Families

Hi, my name is Dona Landry Boudreau. I'm the daughter of Délima and Gonzague Landry. I've been, I was born on Isle Madame. I've lived on Isle Madame all my life. I'm one of six children. One of my brothers was an artist, a self-taught artist from Isle Madame. His name was Ronald à Gonzague Landry. Ronald à Gonzague due to the fact that our father's name was Gonzague and he wanted to carry the heritage and the culture of his area and he liked the name Gonzague. So this is how he came about to be Ronald à Gonzague. Ronald was an artist like I said before and he was self-taught but most of his work was surrounded by nature, by his culture. He liked the old houses, the old buildings, fishing boats, everything that he knew was going away with time, like it was something that was, would soon be in passing but he wanted it to be remembered, and for him to keep it going and to keep it alive in everyone in the future, it was through his paintings. Ronald painted. He left home at an early age. Ronald left home he was only 15 years old, educated himself in Ontario while he worked, living with a family friend and he came back, he did the the Acadian Péninsule in New Brunswick first. He lived there for many years. He got to know a lot of New Brunswick. He loved the area, and eventually came back home where he bought himself a little trailer, painted it red white and blue with the yellow star at the end for the Acadian because that was his culture and that's what he loved. Through the years, Ronald became like a good member of the community. He liked to volunteer, he loved working with the young people. His interests were mostly with the young people, the festivals. That was like his joy, pride and joy with the Acadian festival every year. Then we, well I kind of got him down to business I suppose. I encouraged him into selling his paintings trying to do something that he loved yet be able to support himself at the same time. So Ronald soon started painting on a full time basis and we sold through the old center that we had down by the church in Petit-de-Grat, and we started Les Productions Picasse, which was a part of this. The Picasse here, we wanted to be a part of it. We wanted to bring the culture and everything into along with the rest of them and Ronald got sick, therefore we couldn't diversify our product. So we are now just doing reproductions in his honour, as a heritage towards Ronald. It's what we are doing. Ronald loved to travel and through, through the business, we did have a trip to Louisiana and for him it wasn't a business trip, it was more like a pleasure trip. Ronald was finally gonna meet some of his Cajun cousins, which he was determined he would teach how to speak French if they couldn't and that was a part of, that was a part of him. That we would go in a restaurant in Louisiana and he'd try to get the waitress or the waiter to speak to him in French even though they'd say they couldn't. He'd say "well, yes, your family comes from down home and we are French", but that was mostly like he liked to do. Like to him it was more, always on a personal. He liked to help people, but he loved people, but he wanted, he loved his culture. He loved what he stood for, so he was always selling it naturally. That was something he liked to do. Louisiana for us was a great experience really, because we got to meet so many people and if any of them are looking at our web site. I'd like to say hi, after ten years or so, it would be great. We started a business and like I said before, we couldn't diversify because Ronald got sick. Ronald passed away at the age of 42 which was very young. He died of leukemia, which was very fast for us. He didn't have a lot of time. However, now, according to Ronald, he had lived his life to the fullest and was just as happy dying as he was living. For him, he didn't want us to be sad. He didn't want us to cry. To him, it just meant a part of his life was over because he said he had accomplished more in his 42 years, as far as he was concerned, than some people that lived to 100, whatever, imagine accomplishing and that he probably was needed up there because God probably had some paintings that he wanted done or some colouring. That's how he thought. That was Ronald à Gonzague. There was never a serious bone in him and he died without a serious bone. But he was a very special person. We miss him. I worked side by side with him for so many years. When I lost him, I lost a brother, I lost a friend, I lost a working partner. Like, I thought I lost everything for the longest time. I mean, it took a long time to get back on my feet and actually see it that there was nothing I could do. I just had to keep going. So to me, I'm just happy that through all this, I can actually offer a part of his heritage through his artwork as we continue to do the reproductions of the Ronald à Gonzague.