The contrast between Larocque extracting wealth from California's chaos then quietly spending it on tenant health care in Ste. Agathe is such a compelling arc. What stuck with me is how Polk weaponized the gold announcement to drown out political resistance, basically using economic opportunity to launder territorial aggression. That pattern of using resource booms to legitimize dubious acquisitions keeps showing up in history. Also interesting how Larocque chose not to pressure his tenants when they couldnt pay, almost like he was rejecting the extractive mindset he witnessed in California.
Yeah, I saw it as a reaction too. He was the only doctor in the church-dominated pioneer community of early Ste. Agathe, and he was there without a practice. While people said he died poor, that is an assumption. His children sold off his remaining property as though they were walking away from it. They were not living here - never had, and nor were his parents by that time. My own grandfather, a devout Catholic who did well in the east, inherited his uncle's farm where he grew up in the late 1800s in Manitoba. He abandoned it for the taxes, knowing how hard people worked to have anything out there and knew someone would benefit. When '29 came he had good advice to sell before the crash, but he refused, feeling he was abandoning people when they needed him.
Great story-telling and inspiring because it actually happened. five-stars
Fascinating and terrifying that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
The contrast between Larocque extracting wealth from California's chaos then quietly spending it on tenant health care in Ste. Agathe is such a compelling arc. What stuck with me is how Polk weaponized the gold announcement to drown out political resistance, basically using economic opportunity to launder territorial aggression. That pattern of using resource booms to legitimize dubious acquisitions keeps showing up in history. Also interesting how Larocque chose not to pressure his tenants when they couldnt pay, almost like he was rejecting the extractive mindset he witnessed in California.
Yeah, I saw it as a reaction too. He was the only doctor in the church-dominated pioneer community of early Ste. Agathe, and he was there without a practice. While people said he died poor, that is an assumption. His children sold off his remaining property as though they were walking away from it. They were not living here - never had, and nor were his parents by that time. My own grandfather, a devout Catholic who did well in the east, inherited his uncle's farm where he grew up in the late 1800s in Manitoba. He abandoned it for the taxes, knowing how hard people worked to have anything out there and knew someone would benefit. When '29 came he had good advice to sell before the crash, but he refused, feeling he was abandoning people when they needed him.
Values that put community before themselves.