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Comeauville, N.-É.
My name is Élaine Thimot or Élaine Saulnier Thimot and I'm la fille à Adolphe à Valérie[?] à Élard à Marc à Marie et à Angélina à Georges à Jos à Rosalie and I have lived pretty well along the shores of Clare because my first years, I was brought up in Little Brook and moved to my grandparents' house in Comeauville, married and raised my family in Saulnierville, and now I live way back on the lakes at the Beaver Lake. So I have been quite familiar with the regions of St. Mary's Bay and today, I'm going to tell you a story that happened when my mom was young and it has to do with the sailors that used to sail to the Caribbean to do the export trade with the, with the grands voiliers. These two sailors, which of course were people that were strong and were people that had a lot of courage to sail these ships, who also had hearts that were tender and liked to entertain people in their village so Ti-Louis à Cyril, Ti-Louis à Ambroise à Cyril and Édouard à Philippe à Ti-Jos were these two sailors that used to in the winter time all of a sudden visit throughout the village of Comeauville. And at my grandparents' house, you would hear this noise all of a sudden after dark of feet that were stepping really hard as they were coming at the entrance to the house and my grandmother would say, "ah! Here comes la catin des îles" and my grandfather would get up and open the door and help this person come in. This person would be covered with a black cloth and with their heads bended down and their hands would also be sort of covered with a small white handkerchief that had a little face painting on it, eyes and a mouth, this face looked a little bit like a little ghost, but the person underneath here was, couldn't speak and so they would speak with their hands. So my uncles who pretty well were the ones who would ask the questions would talk about the events of the export trade to the Caribbean and the, what this trade was all about and how the people lived in the Caribbean islands and so on and by doing this it would tell the story of this part of our history for the children in the house to know and it was sort of almost the storytelling evening, and after an hour or so of this, the person would just get up and leave. So this was a long time back in the early 1900s, of course, and so my grand-, my mom remembered this, but later on, when we were getting about, when I was about 8 or 9 or so. In 1955, we used on every Saturday, not Saturday, every Sunday that the custom was as people started to have cars was to go out for a Sunday excursion and that was the big thing to do at the end of the week, and of course by the evening you would all end up at your grandparents' house, and all the family would be there and they would start telling stories of the week, and of course all aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, and brothers, and so on often you made up a râpé pie for the evening and it was a way of entertaining yourselves. And one evening, one winter, at that time my grandmother said to my aunts and the ones that were there, that we should revive this entertainment of la catin des îles. So I guess I'm a little fortunate, since this would only have been something that would have happened in the village of Comeauville. I can't see that this would have happened anywhere else because of these two sailors Louis and Édouard, who liked to do this for the people in the community. I don't think that anyone else would be able to tell us the story and we're fortunate to, that my grandmother wanted to do that with us with her grandkids, so that this story has kept on going and we can sort of tell this story once in a while to our friends.
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Titre : Comeauville, N.-É.
Description : Élaine Thimot raconte des histoires au sujet de son village, Comeauville, N.-É.
Sujets : familles; villages
Source : Connections Productions
Langue : anglais
Date : 2007-02-19
Créateur : Connections Productions
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