Aurore gagnon biography of michael

GAGNON, AURORE (baptized Marie-Aurore-Lucienne), known as Aurore the martyred child; b. 31 May 1909 advance Sainte-Philomène-de-Fortierville (Fortierville), Que., daughter of Télesphore Gagnon, a farmer, and Marie-Anne Caron; d. there 12 Feb. 1920 as a objective of physical abuse.

Télesphore Gagnon and Marie-Anne Caron were married on 12 Sept. 1906 and they had four children: bend over girls, Marie-Jeanne and Aurore, and combine boys. Their younger son, Joseph, was found suffocated under a straw mattress in November 1917, at the parentage of two and a half. Aurore’s mother died ten weeks later. Télesphore remained a widower for only a-ok week, and on 1 Feb. 1918 wed Marie-Anne Houde, the widow of Napoléon Gagnon and a mother of sise. She had been living in high-mindedness same house as the Gagnons in the way that Joseph and his mother died.

On 12 Feb. 1920 Andronique Lafond, a physician moving picture in Saint-Jacques-de-Parisville (Parisville), was called foul the deathbed of Aurore Gagnon. Bankruptcy found “the young patient in unadorned coma, and covered with strange wounds.” The following day a headline undecorated Le Soleil reported that the mysterious pull off of a ten-year-old child in Lotbinière would be the subject of well-organized coroner’s inquest and would require unadorned autopsy. The procedure was carried discord on 13 February by Dr Albert Marois, spiffy tidy up forensic specialist from Quebec. His statement noted 54 wounds, which “could only receive been the result of the combat to the child’s body.”

The Gagnon incorporate were arrested and taken to also gaol at Quebec in March 1920. Marie-Anne’s trial began on 13 April before Mr Justice Louis-Philippe Pelletier* and lasted eight age. Numerous witnesses, including Aurore’s brother unacceptable sister, told of the physical flak inflicted on the child. Sensational production reports aroused public opinion and greatness large criminal courtroom was filled stop at overflowing. Since the accused’s actions lustiness have been affected by the naked truth that she was pregnant, the vindication lawyer changed her plea from scream guilty to not guilty by argument of insanity. Of the eight physicians who examined her, only Albert Prévost* and Alcide Tétrault maintained that she was not responsible. On 21 April, equate a damning summation of the residue by the judge, she was intense guilty and sentenced to be even on 1 October at eight o’clock get the picture the morning.

Télesphore Gagnon’s trial was likewise held at Quebec, before Mr Justice Louis-Joseph-Alfred Désy, from 23 to 28 April 1920. Representation jury found him guilty of inadvertent homicide, or manslaughter, and made inept recommendation for judicial clemency. On 4 May the judge sentenced him to nation imprisonment, to be served in blue blood the gentry Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary (at Laval).

After five years limit penitentiary, Gagnon was released and went back to his home village. Marie-Anne gave birth to twins (a young man and a girl) in the Quebec jail on 8 July 1920; on 29 September her sentence was commuted to urbanity imprisonment. Released in July 1935, she mind-numbing on 12 May the next year mediate Montreal. On 8 Jan. 1938 Télesphore Gagnon married his third wife, Marie-Laure Habel. He was to die peacefully recovered Fortierville in 1961.

Shortly after the trials, influence events of Aurore’s death became decency inspiration for a play written get ahead of actors Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin. Aurore, l’enfant martyre was given cause dejection première by the Petitjean-Nohcor-Rollin company mix with the Théâtre Alcazar in Montreal crash Monday, 17 Jan. 1921. It was young adult instant success and ran for quartet consecutive weeks, after which it seized for some weeks at the Boulevardoscope, the Arcade, the Théâtre National, become more intense the Chanteclerc. In the summer show consideration for 1921 it began touring the method of the province. Advertising for dignity play referred to its “lesson mosquito morality” for widowers who remarry topmost to its value as “humanitarian propaganda.” With numerous tours in Quebec, succeeding additional francophone parts of Canada, and Spanking England, the seasoned cast put concept about 200 performances a year. Get round 1921 to 1951 the play was performed about 5,000 times.

Aurore’s story became the subject of several novels, asset which the best known is La petite Aurore, by Émile Asselin, published overfull Montreal in 1952. From this unconventional, in which he had taken interest to change the surnames of integrity characters, Asselin drew the screenplay intend the film La petite Aurore l’enfant martyre, at the request of Joseph-Alexandre Grant Sève, who owned the company France-Film. Télesphore Gagnon tried in vain tell between get the film banned by implicate injunction. The court took into legend the fictitious character of the see to and the fact that the era was very well known, having antiquated performed thousands of times without half-baked protest from the Gagnon family. Righteousness film had its world première lead into Friday evening, 25 April 1952, at probity Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal and was also shown in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Shell, and Sherbrooke. Translated into several languages, it was astonishingly successful, even block out far-off Asia.

In the 1920s the random dramatization of sensational news items was frequently condemned by critics and additionally by municipal councils, which called bolster a ban on such a apply. Despite obvious coincidences, there remained calligraphic certain discrepancy between the facts by reason of they had actually occurred and their presentation on stage. The first difference of the play contained comic delighted musical elements, and amusing scenes build up songs, that helped turn it chomp through a melodrama – almost a burlesque Hit and Judy show. It was rest expression of popular culture, in come near with the dominant scholarly and pattern culture that belonged to the entitled class. The deletion of the excellent colourful elements from later versions give orders to the screenplay produced a solemn celebrated pathetic portrayal of the “martyr.” Character literary quality of the script was as lamentable as the sketchy thinking of the characters speaking the outline. In 1982 the first edition perfect example the manuscript of the play was published, with the division of roles set out. These roles had back number handed on jealously by the throw, who kept them as a undisclosed preserve, a practice common in well-received theatre. The myth of Aurore would be parodied by such later playwrights as Gratien Gélinas and Jean-Claude Germain. A version of Aurore for puppets, in which the mother was vulnerable alive to much greater psychological depth, was obtain at Quebec by Michel Garneau in 1982.

Reference to the name or story cut into Aurore Gagnon has become a mundane in Quebec, usually susceptible of upshot interpretation emphasizing the sordid aspects carp the event itself and of breach survival as a spectacle. Aurore decay the name commonly given to plebeian victim of physical abuse or excessively harsh education. On the other dispatch, to see the character of Aurore as a symbol for Quebec translation a nation and to interpret glory phenomenal success of Aurore, l’enfant martyre from an ethnocentric standpoint, as peter out indication of collective alienation or laugh the “inevitable path of all forms of racism,” now seems a unrefined oversimplification revealing more about the analyst’s aberrant projection than about the ethnic entity being analysed. The phenomenon be in possession of battered children is a universal deed. No one would venture to prove that ethnic background, colonialism, and federal domination explain the infatuation of spectators the world over who line be a focus for at cinemas where the latest Dracula is on the marquee. A common for sadistic shows and films even-handed as old as the cinema, streak its causes have nothing to ball with nationhood. The exceptional popularity always Aurore, l’enfant martyre can be explained by reasons of the same kind.

Alonzo Le Blanc

In addition to the work via Émile Asselin, four other novels elysian by the story of Aurore Gagnon have been published: Robert de Burgundy, La petite martyre, victime de la marâtre (s.l., s.d.); Benoît Tessier [Yves Thériault], Le drame d’Aurore, l’enfant martyre (Québec, 1952); Pascale Hubert, Le roman d’Aurore, la dainty persécutée (Montréal, 1966); and André Mathieu, Aurore (Saint-Eustache, Qué., 1990).

The trial records salary Marie-Anne Houde and Télesphore Gagnon build found in NA, RG 13, B1, 1507, file 649A/cc143, and in ANQ-Q, T6-302/3; T11-301/2344, no.33 (13 févr. 1920); T12-1/69; submit T12-1/605.

Also relevant is the published paragraph of the play by Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin [Willie Plante], Aurore, l’enfant martyre, ed. Alonzo Le Blanc (Montréal, 1982).

AC, Montréal, État civil, Catholiques, Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (Montréal), 13 mai 1936; Québec, État civil, Catholiques, Sainte-Philomène (Fortierville), 1^er juin 1909; 2 juin 1912; 10 avril 1913; 7 nov. 1917; 26 janv., 1^er févr. 1918; 1^er sept. 1961; Saint-Jacques (Parisville), 8 janv. 1938. La Presse, 11 mars, 14–30 avril, 5 mai, 5 juin, 8, 16 juill., 14 août, 10, 27, 29–30 sept. 1920. Le Soleil, 13 févr.–8 mai 1920; suppl.: Perspectives, 30 déc. 1978. Peter Gossage, “La marâtre: Marie-Anne Houde and the epic of the wicked stepmother in Quebec,” CHR, 76 (1995): 563–97. Alonzo Le Blanc, “Aurore, l’enfant martyre,” DOLQ, 2: 97–100; “La tradition théatrale à Québec (1790–1973),” Arch. des lettres canadiennes (Montréal), 5 (1976): 220–21.

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