de Nord
Ollivier Hubert, Université de Montréal

Les Patriotes contre la Reine à la fête de Dollar: la refondation comme argument pour la réconciliation identitaire des Québécois
Anne Trépanier, Université d'Ottowa

Ireland in the pre-rebellion imaginaire : foil or role-model
Mary Haslam, New York University

La réconciliation des ennemis après la Conquête de 1760: Amitié et providence dans les Anciens Canadiens de Philippe Aubert de Gaspé
Jacques Cardinal, Université de Montréal



Autour de 1948
Room: University B


Chair: Rosemary Chapman, University of Nottingham

Les influences françaises de Claude Gauvreau
Thierry Bissonnette, Université de Montréal

Réinterprétation du surréalisme chez l'avant-garde nord-américaine (1940-1950). Pollock et Riopelle : le mythe du pionnier
Louise Vigneault, Université de Montréal

Paul-Marie Lapointe's and Allen Ginsberg's 1948 Visions: Young Men, Trees, and Sunflowers
David Palmieri, Université de Montréal

Du Refus global au réalisme magique: « Place à la magie! » dans les Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal de Michel Tremblay
Olivia Choplin Jones, Emory University


5:30 - 6:15 Session plénière/Plenary Session 4
Room: Parkview Sponsored by the Québec Government

La nouvelle politique internationale du gouvernement du Québec
Mme Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, Ministre des Relations internationales


6:15- 7:30 Réception du gouvernement du Québec
Room: Parkview

Hommage à/Homage to Professor Alfred O. Hero, Jr.

Presentation of the Prix du Québec


Free Evening

9:00 "Délivrez-moi" (Forgive Me, 2006, 103 min.) Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québéois Film Festival at Harvard Film Archive. Followed by discussion with director Denis Chouinard

Note: Tickets for this film will be available for purchase at the Registration Desk.

Saturday October 14

All Day Exhibits and Registration
Room: Somerset

All Day Teacher's Workshop
Room: Parkview

7:30-8:30 Breakfast and Round Table Plenary 5
Room: Riverfront Sponsored by the Gouvernement du Québec
Analyse de la nouvelle politique internationale du Gouvernement du Québec/An Analysis of the Québec Government's New Initiative in Foreign Policy
Chair: Kevin Christiano, University of Notre Dame

Louis Balthazar, President of the Center for the United States Studies of the Raou-Dandurand Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal

David Biette, Director, Canada Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Marc T Boucher, Guest Professor, École nationale d'administration publique

Earl Fry, Professor of Canadian Studies, Brigham Young University


9:00-10:30 Sessions

Globalisation et pluriculturalisme
Room: Charles B
Chair: Maureen Waters-O'Neill, Université de Paris X

Le pluriculturalisme en Amérique
Hilmi Alacakli et Huseyin Gumus, Université de Mamara, Turquie

Cultural Goods, Francophonie and the Global Economy
Jody Neathery-Castro and Mark Rousseau, University of Nebraska-Omaha

Jacques Godbout et les espaces commerciaux: mise en littérature comme mise en garde
Laura I. Pondea, The Ohio State University



Feminist Postcolonial
Room: University A


Chair: Debra Popkin, Baruch College - CUNY

Epistolary Fictions of Postcolonialism: Lise Gauvin's Lettres d'une autre and Nancy Huston/Leïla Sebbar's Lettres parisiennes
Beatrice Guenther, Bowling Green State University

Une amie révolutionnaire: Marie-Claire Blais's tribute to American Activist Barbara Deming
Roseanna Dufault, Ohio Northern University


Stéréotype et idéologie
Room: University C
Chair: Vincent Desroches, Western Michigan University

Declining the Stereotype in Stanley Lloyd Norris's La Pucelle and Max Dorsinville's James Wait ou les lunettes noires
Susan Ireland, Grinnell College

Arrive without travelling: Wrestling cultural identity, coming out, and group affiliation in Steve Galluccio's Mambo Italiano
Lonnie Renteria, University of Washington

Idéologie et représentation dans quelques films québécois. La figure du nègre comme une étrangéité a priori
Boulou E. de B'béri, Université d'Ottawa

Les Porteurs d'eau: les artistes québéois se mouillent
Vincent Desroches, Western Michigan University


(Re)lire Guèvremont
Room: University B


Chair: Lucie Joubert, Université d'Ottawa

Genres et Cycle chez Germaine Guèvremont
David Décarie, Université de Moncton

Une Phonsine nouvelle : quand la bru tient tête à l'entourage... dans le radioroman
Lucie Joubert, Université d'Ottawa

Pouvoir et parole dans le radioroman du Survenant de Germaine Guèvremont
Lori Saint-Martin, Université du Québec à Montréal


Le roman familial dans la littérature et le cinéma québécois contemporains
Room: Charles A


Chair: Maïté Snauwaert, McGill University

Achever l'inachevable roman familial : figures de la "Stabat mater" dans les films d'Anne-Claire Poirier
Catherine Mavrikakis, Université de Montréal

D'une famille à l'autre : l'échappée du mort dans le cinéma québécois
Étienne Beaulieu, Université du Manitoba

La transmission générationnelle dans l'œuvre écrite de Pierre Perrault : une controverse territoriale
Daniel Laforest, University of California - Santa Cruz

La filiation du roman à l'essai : la littérature anthropologique de Suzanne Jacob
Maïté Snauwaert, McGill University


10:30 - 11:00 Pause café/Coffee Break
Room: Charles Foyer

11:00-12:30 Sessions

Federal Relations
Room: University C


Chair: Brian Tanquay, Wilfrid Laurier University

Strategic Perspectives: An Examination of the Strategic Decisions of the Federal and Quebec Governments between the Referendum and Patriation
Neal Carter, St. Bonaventure University

Framing the issue of Québec's sovereignty in the rest of Canada
Scott Piroth, Bowling Green State University

It's a Long Road from Fort Greely to Chicoutimi: Québec Sovereignty and the Issue of Missile Defence
David Haglund, Queen's University


Contemporary Québec Theater I
Room: University C


Chair: Louis Patrick Leroux, Concordia University

Squatter la scène dans le théâtre québécois contemporain
Shawn Huffman, Université du Québec à Montréal

Robert Lepage: The postcolonial in global space
Karen Fricker, Trinity Collge, Dublin

Jouer dans les décombres: quand le théâtre aborde la catastrophe
Stéphanie Nutting, University of Guelph

Figuring performance-nation connections in modern Québec
Erin Hurley, McGill University


Translation/Imaginations, Traduction/Imaginaires
Room: University A


Chair: Jane Koustas, Brock University

Divers rougarous ou La récupération de voix franco-métisses, une pratique postcoloniale
Pamela V. Sing, University of Alberta

Traverser les langues et les cultures : Santiago de la romancière franco-manitobaine Simone Chaput
Estelle Dansereau, University of Calgary

Transatlantic Translation of the English Canadian Imagination
Jane Koustas, Brock University


Convent Voices from New France
Room: University B


Chair: Thomas J. Carr, Jr., University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Teaching the Tridentine Catechism in New France
Mary M. Rowan, CUNY-Brooklyn College

Québec Women Religious and Colonial Warfare
Maureen F. O'Meara, University of Dayton

Convent Writing in New France A Colonial Literature?
Thomas M. Carr, Jr., University of Nebraska-Lincoln


Figures du père dans la littérature et le cinéma québécois contemporains
Room: Charles A


Chair: Lori Saint-Martin, Université du Québec à Montréal

Modèles paternals dans Ce qu'il en reste de Julie Hivon
Isabelle Boisclair, Université de Sherbrooke

Hunting the Father in Francis Leclerc's Mémoires affectives (2003) and Francis Mankiewicz's Le temps d'une chasse (1972)
Katherine Roberts, Wilfrid Laurier University

Le «nouveau père» existe-t-il? Trois modes de conservation des viandes de Maxime-Olivier Moutier
Lori Saint-Martin, Université du Québec à Montréal


12:30-1:30 Lunch Break 12:30-1:15 ACQS Business Meeting - Open Forum

1:30-3:00 Sessions

Historiographie du Québec: religion et cléricalisme
Room: Charles B


Chair: Mary J. Okin, University of Maine - Orono

Roman Catholicism and the 'Normal' Society: Towards a Re-imagining of Québec History
Michael Gauvreau, McMaster University

Quelques aspects du clérico-nationalisme dans des manuels d'histoire canadienne en usage à l'école secondaire francophone au Québec des années 1960 : nouvelles perspectives
Paul Buck, University of Maine - Orono

La composante religieuse dans la discours nationaliste québéois
Xavier Gravend-Tirole, Université de Montréal



Contemporary Québec Theater II
Room: University C


Chair: Shawn Huffman, Université du Québec à Montréal

Mommy Dearest: Mothers and Daughters in Quebec Women's Theater
Jane Moss, Colby College

L'œuvre théâtrale de Pol Pelletier: la femme, le corps et l'inconscient
Celita Lamar, University of Miami

(Se) Jouer (de) l'authenticité dans les autofictions théâtrales assumées, suggérées ou feintes... L'Inoublié de Marcel Pomerlo, Henry et Margaux d'Évelyne de la Chenelière et Everybody's Wells Pour Tous de Patrice Dubois et Martin Labrecque
Louis Patrick Leroux, Concordia University


Fragmentation and collage
Room: University A


Chair: Miléna Santoro, Georgetown University

Piecing Together our Stories: Collage and the Internet in the Autofiction of Régine Robin
Katharine Harrington, University of Maine-Fort Kent

Les modes de communication dans Retour d'Afrique de Francine D'Amour
Heather A West, Samford University

Searching for Identity, Authenticity and Redemption in Carole David's Impala
Jay Ketner, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Une représentation littéraire de l'événement de la recontre urbaine
Marie Cusson, SUNY-College of Plattsburgh


Trends In Twenty-First Century Literature
Room: University B


Chair: Paula Ruth Gilbert, George Mason University

Writing Nagasaki: History and its Half-Life in the Novels of Aki Shimazaki
Emile J. Talbot, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana

Writing (after) the end of the world: Brossard and Blais
Karen McPherson, University of Oregon

Parodic Professionalism: The idea of literature in Nadine Bismuth's Scrapbook
Patrick Coleman, University of California-Los Angeles


Le colonial au XXème siècle
Room: Charles A


Chair: Leslie Choquette, Assumption College

100th anniversary of the birth of Father Emile Legault
Marge Fitzpatrick, Dickinson College

L'Amérique française and the limits of the colonial model
Marvin Richards, John Carroll University

La double inconstance ou le théâtre colonial dans L'homme de paille de Daniel Poliquin
François Paré, University of Waterloo

New France, Culture in the New World and Speech Acts in Volkswagen Blues
Susan Rosenstreich, Dowling College


3:00-3:30 Pause café/Coffee Break
Room: Charles Foyer

3:30-5:00 Sessions

Contemporary politics: Quebec in/and Canada
Room: Charles B
Chair: Richard Vengroff, Kennesaw State University
Twenty-first Century Proposals for Political Reform in Canada and Quebec
Diddy Hitchins, University of Alaska

Le gouvernement Bush et la droite francophone au Québec: l'exemple de la revue Égards
François-Emmanuël Boucher, Royal Military College of Canada

The Neoconservative Agenda: Implications for Québec
Ellie Malone, U.S. Naval Academy

Discussants:Richard Vengroff, Kennesaw State University


Redefining Québec: Language and Intention in the 1960s
Room: Charles A

Chair: Peter Klaus, Freie Universität Berlin

Le code littéraire « canadien-anglais » dans la Nuit de Jacques Ferron
Susan Murphy, Queen's University

Naming the Individual, Naming the Collective: Names, Identity and Community
Julie Robert, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

You Are What You Read: Reading Reviews in Liberté
Meadow Dibble Dieng, Colby College

L'imaginaire et la morale chez Félix Leclerc
Michael Gendre, Middlesex Community College


La filiation dans la littérature contemporaine
Room: University A


Chair: Mary Jean Green, Dartmouth College

L'image du père dans la littérature québécoise actuelle
Lucie Lequin, Concordia University

Flora, Flore, et le piège du passé: Le Premier Jardin d'Anne Hébert et Le Livre d'Emma de Marie-Célie Agnant
Amy Reid, New College of Florida

Flora Fontanges, Comédienne
André Senecal, University of Vermont

Le paradoxe filial sous l'éclairage de Francine Noël et de Suzanne Jacob
Anne Caumartin, Université d'Ottawa



Franco-American History and Literature
Room: University B
Chair: Mark P. Richard, SUNY College at Plattsburgh

The K.K.K. in French-Speaking Centers of Maine in the 1920s
Mark P. Richard, SUNY College at Plattsburgh

Exploring the ideology of la survivance in two failed romans à thèse: La Jeune Franco-Américaine and Les Enfances de Fanny
Cynthia Lees, University of Florida

Unacceptable Colonizations
Constance Schick, College of the Holy Cross


5:15 - 6:00 Plenary Session / Session Plinière 6
Room: Skyline Suite
Chair: Juliette M. Rogers, University of New Hampshire Presentation of the ACQS Distinquished Service Award

Colonial/Postcolonial: Two or Three Things Michel Tremblay Has Taught Me
Robert Schwartzwald, Université de Montréal


6:15 - 6:45 Séance plénière / Plenary Session 7
Sponsored by the Canadian Government
Speaker to be announced.

6:45 - 7:30 Réception sponsored by the Canadian Government
Room: Grand Ballroom Foyer

7:30 - 9:00 Closing Banquet
Room: Grand Ballroom

9:30 "Familia" (2006, 102 min.) Tournée des Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois Film Festival at Harvard Film Archive. The film is followed by a discussion with the director Louise Archambault
Note: Tickets for this film will be available for purchase at the Registration Desk.

http://www.acqs.org/biennial_conf/program.html

Africa explorer's remains exhumed

Africa explorer's remains exhumed

By Mark Doyle
World affairs correspondent, BBC News
Saturday, 30 September 2006,


The once-rival cities of Brazzaville and Kinshasa are linked by ferry
The remains of Pierre de Brazza, the 19th Century French explorer and founder of modern-day Congo, have been exhumed in Algeria.

They will be reburied in three days' time in the Congolese capital, Brazzaville.

It is one of the few African cities that retains the name of its colonial founder.

Brazza was buried in 1905 in Algiers, when Algeria was part of metropolitan France.

His century-old adventure story pits the Frenchman against the envoy of the Belgian crown, Henry Morton Stanley, to capture central Africa.

Both men had different masters but a common aim - to win the 19th Century "Scramble for Africa", that audacious and often cruel race to subjugate a continent.

Mineral riches

The American Stanley, who today is famous for having re-supplied the struggling British explorer David Livingstone, was working for the ambitious King of Belgium, Leopold. Brazza was working for France.


They both wanted to capture the navigable section of the great Congo river - and with it vast territories and fabulous mineral wealth.

In the end, Brazza won the race through uncharted jungles, planting the French flag on the northern shore of the river.

Brazzaville was born. Stanley was forced to the southern shore of Congo river. He founded another city and named it after his royal Belgian backer, and Leopoldville took root.

Today, Brazzaville and Leopoldville, later renamed Kinshasa, are joined by only a short ferry ride.

Brazzaville is the capital of Congo. Kinshasa is the capital of the confusingly named "Democratic Republic of Congo".

Controversy

Brazza's remains will be flown to Brazzaville in a few days time to be reburied in a mausoleum built jointly by the French and Congolese governments.

Some Congolese are critical about the honouring of this controversial figure.

They say Africans have not benefited from the relationship with France.

French and Congolese historians of Brazza's exploits say, however, that by the standards of the day, their man was a humanist who had respectful relationships with African chiefs.

Where possible, they say, he used negotiations rather than force - unlike Stanley, who by most accounts was a brash and violent conqueror.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5395194.stm

Brazza’s remains transferred to Congo

Brazza’s remains transferred to Congo
EuropaWorld - Sep 30, 2006
A ceremony will take place on 3 October in Brazzaville at which the mortal remains of the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza are to be transferred.

Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, born in Rome in 1852, as Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazza, the seventh son of Count Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazza, a nobleman of Udine with many French connections. He was one of the most extraordinary figures in the French presence in Africa.  Adventurer, visionary and humanist, this peaceful and bold explorer always rejected the use of violence.  He was an administrator who was mindful of the interests of the people under his responsibility.  He died in Dakar in 1905

One hundred years after his death, his family and the Congolese authorities wished Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza to lie with his friends and family in the city which bears his name and which was founded exactly 126 years ago on October 3, 1880

http://www.europaworld.org/week279/brazza29906.html

Lewis and Clark

recycled: Previously published Slate articles made new.
Lewis and Clark
Stop celebrating. They don't matter.
By David Plotz
Posted Monday, Oct. 2, 2006, at 7:36 AM ET

Slate's "Assessment" columns dissect the conventional wisdom about real people (L. Ron Hubbard), fictional characters (Scooby-Doo), companies (Whole Foods), body parts (the prostate), and even weather patterns (El Niño). This week, Slate is resurrecting a handful of classic "Assessments," all collected in a new book, Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses, and Animals We Hate.

The American infatuation with Lewis and Clark grows more fervent with every passing year. The adventurers have become our Extreme Founding Fathers, as essential to American history as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson but a lot more fun. Last month, President Bush announced the Lewis and Clark bicentennial celebration, a three-year, 15-state pageant that begins Jan. 18 in Virginia and could draw as many as 25 million tourists to the Lewis and Clark trail by the time it wraps up in 2006. The same week as Bush's speech, Time devoted a special issue to the expedition, 42 salivary pages of Lewis and Clark.
Bookstores have been stuffed with Lewis and Clark volumes since the publication of Stephen Ambrose's in 1996. There are scores of trail guides, multivolume editions of the explorers' journals, a dozen books about Sacagawea, three histories of Fort Clatsop, a Lewis and Clark cookbook, and at least three books about Meriwether Lewis' dog, Seaman.
Our Lewis and Clark have something for everyone—a catalog of 21st-century virtues. They're multicultural: an Indian woman, French-Indians, French-Canadians, and a black slave all contributed to the expedition's success. They're environmental: Lewis and Clark kept prodigious records of plants and animals and were enthralled by the vast, mysterious landscape they traveled through. They're tolerant: They didn't kill Indians (much) but did negotiate with them. They're patriotic: They discovered new land so the United States could grow into a great nation. Lewis and Clark, it's claimed, opened the West and launched the American empire.
Except they didn't. "If Lewis and Clark had died on the trail, it wouldn't have mattered a bit," says Notre Dame University historian Thomas Slaughter, author of the forthcoming Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness.
Like the moon landing, the Lewis and Clark expedition was inspiring, poetic, metaphorical, and ultimately insignificant. First of all, Lewis and Clark were not first of all. The members of the Corps of Discovery were not the first people to see the land they traveled. Indians had been everywhere, of course, but the corps members were not even the first whites. Trappers and traders had covered the land before them, and though Lewis and Clark may have been the first whites to cross the Rockies in the United States, explorer Alexander MacKenzie had traversed the Canadian Rockies a decade before them.
After the celebration of their safe return, Lewis and Clark quickly sank into obscurity, and for good reason. They failed at their primary mission. Jefferson had dispatched them to find a water route across the continent—the fabled Northwest Passage—but they discovered that water transport from coast to coast was impossible. Jefferson, chagrined, never bragged much about the expedition he had fathered.
Not discovering something that didn't exist was hardly Lewis and Clark's fault, but the expedition also failed in a much more important way. It produced nothing useful. Meriwether Lewis was supposed to distill his notes into a gripping narrative, but he had writer's block and killed himself in 1809 without ever writing a word. The captains' journals weren't published until almost 10 years after the duo's return; only 1,400 copies were printed, they appeared when the country was distracted by the War of 1812, and they had no impact. The narrative was well-told, but it ignored the most valuable information collected by Lewis and Clark, their mountains of scientific and anthropological data about the plants, animals, and Indians of the West. That material wasn't published for a century, long after it could have helped pioneers.
Lewis and Clark didn't matter for other reasons. At the time of the journey, the Corps of Discovery "leapfrogged Americans' concerns," says American University historian Andrew Lewis (no relation to Meriwether). "They were exploring the far Missouri at a time when the frontier was the Ohio River. They were irrelevant."
When the country did start catching up, decades later, the Lewis and Clark route didn't help. William Clark told President Jefferson that they had discovered the best route across the continent, but he could hardly have been more wrong. Lewis and Clark took the Missouri through Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Montana before crossing the Rockies in Northern Idaho. Their route was way too far north to be practical. No one could follow it. Other explorers located better, southerly shortcuts across the Continental Divide, and that's where Western settlers went. Lewis and Clark aficionados delight today in the unspoiled scenery along the trail. The reason the trail remains scenic and unspoiled is that it was so useless.
In a few years, Lewis and Clark disappeared from the American imagination and the American project. Lewis was dead, and Clark spent the rest of his life on the frontier, supervising relations with Indians—an important job, but not one that gave him any say over government policy. Meanwhile, other daredevils captured the popular fancy, especially during the great wave of exploration in the mid-19th century. John C. Frémont enthralled the country with his bold Western trips. John Wesley Powell—the one-armed Civil War veteran—made his name by rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The midcentury explorers provided information that was vastly more productive than anything Lewis and Clark offered.
By the late 19th century, Lewis and Clark were negligible figures. They weren't found in textbooks, according to the University of Tulsa's James Ronda, a leading scholar of the expedition. Americans didn't hearken back to the adventure. It was so unimportant that Henry Adams could dismiss it in no time flat in his history of the Jefferson administration as having "added little to the stock of science and wealth."
The first Lewis and Clark revival occurred at the turn of the 20th century, when the journals were published again after an 80-year hiatus. Americans were remembering the trip only after the West had been settled, the Indians had been wiped out, and the frontier closed. During the years that the empire was actually being built, at the time of settlement and conquest, Americans hadn't cared at all about Lewis and Clark.
After World War I, says Ronda, the expedition was ignored again. University of Texas historian William Goetzmann says that when he was writing his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West in the mid-'60s, he wasn't even going to include Lewis and Clark, but "my publisher talked me into it."
But by the late '60s, Americans had rediscovered Lewis and Clark, and their fervor has not flagged since. The creation of the 3,700-mile Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail in 1978 made the story accessible in a way that history rarely is. Millions of people have followed Lewis and Clark's footsteps and oar-swings since the trail opened. Ambrose's book attracted tens of thousands of new fans to the tale. The expedition's various appeal—ecological, patriotic, diverse, literary, thrill-seeking—gives it traction. More and more Americans read directly from the captains' journals, whose blunt, direct, and oddly beautiful language makes the story live. And the United States, as Ronda notes, is a country that loves road stories, and there is none more vivid or exciting than Lewis and Clark's.
But our fascination with Lewis and Clark is much more about us than about them. The expedition is a useful American mythology: How a pair of hardy souls and their happy-go-lucky multiculti flotilla discovered Eden, befriended the Indian, and invented the American West. The myth of Lewis and Clark papers over the grittier story of how the United States conquered the land, tribe by slaughtered, betrayed tribe.
Lewis and Clark didn't give Americans any of the tools they required to settle the continent—not new technology, not a popular narrative, not a good route, not arable land. It didn't matter. Nineteenth-century pioneers were bound to take the great West, with or without Lewis and Clark. Their own greed, ambition, bravery, and desperation guaranteed it. They did not need Lewis and Clark to conquer and build the West. But we do need Lewis and Clark to justify having done it.

http://www.slate.com/id/2150568

Chicago History Museum

City planners were right -- and wrong
Museum puts centuries of the famous and the dubious together

October 2, 2006
BY TOM McNAMEE, Chicago Sun-Times Columnist

When I was a kid, we called any vacant lot full of weeds a "prairie," which seemed stupid to me at the time. Even I knew, from watching cowboy shows, that a prairie was an endless field of grass where pioneers lived in log cabins.

The prairie at the end of my block, on 79th Street, didn't have even one pioneer -- just old tires and bottles and a rusted-out radio and a broken lamp and a waterlogged pile of porn magazines.

I'd tell my mother, "I'm going to the prairie," and she'd say, "Watch out for broken glass," not knowing about the porn.

But when I grew older, it occurred to me that calling an undeveloped lot on the edge of the city a prairie made perfect sense -- because it was a prairie. It may have been hemmed in on all sides by buildings and streets, but nothing had ever been built on it, meaning it was a tiny remnant of those great grassy fields that swayed in the wind before Chicago was Chicago.

That's the fascination of Chicago: It's been built and rebuilt in a hurry, one brilliant or asinine layer thrown up over another, and the old days still poke through, like arrowheads in a garden.

"The past, present and future, all right in front of you," agreed Russell Lewis, chief historian for the Chicago History Museum. "If you know how to look."

The museum -- previously called the Chicago Historical Society -- reopened Saturday after a complete renovation and redesign. Exhibit space has been tripled.

I met Lewis on Friday while visiting the museum to see what's new. I told him that I like learning about Chicago's past because it makes the day-to-day experience of living here that much deeper. When I walk across a bridge over the Chicago River, I imagine French voyageurs paddling upstream. When I drive up Ridge Avenue, it sometimes occurs to me that this was once an Indian trail -- the high ground in a swampy land.

"And it was the rim of Lake Chicago," Lewis said, referring to a prehistoric glacial lake that shrank to become Lake Michigan. "I do the same thing."

The museum is a terrific place to begin learning about Chicago's history, Lewis said, which is why its motto is "Chicago begins here." But nothing, he said, beats exploring the city firsthand.

"The really great artifact is the city itself," he said. "It's an accumulation of our ancestors' dreams, some of them wrong and some good."

A tavern on the river
Learn enough of Chicago's history, and after a while a ghost city moves alongside the living one.

When I look out a south window of the newsroom at the Chicago Sun-Times, I see the curved green facade of the 333 W. Wacker Building. Right about where that building stands, I often remember, was the famous Sauganash Tavern, opened in 1826 by a fiddle-playing French Canadian, Mark Beaubien. I try to imagine the drinking parties there, on the bend of a river in the middle of nowhere.

When I walk past Holy Name Cathedral, I look for the bullet holes in the stones from when, in 1926, Hymie Weiss was gunned down outside the cathedral, probably by Al Capone's boys.

When I sit in St. Gabriel's Catholic Church on the South Side, I imagine how the hush and splendor of this landmark building must have soothed my paternal grandmother, who came alone to this country when she was only a teen. She cleaned houses for a living. I wonder if she sat in these pews, with the choir and the Latin mass, and felt like she was back in Ireland.

Touchstones of Chicago history are everywhere, once you get to looking, and it almost becomes a game of six degrees of separation.

I walk across Michigan Avenue at Wacker Drive and remember that Fort Dearborn stood here.

That gets me to thinking about how all the land east of Michigan Avenue at one time didn't exist. It was created by dumping fill into the lake.

That, in turn, gets me to thinking about the Chicago Fire of 1871, the source of much of that landfill. The city had to do something with all the rubble.

And that, of course, gets me to thinking about Mrs. O'Leary and her famous cow, the one that legend has it kicked over the lantern that started the fire. The legend is false, as it happens, probably made up by a newspaper reporter.

That gets me to thinking about the Chicago Fire Academy, which appropriately stands on the site of the O'Leary barn.

And that, finally, makes me think of Manny's, around the corner from the academy. It's the best Jewish deli in town, and I'm hungry. I should go there for lunch.

Old times no longer old
The more Chicago history I learn, the more time contracts. Old times no longer seem so old, and the people in all those old photos no longer look so different.

At the History Museum, I stare at a photo of a woman in a boat in 1893 and I think, you know, she's got great eyes.

Consider this: If a man who is 88 years old today was held at birth by a man who was 85 years old then, the lives of just those two men have spanned the entire history of Chicago -- from 1833, when the city incorporated as a village, to now.

Chicago is so young.

One of the benefits of studying local history, Lewis said, is that we begin to see that nothing was preordained or destined. Chicago is what it is, for better or worse, because real people made real decisions.

Our civic ancestors decided the lakefront should be free and clear (great idea). They decided the poor should live in high-rise public housing (bad idea). They decided to bulldoze much of the Near West Side to build the University of Illinois at Chicago (good idea -- and bad).

"Nothing had to happen as it did," Lewis said. "Right or wrong, people made decisions. That's what you learn. You have to make decisions."

When I drive down the Kennedy Expy., I often notice all the houses and apartment buildings facing the road. How odd, I used to think, that anybody would build a house facing an expressway.

And then one day it hit me -- the houses came first, and the expressway came second. Before the Kennedy wiped out whole blocks, those houses faced other houses on quiet streets.

But somebody made a decision.

And now, on the Kennedy, I drive through ghost neighborhoods.

Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" runs Mondays in the Sun-Times.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/mcnamee/79735,CST-NWS-mcnamee02.article

Neighborhood spirit remembered at reunion

Neighborhood spirit remembered at reunion
 
By James Lomuscio
Special Correspondent

Published October 2 2006

WESTPORT -- Ed McGuinness remembers Washington Village of the late 1930s as a segregated neighborhood.

"A road ran right through Washington Village with blacks on one side and whites on the other," he said of the Norwalk neighborhood.

There was de facto ethnic segregation in the city as well, he recalled, with Italian, Irish, Hungarian and French-Canadian groups each in their own enclaves.

Still, McGuinness said there was one place where race and ethnicity didn't matter: St. Joseph's Elementary School, a Roman Catholic first- through eighth-grade school on South Norwalk's Main Street.

"We all lived in separate little neighborhoods, but in class none of that was allowed," said McGuinness, who graduated from St. Joseph's in 1945.

He said the Sisters of Mercy nuns demanded "we all had to get along with each other, and we played with each other out in the school yard."

These were some of the memories McGuiness and nearly 100 other alumni from the classes of 1943 to 1953 shared as they gathered for a multiclass reunion at Nistico's Red Barn Restaurant yesterday afternoon.

Though their old, brown brick, three-story school building had been demolished in 1972 --Êand its replacement building was closed by the Diocese of Bridgeport in the late 1980s --Êvivid memories and the spirit of St. Joseph's as an egalitarian force in a diverse yet divided city prevailed.

"Everyone was ethnically equal, and we were not even aware of cultural lines at school," recalled Terry Fontaine, Class of 1946, who grew up in a French-Canadian neighborhood on Woodward Avenue. "We all blended in. We were the new Americans."

Her allegiance toward her alma mater remains strong, even though amenities at St. Joseph's were sparse by today's standards.

"We either walked to school or rode our bikes," she said. "And there was no gymnasium. We played