Novel
Jean Rivard
Jean Rivard, le défricheur
Antoine Gérin-Lajoie · 1862
Opening lines
Jean Rivard vint au monde vers l'an 1824, à Grandpré, une de ces belles paroisses canadiennes établies dans la vallée du Lac St. Pierre, sur la rive nord du St. Laurent.
Jean Rivard came into the world around the year 1824, at Grandpré, one of those fine Canadian parishes settled in the valley of Lake Saint-Pierre, on the north shore of the St Lawrence.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from canadiana.ca
Synopsis
Jean Rivard is nineteen when his father's death forces him to leave college: his share of the inheritance comes down to fifty louis. Tempted by the law, he consults the priest of his parish, who steers him away from the overcrowded liberal professions and advises him to take to the land. He buys a hundred acres of forest in the township of Bristol, in the Eastern Townships, and settles there with a hired man, Pierre Gagnon: felling, burning, potash, first sowing, a cabin, soon other settlers.
Context
The text appeared in 1862 in Les Soirées canadiennes, in Quebec, and a sequel extended it in 1864 in Le Foyer canadien. In his foreword, the author says he never meant to write a novel. He wrote it at the beginning of an emigration that was to take some nine hundred thousand French Canadians to the United States between 1840 and 1930, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography makes it a classic of the ideology of Church and State for three quarters of a century.
Who it is for
Narrative of more than two hundred and fifty pages, in clear, didactic language, interspersed with farm accounts.
Prizes and reception
Published in volume form as early as 1874, it reached a tenth edition at Beauchemin, in Montreal, in 1958.
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The pages consulted to check this page.