The Christmas Truce

A young boy named Justin finds a letter and learns about the Christmas truce of 1914. Justin moved with extra care as he crept along the upstairs hallway. One wrong step and the squeak of a floorboard might give him away. Downstairs, his sisters and grandparents were decorating the Christmas tree and singing carols. He doubted they could hear him over his sisters’ annoying voices. But he had to be careful all the same. There were six days left until Christmas, and Justin was on a mission. 

He knew his mother had hidden his Christmas gifts somewhere in his grandparents’ house. And he was determined to find them. So far, he’d searched every room except for the one that was strictly off-limits: his grandfather’s study. He was sure he’d get in trouble if anyone caught him in there, but he was willing to risk it. He wanted to find those presents. Taking a deep breath, Justin pushed open the study door and looked around. Immediately, his eyes fell on a large closet in the corner of the room. Jackpot. ...more

The Canadian Letters and Images Project

 The Canadian Letters and Images Project is an online archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, as told through the letters and images of Canadians themselves. Begun in August 2000, the Project is located in the Department of History at Vancouver Island University. Through the digitization of contemporary letters, diaries, photographs, and other related materials, the Project permits Canadians to tell their story, and Canada’s story, through their own words and images. It is history without a lens of interpretation by the present.

As a starting point to understand what we do, please have a look at the Global News story about the project from November, 2016.  Click here to view the story.

Ireland's Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora - 175th Anniversary

 

Habitant Pea Soup

Growing up in Burlington in a large French Canadian family, there were always several cans of Habitant pea soup in the kitchen cabinet. If chicken soup is the Jewish penicillin, French Canadian pea soup is the nearest equivalent for those with a Quebecois background.

Several things set it apart, first and foremost, unlike their monolithic rival Campbell’s Soups, you did not add water to Habitant. That was their proudest boast, that the soup was not condensed, it went into the can and then into the mouth exactly as it had been cooked. The other thing that set it apart was that the recipe called for yellow peas, not the green variety everyone was familiar with. In fact, after being raised on this stuff, I thought it was really strange, almost disgusting when I was first exposed to green pea soup.

The soup started in Montreal at the grocery store of the Morin family. The can says “since 1918”, so we’ll go with that. The Morins started a small plant to pack jams and pickles and one day they decided to try canning the pea soup that Mrs. Morin had been making for years for her 15 children. One of her daughters, Marie-Blanche cooked the first batch of pea soup canned as Habitant, using the old family recipe consisting of yellow peas, pork fat and savory spices. The first batch was given away and people who tried it ordered more. As sales grew Habitant incorporated as Dominion Preserving Ltd. The old Montreal plant still stands, now luxury condos.

In 1938 Habitant opened a plant in an old mill building in heavily French Canadian Manchester, New Hampshire. Since the U.S. was the biggest market, particularly the northeast, it made sense logistically to have a plant south of the border. Gilles Morin, son of the company founder, moved to Manchester to run the plant. He is seen in the photo posing with two cans of the pea soup in 1978. While the plant produced many other varieties of soup, the famous pea soup accounted for 70% of their sales. At its peak the plant was churning out 80,000 cans per day.

Campbell’s tried to get a piece of the action by test marketing a condensed version of French Canadian pea soup in Providence, Rochester and Manchester. It flopped. Snow’s, well known for their clam chowder also tried out their version of the soup called “Alouette”. It met the same fate as the Campbell’s version. As Gilles Morin said “we had very loyal customers”.

In 1968 Habitant was acquired by Montreal firm Catelli, which became Catelli-Habitant. Over the years you could see the decline in the product. In earlier times the thick soup would contain lots of whole peas, but toward the end of their run you would find maybe two or three peas in a large can. The label still showed lots of peas as you can see in the images of the familiar yellow can. And the soup was not as thick as in the past. The decline in quality and changing tastes led to the closure of the Manchester plant in 1983. The soup is still made and sold in Canada, and the brand has been purchased by their former arch rival Campbell’s.

It can still be had via Amazon, but it will cost you. Three 28 ounce cans go for $25.50.

Join the Utah pilot project to tell the stories of all of the Utah WW2 fallen

Happy Canada Day!

 A federal statutory holiday, it celebrates the anniversary of July 1, 1867, the effective date of the Constitution Act, 1867 (then called the British North America Act, 1867), which united the three separate colonies of the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into a single Dominion within the British Empire.

Good Reads - French Canadian Sources: A Guide for Genealogists

A six-year collaborative effort of members of the French Canadian/Acadian Genealogical Society, this book provides detailed explanations about the genealogical sources available to those seeking their French-Canadian ancestors.

Good Reads - A People's History of Quebec

Revealing a little-known part of North American history, this lively guide tells the fascinating tale of the settlement of the St. Lawrence Valley. It also tells of the Montreal and Quebec-based explorers and traders who traveled, mapped, and inhabited a very large part of North America, and “embrothered the peoples” they met, as Jack Kerouac wrote.

Connecting everyday life to the events that emerged as historical turning points in the life of a people, this book sheds new light on Quebec’s 450-year history––and on the historical forces that lie behind its two recent efforts to gain independence.

About the Author:
Jacques Lacoursière is one of Quebec's most notable writers. He is the author of the five-volume Histoire populaire du Québec, which has been a bestseller since the first volume was published in 1995. He lives in Quebec City, Quebec. Robin Philpot is a writer and translator who lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Good Reads - The Flight from Famine

Winner of the 1991 QSPELL Prize for Non-fiction

One of Canada’s founding peoples, the Irish arrived in the Newfoundland fishing stations as early as the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century they were establishing farms and settlements from Nova Scotia to the Great Lakes. 

Then, in the 1840s, came the failures of Ireland’s potato crop, which people in the west of Ireland had depended on for survival. "And that," wrote a Sligo countryman, "was the beginning of the great trouble and famine that destroyed Ireland."

Flight from Famine is the moving account of a Victorian-era tragedy that has echoes in our own time but seems hardly credible in the light of Ireland’s modern prosperity. 

The famine survivors who helped build Canada in the years that followed Black ’47 provide a testament to courage, resilience, and perseverance. By the time of Confederation, the Irish population of Canada was second only to the French, and four million Canadians can claim proud Irish descent.

Good Reads - Community and the Human Spirit by David J. Flavell

A solid contribution to social and urban studies, this fascinating collection of oral histories details the life and times in Canada's "cradle of industrialization." 

Contributors to this book were all born between the 1920's and 1950's and remember growing up around the east end of the Lachine Canal near the Montreal harbour. It was a time when ships from far away places still navigated the canal and this historic working-class area hummed with the sounds of factories. Families were often large and the streets teemed with children. 

These oral histories follow contributors' lives to the present day. The book also discusses the redevelopment and evolution of the area. Well-illustrated with archival photos, with bibliography, and an introduction by the author. 

Good Reads - From the Emerald Isle to the Cream City

The Past Whispers is once again entered in Blogging from A to Z  2020

This years inspiration is 'Good Reads', books about the Irish and French in Canada and the United States. I hope you come back every day for new books to consider.

From the Emerald Isle to the Cream City by Carl Baehr.

Irish-Milwaukee history begins with the first Irish immigrants who arrived during Milwaukee's founding in the mid-1830s. Irish laborers helped shape the city by cutting down bluffs, filling in marshes, digging a canal, and creating streets. They were joined in the late 1840s by more Irishmen who were fleeing the Great Famine and starvation in Ireland.
It's a history populated with heroic figures like Patrick O'Kelly, the city's first Catholic priest and the founder of Milwaukee's first Catholic church; John O'Rourke, the first editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel; and Timothy O'Brien, who emerged as a hero during the cholera epidemics as well as other colorful characters like the scoundrel Robert B. Lynch, kindhearted Hannah Kenneally, the "White Irishman" John White, firefighting hero Patsy McLaughlin, and militia leader John McManman.

And it's a tale of overcoming some of Milwaukee's biggest tragedies: the sinking of the Lady Elgin, which cost the lives of 300 people, most of them from the Irish Third Ward; the Newhall House hotel fire, which took more Irish lives; and finally, the Third Ward Fire, which destroyed hundreds of buildings and scattered the Irish to other parts of the city.

This historical tour captures it all--from the difficulties in adapting to American ways, as seen through events like the Leahey riot and the lynching of Marshall Clark, to the successes, such as the founding of the city of Cudahy by a poor Irish immigrant, the film stardom of Tory Hill's Pat O'Brien and Merrill Park's Spencer Tracy, and the many people who have Milwaukee streets and parks named for them.

From the Emerald Isle to the Cream City describes how the Irish influenced the political, educational, religious, and sports landscape of Milwaukee and their impact on other ethnic groups, overcoming early poverty and bigotry to help make Milwaukee the city that it is today.

Good Reads - A Distinct Alien Race

In the later 19th century, French-Canadian Roman Catholic immigrants from Quebec were deemed a threat to the United States, potential terrorists in service of the Pope. Books and newspapers floated the conspiracy theory that the immigrants seeking work in New England's burgeoning textile industry were actually plotting to annex parts of the United States to a newly independent Quebec. 

Vermette’s groundbreaking study sets this neglected and poignant tale in the broader context of North American history. He traces individuals and families, from the textile barons who created a new industry to the poor farmers and laborers of Quebec who crowded into the mills in the post-Civil War period. Vermette discusses the murky reception these cross-border immigrants met in the USA, including dehumanizing conditions in mill towns and early-20th-century campaigns led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Eugenics movement. 

Vermette also discusses what occurred when the textile industry moved to the Deep South and brings the story of emigrants up to the present day. Vermette shows how this little-known episode in U.S. history prefigures events as recent as yesterday’s news. His well documented narrative touches on the issues of cross-border immigration; the Nativists fear of the Other; the rise and fall of manufacturing in the U.S.; and the construction of race and ethnicity.

Available nationwide.

Rootstech

Rootstech now streaming...more

St. Brigid's Day - The Enduring Traditions

Brigid of Kildare

Lost Children of the Carricks

New documentary by a Concordia professor recounts the hidden history of Quebec’s Irish population...more

Seeking The Primrose Girls from Galway Ireland to Canada 1853

A group of Irish amateur genealogists from a small Galway town are seeking to connect with descendants of 156 emigrants known as the “Primrose” girls after the name of the ship they sailed on to Canada in 1853...more