Joyeuse Saint-Jean-Baptiste!

As we mentioned twice recently (here and here) June 24 is St. John’s Day, the Feast of St. John the Baptist (Saint-Jean-Baptiste). It has many significances and forms of celebration around the globe, but one people in particular has made it their own, and I’m a little fascinated. I refer to the Quebecois. They’ve made it an ethnic national day, modeled on the Irish-American connection to St. Patrick’s Day. Quebec separatists in particular rally around the day. There are parades and bonfires and so forth throughout the province.

I’m more interested in the phenom than I might otherwise be because I’m from a New England mill town — one of the few regions of the United States that has had a substantial influx of French Canadian immigrants. It’s quite a separate population from the Acadians who settled in Louisiana and became “Cajuns”, or the small number of French who settled in Louisiana, the mid-west and Eastern seaboard directly from France. (They are like Caribbean-Americans, or for that matter Scotch-Irish Americans…people for whom for whatever reason we’ve decided to track at least TWO phases of immigration into their identity. It introduces one of the messy areas of history and culture. Truth be told, nearly all lineages of the human species have been migrating since they first evolved. All lines have lived in multiple locations the farther back into their past you probe, all the way back to Africa. At what point do you stop quantifying? For example, my ancestors came from Great Britain, but of course the population of that island is also made up of waves of immigrants from the Continent. My DNA test, but not my family tree, shows a certain amount of Scandinavian ancestry. I’m fairly certain I have no recent ancestors from Sweden and Denmark — so that DNA comes from the Vikings who brought it to Britain. We don’t usually include it in our tally, but it’s roughly equivalent to what we’re talking about with more recent multiple migrations. Anyway, that’s a digression. But if I wanted to be troublesome, I feel like I could accurately call myself an Afro-Caucasio-Celto-Scando-Anglo-American, and might have to do that at some point, just to infuriate everyone.)

At all events, where I come from in Southern New England there are plenty of French last names. My best friend in elementary school was of Quebecois stock, and so are my half-brother, my aunt, a sister-in-law, many family friends, and kids I went to high school with. So it’s quite close to home. It’s such an interesting little cul-de-sac, I thought I would bunch together and celebrate the small number of famous Quebecois I have written about, or conceivably might in the future (in the same spirit as my recent post about the Portuguese, and for the same reason). It includes vaudeville stars Eva Tanguay,Fifi D’Orsay, and Rudy Vallee, and silent movie players Rod La Rocque, Lew Cody, and Mabel Normand. Cody and Normand actually married! Interestingly, Mack Sennett (who nearly married Normand) was also from Quebec, though he was Irish. (Many American Irish came to the U.S. by way of Quebec). The McGarrigle Sisters are Irish-French Quebecois, passing that lineage to Lucy and Rufus Wainwright. There are also writers Jack Kerouac,Grace Metalious, Annie Proulx, and Paul Theroux; and singers Gisele MacKenzie and Robert Goulet. Buffy St. Marie is Cree, but her adapted parents were French-Canadian-American. There are also actors Franchot Tone, Cliff Arquette (Charlie Weaver) and all his grandchildren, Michael Sarazin, Genevieve Bujold, Adrienne Barbeau, Jim Carrey (Carré), and Chloe Sevigny. There’s cartoonist Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury, playwright Neil LaBute, blues guitarist Duke Robillard (whom my other half-brother used to play in a band with) and pop star/ performance artist Phoebe Legere. And numerous rather troublesome political figures (with a high proportion of 3rd party Presidential candidates), including John C. Fremont, Wayne LaPierre (of the NRA), Lyndon LaRouche, and Ross Perot.

But wait! Let’s not forget Robert Conrad as “Pasquinel” on Centennial!

Oh, ho, ho!

Oh now. That’s just Quebecois minstrelsy!