Ste. Lucie at a Century and a Half

Ste. Lucie, where I have lived since 1978, is a tiny municipality with a permanent population of 1,445 and very little other than nature and the historic Catholic church to recommend it. Always interested in local history, I decided to attend a conference at the church on May 30,2009, if for no other reason than to show solidarity with a group of volunteers who had given of their time to make the event happen. Frankly, I did not expect to be stimulated, nor did I expect more than a few of the older people I knew to be there. When I arrived, though, accompanying a neighbour who was very enthusiastic about the whole event, my first surprise was that we had a little trouble finding parking close by. We waited in line at the door, and upon entering I was again surprised to see that people were crowding the aisles to examine artefacts of local history. The elders were outnumbered as we examined displays that looked alarmingly like my own mother’s wardrobe, hats I had forgotten and shoes that clopped around our house in my – well I thought to say my recent memory. Were younger people actually examining these items with interest? It was hard to imagine.

When the event began, I watched video interviews of residents of three lakes, Sarrazin, Ménard and Swell. The information was the kind you are sometimes lucky enough to find in an archive while researching a story. The amount of work that went into the preparations was clearly enormous, and the screen, up by the alter, was displaying a Windows desktop into which we delved, enjoying a series of historical pictures while the moderator, Lucie Lanthier, asked questions that elicited further information from those present. To my delight, the man operating the computer, grinning with obvious pride and throwing in his own comments, was none other than our young mayor, Ghislain Schoeb.

The event had drawn me because they were talking about the influence of tourism and second residence development. Not to disappoint me, they had interviewed an English resident as well as one of the very important Italian families that have contributed much to Ste. Lucie over the years. Enough people went out of their way to make me feel welcome that I almost felt like a married-in, and when they began the show, I could identify with some of the characters. While there was no real plot, I felt that they were capturing memories and stories that we would not otherwise appreciate until it was too late. Watching a husband and wife being interviewed, I could see that she was articulate and had a clear memory of events. She talked confidently while her husband interrupted from time to time with a bit of colour. They seemed familiar to me, so I looked around and found them in the pew two rows up. He sat with the same quiet confidence as he watched himself on the large, grainy screen, but she sat beside him, continually shaking like a victim of Parkinson’s. Clearly, she was as able as she had been when the video was filmed. How quickly our past can be lost!

I called the animator later and learned that the four women involved in putting the evening together, Lucie Lanthier, Francine Picard, Francine Duhamel and Marie-Andrée St. Arnaud had simply rolled up their sleeves and done the work necessary, offering the citizens of Ste. Lucie an evening of living history. I have seen much larger historical associations accomplish much less.

The three lakes, the focus of the show, were Lac Swell, Lac Ménard and Lac Sarrazin. I learned how Magloire Ménard had begun to rent rooms and cottages as early as the first decade of the 1900s around the small lake that bears his name, while his brother-in-law, Mr. Sarrazin, was on the much larger Lac Sarrazin up the road. No one could tell me Sarrazin’s first name, but it should be recovered before it is too late. The third lake, Lac Swell, was artificial, contained behind a dam. When Lucie Lanthier asked if anyone knew where its name had come from, I learned that there had been a contest of sorts, and the people who had bought cottages there had chosen the name because the lake was ‘swell.’

This year, on January 18, the 150^th anniversary celebrations were kicked off at the same church, now the Ste. Lucie community hall, and I could see how much the town’s sense of self had grown. The main draw of this event was Joyce Borenstein presenting a National Film Board Oscar-nominated short film about her late father, The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein. I remember visiting his widow. They had acquired a little one-room schoolhouse that was on the road between Highway 329 and the village and one of his subjects was Ste. Lucie. The schoolhouse was one of those places that turns your head as you drive past. It was more than a getaway for him, it also served as a studio with all that entails, the smells, the calm, the art. Sadly, since those times the road has become much busier, and while a string of buyers have moved into that little dream, the roaring traffic has chased them off.

Ste. Lucie continued to celebrate its birthday over the summer. I did not make it to all the events, but I was there for the Stradivaria Festival with Alexandre Da Costa on July 27 and I plan to be back there for the Journée de la culture on September 27 for an exhibition and sale of reproductions of works by Sam Borenstein and the launch of a magazine tracing 150 years of Ste. Lucie’s history.

The anniversary celebration culminates on October 5 with a dinner and jazz by the Elizabeth Shepherd trio.