THE SEARCH FOR COUSIN
PIERRE CHOLET, THE CHILD LOST AND FOUND
AGAIN
Gregory Gerard Sholette, 1998/2002
Introduction
Growing up in the
suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the very existence of a book about our
French-Canadian ancestor named Pierre Cholet, was intriguing even if it
appeared at the time to be a family legend of questionable accuracy. Allegedly,
the book detailed how Pierre was kidnapped as a child of five, sold to a French
sea captain, turned into a cabin-boy, lost his freedom and his identity and
only regained both of these as a grown man and after many adventures on land
and on sea. Indeed, there were times when my father, Carol C. Sholette, even
suggested that the story originated with my grandfather, Maguire Sholette (born
Magloire Cholette), the son of Magloire Cholette (see Jack Cholette’s family
tree for how Pierre is related to my father and me).
But while the
transformation of the name Cholet into Cholette and then into Sholette may be
something of a mystery, the story of the lost child is no longer so, at least
not entirely, for somewhere in Quebec City during the summer of 1974, while on
a family outing with my brothers Patrick, William and sister Lisa, my father,
Carol and my mother Julia entered a small bibliotech and discovered a
cover-less and yellowing copy of the book, L’enfant
perdu et retrouve ou Pierre Cholet: the story of the child lost and found
again. What follows is the story of my
attempt, many years later and with my own family, to trace Pierre’s steps
across what is now North Eastern Canada.
The story begins as
my wife Janet Koenig, and our daughter Ariana, are about to enter the austere
province of Labrador, Canada in the summer of 1998. This was where Pierre and
his brother Toussaint along with several shipmates escaped the French vessel
they were imprisoned on in the year 1870. And it was from Labrador that they
once set off for a home that had become nothing but a distant memory.
Meanwhile, Pierre had no idea of the many sorrows and hardships that still lay ahead
of him.
***
Janet, Ariana, and I
actually began to trace the footsteps of our 19th century predecessor Pierre
Cholet, the child lost and found again, on Thursday, August 20, 1998. However our
story begins 7 days earlier when we pulled away from our apartment on the
Upper West Side of Manhattan initiating a winding pilgrimage to the coast of
Labrador. Why Labrador? Initially to
see and photograph the kind of terrain Pierre and his brother Toussaint first
encountered on their long trek home some 125 years ago. Our rented transportation was a green Chevy
Nova and thanks to Janet’s prudent thinking the rental contract had no mileage
limitations, a real blessing in light of the five thousand miles we logged by the
end of our trip. The car was stuffed with a pop-up tent (veteran of 12 years
camping), sleeping bags, assorted pots and pans, a cooler, a half dozen maps
and a computer print-out of Janet’s first draft, English translation of L’enfant perdu et retrouve ou Pierre Cholet;
the true story of Pierre Cholet’s adventures first published in French some 106
years ago.
The first stop on our
excursion was Dover New Hampshire where we failed in our attempt to find a
record of Sebastien Cholet, the family’s oldest known North American ancestor
who lived here in the 17th century.
Just before leaving town we discovered that Janet’s Nikon wasn’t
working. It’s old circuitry had
shorted-out leaving her with a collection of spare parts. So we wound up unexpectedly purchasing
another used Nikon camera body plus lens, only to have the lens of this
replacement fall apart later. I spent an afternoon repairing it with an
assortment of cheap tools gathered from the hardware, fishing, and
pharmaceutical departments of a Wall Mart in Canada. Before completing this makeshift operation in the food court of a
shopping mall, I would attract the suspicion of several security guards clearly
not used to an intense man with a beard and thick black, rimmed glasses
sweating over a small, dark device between bites of cold pizza. Somehow I managed to get the lens back
together and the anxious sentries returned to their routine surveillance of
teenage shoplifters
After leaving the
historic town of Dover we advanced north to our favorite camping spot on the
rocky coast of Schoodic Point, Maine.
After two days of fresh lobsters and spectacular ocean views we packed
the Chevy and again hit the road. This
time we drove across the Canadian border up to the town of North Sidney, Nova
Scotia where we had reservations for the super ferry to Port aux Basques,
Newfoundland. Along the way we stopped
off in the port town of Pictou, Nova Scotia.
Pictou is the oldest Scottish settlement in North America and a place
that Pierre not only visited on his many voyages between Canada and France, but
the closest town to where his first shipwreck occurred between the years 1854
and 1855. In that wreck, twelve of
Pierre’s shipmates drowned in the icy waters of “New Scotland.”*
We finally reached
the town of Sidney. There are two super
ferries that operate across the Cabot Strait from Nova Scotia to
Newfoundland. We drove our car into the
hold of one named the Caribou. It was
named after another ferry that began operating in 1898. A German U-boat sank the first one sometime
in the 1940s and a few hundred people lost their lives, a tragedy carefully
documented in a museum display found on-board the newer vessel.
Essentially the
modern Caribou is a gigantic, floating parking garage. It has room for 300 hundred cars and trucks
and 1200 passengers. Because the trip
to Newfoundland takes six hours, there are accommodations available for
sleeping. We opted to make the crossing
starting at midnight, however our budget left us curled up and napping on large
reclining chairs along with hundreds of other men, women and children. Some of these nocturnal travelers had
brought sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows, a policy we adopted on the return
journey. On a wobbly 1AM tour of the
ship I found sleeping people scattered throughout the large staterooms of the
vessel, draped across dining tables, slumped in front of the museum displays
and even huddled against the heavy sea mist on the outside deck
We had decided on
this late night excursion in order to get an early start on the road across
Newfoundland and up to Labrador. The goal was to locate a campground as close
as possible to the second ferry that would take us to Labrador before it got
dark the next night. But so great are
the distances on Newfoundland that after disembarking from the Caribou on
August 18th at Port aux Basques it took us the entire day to reach Shallow Bay
or about half the length of the island’s west side. In Shallow Bay we enjoyed a solid presentation of regional
Newfoundland theater offered by a group of young thespians. The play was a comedy entitled “The
Fisherman’s Revenge.” It was genuinely
funny but it also provided evidence about the lives that people lead in these
parts, including their dialect of mixed Irish and Scottish accents and their
familiarity with long, hard work and often eventless winters spent near an ever
present sea. As things turned out it
was not until the morning of August 20th that we finally walked onto the ferry
for Blanc Sablon Labrador. The
90-minute crossing over the Straits of Belle Isle did not prepare us however
for the longer and more surprising venture we ultimately encountered
We knew that it was
not far from this stretch of the Labrador coast, and just about this same time
of year, that Pierre and Toussaint Cholet, along with five other sea mates,
would dessert the French ship they had been working on order to avoid
conscription in the Franco-Prussian war.
After rowing ashore to rest on a sandy beach near a fresh water creek,
the men conspired to dessert ship. The
book names this place as Black Bay. We
knew from a footnote in the book that Black Bay was situated on the Labrador
side of the Straits of Belle Isle, across from the north end of Newfoundland;
still we couldn’t find it on any map.
Once away from their captors the two Cholet brothers set off on foot
across the wet and boggy terrain of Labrador to begin the search for their
parents. They knew that they had been
stolen from the French speaking part of Canada and had surmised that their home
was most likely near Montreal, Quebec.
This is the direction Pierre eventually took but not until his younger
brother, Toussaint, perished, either from exposure or food poisoning; the book
does not make it clear. To give a
sense of scale, consider that the distance from the coast of Labrador to Saint-
Polycarpe is a minimum of 1100 miles or 1500 kilometers and unlike us, Pierre
was without the benefit of a rent-a-car.
We had made an
assumption early on that we would never actually find Black Bay since it did
not appear on any of the three maps of the region we had come across. We soon discovered our mistake. Initially
satisfied that we would only be spending an afternoon photographing the details
of the natural terrain in and around the ferry port, we had decided to save
money and travel across the straits sans car carrying what we needed for the
day in each of three small backpacks.
The hour and half trip is pretty disorienting because of an odd
half-hour time shift. Even more so
because the Ferry actually lands in Blanc Sablon which is in the province of
Quebec, smack on the geographical border of Labrador. This means that we add an hour to the local Newfoundland time
until traveling a few hundred feet into Labrador proper where the time shift
trims an hour and a half off ones day in a single step.
Once on shore at
Blanc Sablon we immediately went for a hike around the rocky bluff near the
dock. This took us up a series of
rolling hills blanketed in carpets of wet mosses and lichen. This jaunt turned out to be both lengthy and
arduous, although Ariana, who was seven, handled it with ease. During this trek we were delighted to
confirm a number of the details Pierre relates to the reader about the
region. First, walking on the Labrador
ground was like hiking on a spring mattress, just as Pierre describes it. Second, the forests that surrounded the area
were made of dwarf pine trees exactly the foliage he relates was so difficult
to hide behind as he and the others fled from the ship captain’s searching
gaze. Finally we found patches of the
local berries that he and Toussaint had survived on. My favorite is today known in Labrador as the Bakeapple. It looks like a swollen orange raspberry but
tastes a bit salty like a fish egg.
Neither Janet nor Ariana had any use for them, preferring the tart,
cranberry-like Partridgeberry instead.
However they continued to pick my favorites, passing them on to me with
a sour looking wince as a source of amusement.
A misty rain fell on us throughout the hike adding to the feeling of
having stepped back into the previous century.
We shot several roles
of film on this junket, more than enough to use as source material and then
returned to the ferry landing for lunch and the return trip. We ate soup and fried eggs in the
combination canteen/gift shop/ticket office.
While browsing the display of Labradorian souvenirs, mostly woolen socks
and mittens, Bakeapple Jam and syrup, I noticed a pamphlet about Labrador’s
history entitled. “Just One Interloper
After Another: An Unabridged, Unofficial, Unauthorized History of the Labrador
Straits” edited by David J. Whalen. It
was one of those inexpensive newsprint editions found on the racks of gift
shops in small towns and consisted primarily of reprints from newspaper
articles selected by a local amateur historian. Haphazardly thumbing through it, I stopped on a page that
provided details of French cod fishing and shipping in Labrador during the 19th
Century. My eye was suddenly caught
half way down the page by a sentence describing French vessels stopping in a
place known as “Black Bay or Pinware.”
I hurried to show my discovery to Janet who then asked the store manager
where we could find this Pinware/Black Bay.
He hadn’t heard of Black Bay, but he explained that Pinware was not far
up the coast and it had both a large harbor and a river as well as a public
park leading out to a sandy beach - all the elements Pierre described as
belonging to Black Bay. Was this the
re-named Black Bay after all? Following
a short deliberation we altered course, rented a small van in Labrador and the
three of us drove off toward Pinware with loaded cameras.
The park at Pinware
is beautiful. Hills surround the bay,
which is fringed with grasses and black rocks covered in pale green
lichens. There is a large sandy
beach. However the river is just that,
a full-fledged river and not the small creek that the story offers Pinware
appeared to be Pierre’s Black Bay and, despite the voracious black flies, we
documented it well with both of our cameras.
Not until we entered the local interpretive center and museum further
east in Red Bay did we discover our mistake. The center has several display’s
and miniature dioramas of the first Basque fishermen who arrived on this coast
as early as the 1500s. In fact between
1850 and 1600 Red Bay was the whaling capital of the world. SOURCE? We casually
mentioned the purpose of our trip to the young museum attendant. No, he had never heard that Pinware was once
called Black Bay, but there was a place known as Black Bay only a few kilometers
north of Red Bay. Instinctively Janet
and I knew we had erred and that this was the actual site we came to see.
Red Bay is a small
coastal village today where the only road used in this part of Labrador comes
to an abrupt end. After that point one
is either on foot or in a boat except in winter when the snow skidoo --a sort
of hybrid of a watercycle and sled -- is used for local transpiration. Only one local appeared to still maintain a
pack of Huskies for use as sled dogs.
We soon discovered
that several Red Bay residents had built small hunting shacks at Black
Bay. After checking into the Bayview
Bed and Breakfast it’s owner, an Innuit women named Blanche, kindly helped us
to make arrangements for one of her relatives to ferry us up to our longed-for
destination in the morning. Blanche
also offered to watch over Ariana while we went off on our business, an idea no
doubt first proposed by our daughter who had made fast friends with Blanche’s
ten year old girl Natasha.
The next morning at about
8:45AM, August the 21st, we met up with Albert Ryan. Like most of the men in this part of Labrador, Albert was an
out-of-work cod fisherman. He had
agreed to transport us up to Black Bay for a reasonable amount of “Loonies”
(Canadian dollars) in his uncle’s, Ron Ryan’s, boat. It was a small boat with a powerful outboard. Until this point we had resigned ourselves
to walking the six or so kilometers to Black Bay. As it turned out the distance was far more than we had
anticipated since even the boat ride took close to forty minutes. We bounced across the tops of waves as a
chilly sea-spray woke us from any lingering sleepiness. Then Albert turned the boat toward the shore
as a rocky coast opened onto Black Bay harbor.
We knew right away that this was worth the trouble because the setting
fit Pierre’s description so well. The
bay was large enough for a sea going vessel to anchor; the shore was sandy and
seemed a good spot for tired sailors to rest; plus there was a creek, not a
river, linking the bay to the surrounding hills that were covered in miniature
pines.
After tying off the
boat to a large rock, Albert kindly took us on foot to the mouth of the
creek. Bushwhacking through the bushes
that edged the shore, we saw bear scats and the footprint of a wolf. We documented the entire area and after a
look inside Albert’s uncle’s shack we headed back to Blanche’s house, retrieved
our daughter with thanks and drove back to the ferry at Blanc Sablon.
Our next target was
the large port city of St. Johns where Pierre’s ship had often anchored during
his years as a captive seaman. Because
of the limited highway development in Newfoundland we re-traced our route four
times, going to and from the eastern parts of the island province. One notable stop we made was outside the
Gross Morne National Park at a place called Table Rock where carnivorous
Pitcher Plants abound, lying in wait for hapless insects to fall into their
limpid pools of digestive juices. St.
Johns is still a big port city but today the ships are steel and are loaded
with huge containers while the city hosts numerous cafes and restaurants
including a very good Indian eatery.
Not eating meat, and coming from a food-fussy place like New York City,
I can only say that after days of watery coffee, fried cod fish and french
fries (fish & chips) St. Johns offered a culinary oasis. We stayed an extra day.
While camping near
St. Johns we stopped at a small harbor town called Bay Bulls. Here we enjoyed an early evening excursion
on board a tour boat run by the Mullowney family. What we saw were thousands of Puffins and hundreds of gulls that
unhappily share an island that is off limits to people (Puffin eggs are a
seagull delicacy.) We also spied a bald
eagle, dozens of translucent purple jellyfish called Lion’s Mane, and an
extraordinary fish known as the Ocean Sunfish or Mola Mola. Next morning, after a sleepless night spent
over an expanding puddle of rain that cruelly formed beneath our tent, we broke
camp early and retraced our path back to Port aux Basques where the Caribou
would return us to the mainland. From
there we would once again be able to pick up Pierre Cholet’s 125-year-old
trail.
From Sidney, Nova
Scotia we cut across the base of the Gaspe Peninsula. Our goal was to reach Restigouche or Listuguj (the Micmac
spelling), a region at the mouth of Chaleur Bay. It was here that Pierre had landed after navigating around the
tip of the Gaspe in a small sailboat he had stolen on the shores of
Riviere-au-Tonnerre, Quebec on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence
River. On foot he travels north again
from Listiguj to the town of Matane then turning west to follow the coast of
the St. Lawrence. On the way he passes
through a number of small towns including Saint Luce, Rimouski, Saint Fabien.
Saint Simon, and Trois Pistoles. In
each one he goes to the local parish church to ask about his family name and to
pray. Little did he know then that the
sailors who raised him had long ago changed his family name to Marin, which
means simply sailor in French. It is
this mistaken identity that prevented Pierre from locating his true parents for
over ten years following his desertion in Labrador.
Meanwhile, in
Listiguj, we discover that Pierre most likely came ashore in what is today a
Mi’gmag Indian reservation. From the
book we know that he first tried to sell his stolen boat to a Mi’gmag man who
declined the deal. On our visit to this
place we discovered Fort Listiguj: a log cabin fort that combined the functions
of a motel with a historic theme park and restaurant. Built several years ago and financed by a local, entrepreneurial
Micmac, Fort Listiguj consisted of a wrap-around fence of yellow pine logs
stripped of their bark. Inside this
simulated palisade was a dozen log-cabin style rooms each one containing a set
of bunk beds also made from stripped pine limbs. In the center of this pseudo-fort was a reconstructed Mi’gmag
village complete with hanging animal skins and a Roman Catholic chapel once
again constructed of pine logs. A salmon smoking oven, an enormous outdoor soup
kettle with blazing fire, and a circulating pond finish off the fantasy that is
meant to evoke the Listiguj region in 1760.
Fort Listiguj’s staff were costumed either as French settlers, trappers,
or monks, or they were in fact Mi’mags wearing traditional Indian garments; all
were very knowledgeable about the history of the area. Despite my raised hopes,
our whimsical fort’s rustic restaurant served the usual vapid coffee and
overcooked fish. However, the wine was
decent and sleeping out of the rain in bunk beds fashioned from branches and
twine was a treat for all three of us.
From the curious
motel museum we passed the spot in Listiguji where the French lost a decisive
battle to the British in 1760 during the French and Indian War. This decisive loss ended France’s control of
New France or French Canada. We soon
caught up with Pierre’s trail along the Saint Lawrence, stopping and photographing
several of the churches he describes in his story. The ones we visited had been reconstructed in the early 20th
century but the old cornerstones were proudly embedded in new walls revealing
dates from before Pierre’s time. In
Saint Luce we purchased croissants and a tasty vegetable spread as well as a
fresh fruit tart. A bit further up the
road we stopped for a picnic along the riverside. Even this far from the sea the Saint Lawrence is so wide that the
distant shore was barely visible.
For a time our trip
took on the semblance of a traditional tourist junket as we stopped in the city
of Quebec to watch fire jugglers near the Chateau Frontenac and walked along
the old French batteries on the Plains of Abraham. Here as well as in Montreal, we asked booksellers if they had any
copies of “l’enfant perdu.” Even though
Pierre had stopped in all of these places he left no traces that we could
detect. However, at the University of
Montreal library we discovered a few papers on the priest, J. B. Proulx, who
had penned Pierre’s narrative. While
none of these texts mentioned our Cholet, they did offer a sketchy profile of
father Proulx, who turns out to have been an accomplished man of letters. Our final week of travel arrived with our
last destination, Saint-Polycarpe, still ahead. Unknown to us at the time our most surprising discovery was
waiting for us there.
We arrived in the
village of Saint-Polycarpe towards the end of the day on August 31st. This had been the original home of Pierre
and his brother Toussaint as well as the place where Pierre was eventually
reunited with his father and mother in 1881.
Because it was late when we entered the village we decided to travel to
a campsite in a nearby town and then start fresh in the morning. We expected to find some grave markers with
family names on them and perhaps, if lucky, even the grave of Pierre’s parents
Hyacinthe and Angelique. Since there is
no precise record of where Pierre himself died his resting-place was
uncertain. After a very pleasant night
camping by a canal in Coteau Landing, we drove back to Saint-Polycarpe. Our first stop was the local chamber of
commerce that also boasted a library.
After a few minutes discussing who we were and what we were looking for
in French, the attendant explained to Janet that we must speak with Marcel
Cholette. “Who is Marcel Cholette,”
Janet asked with excitement. Pierre
Cholet’s great nephew.
Needless to say we
were thrilled and anxious to meet Marcel and his wife Carmen who lived only a
few streets away. Our friendly
attendant called them and, after explaining who we were, they invited us to
their home. A short drive took us to
the small neat house on Gauthier Street.
Marcel greeted us at the door.
He quickly surmised that I spoke no French but was very pleased to be
able to communicate with Janet. Once
again she explained who I was and why we had come to Saint-Polycarpe. Marcel is a man in his seventies with
abundant blond hair and a short, stocky build.
As we entered the interior of the house I could see he was also
bow-legged, no doubt from the laborious life of a farmer. After an awkward moment or two Carmen,
Marcel’s wife, appeared from an adjoining room. She spoke good English and immediately made unnecessary apologies
about the untidiness of their house.
Janet, Ariana and I sat down on the living room couch and before long we
were at ease with each other. Only
Ariana seemed ready to bolt but this was from boredom and not trepidation.
Carmen cleared off a
card table, on which she spread out photocopies of Cholette family
documents. Among these were: the deed
transferring land to Marcel’s grandfather Hyacinthe from his and Pierre’s
father, Hyacinthe Cholet; a printed article written in French about Sebastien
Cholet our mutual 17th century forbear; a recent news clipping about Pierre
Cholet; and a birth certificate dated 1844 bearing the names of Pierre’s
parents and his brother, Hyacinthe Cholet.
It would seem that
there are either three generations of Cholet men with the name Hyacinthe or
only two. The first married Rose Marie
Leboiron in the early 1800s; the second married Angeliqu Andre known as
Saint-Amand in 1838 in Saint-Polycarpe.
This second Hyacinthe and his wife gave birth to Pierre and Toussaint as
well as several other children including yet another Hyacinthe born in 1844 who
in turn fathered Philies Cholet who would later become the father of Marcel
Cholet, our wonderful host. Now all of
this was pieced together using genealogical lists provided by Jack Cholette
with Janet translating as we went along however none of this seemed to impress
Marcel all that much but as we sat down for lunch he offered his own position
on the Cholette family tree. After I
accepted his offer of a beer he said to Janet “Si vous aimez de la bierre, vous
etes certainement une Cholette,” which translates as “you must be a Cholette if
you like beer.” He then made a brief twirling gesture with one hand and I
immediately recalled my grandfather, Maguire, making the same motion.
Now why did I hint
that there might in fact be only two Hyacinthe’s during this period and not
three? This is in fact Jack Cholette’s
hypothesis, one that Janet and I now believe to be extremely likely. Here is what Jack proposes: the Hyacinthe
who married Rose Marie Liboiron is the same man who later married Angeliqu
Andre Amand (according to Marcel she was referred to as Julie). This would mean
that the woman, Justine, whom Pierre describes as his sister and godmother, was
actually his half sister --his father’s daughter from the first marriage. Furthermore, the copy of the baptismal
record Marcel gave us documenting his grandfather Hyacinthe’s christening is
dated 1844, and the godmother listed on this record is a Matlida - again like
Justine a name the genealogy indicates is a child of the first Hyacinthe. Most likely Hyacinth’s first wife who bore
five known children died in the early 1830s, possibly during childbirth, which
was not an uncommon occurrence back then.
Hyacinth then remarried and had several more children among them Pierre,
Toussaint, and later a boy who is the other Hyacinthe, and a girl born after
the kidnapping. Janet and I also
suspect that Hyacinthe was the younger son who disbelieved that Pierre was his
lost brother. This Hyacinthe inherited
the father’s farm, property that might have gone to Pierre had he not been missing. Nevertheless, according to the book Pierre
was simply happy to be with his parents again and made no claim on the
brother’s goods.
One of the most
interesting details we learned from Marcel and Carmen was the news of the
discovery of Toussaint’s makeshift gravesite in Labrador made by a scholar of
Quebec history. We immediately
regretted not having this information available to us earlier on our
pilgrimage. *
After enjoying a very
satisfying lunch provided by our hosts that included fresh berry soup, the
Cholettes drove us to the graveyard of the local church. Several weathered markers were pointed out
to us, one which maybe the grave of Pierre’s parents. However no imprint could be found for Pierre himself despite
Marcel’s assurance that he had returned to Saint-Polycarpe in his later years
and was buried in or near his parents plot.
From the church they brought us to the Cholette farm where the couple
presented their second son, Pierre, his name coming as no great surprise. This Pierre is forty and works the farm with
his wife. They have two children Damien
and Etaonne. Marcel and Carmen sadly
reported that these were the only grandchildren they expect to see despite
their family of five: two men (Gilbert and Pierre) and three women (Sylvie,
Celine, and Dianne).
Marcel explained that
while the farm house was relatively new the adjacent building they now used for
storage is what remains of the home Pierre and Toussaint Cholet had lived in
with their parents up to the fatal day of their abduction. Across the street, not more than thirty
yards, stood the refurbished home of Pierre Doucet, second cousin to Pierre and
Toussaint and the third boy kidnapped those many years before. The cousin had perished on board ship not
long after being abducted. After a few
minutes, Marcel’s son Pierre disappeared into the house. He returned carrying a rectangular wooden
plaque, which he told us Pierre Cholet had painted himself. Indeed the three foot long panel was
inscribed with the words “Pierre Cholet, Pentre, [painter, although misspelled] 1907.” This was the year before Pierre apparently died at the age of 68
after working for some time as a house painter in and around
Saint-Polycarpe. We were told he had a
daughter but discovered little more about any other descendants of the man,
living or dead.
Before parting we
promised to send Marcel and Carmen copies of the photographs from Black Bay and
they in turn said they would mail us copies of other documents related to the
lost children as they turned up. By late Tuesday afternoon we were ready to
begin the drive home. Our return trip
was uneventful with one more night spent camping at Fish Creek Ponds in the
Adirondacks. We arrived at our
apartment the evening of September 2nd greeted by Socks, our colossal alley
cat, which had been cared for by a neighbor.
Immediately after this reunion we began the tedious job of unpacking our
camping equipment, sorting through backed-up printed materials and downloading
accumulated e-mail, a job still underway some five days later.
GS 9/9/98
Post script
* The evening of
September 9th we got around to calling the Canadian historian M. Antonio
Cormier whose name and phone number was given to us by Marcel and Carmen
Cholet. He lives in Lourdes, Labrador
and has indeed been researching the story of Pierre Cholet. He became interested in our relative after a
he mentioned to someone on a trip to Gaspe Bay area that he lived in
Labrador. This fellow then asked him if
he knew of a place called Black Bay. M.
Cormier asked why and this fishery worker then explained that as a child his
mother had often read him the true story of kidnapped boys and their escape at
Black Bay. M. Cormier has been hooked
on the story ever since. He then told
us that he believes that he has indeed located the pond beside which Pierre had
buried his younger brother Toussaint.
His next step will be to return to the spot with a group of helpers in
order to find the actual pile of rocks that Pierre made to mark the grave.
M. Cormier has also
been looking into the descendants of Captain Cottin in the town of Saint Malo
France. Cottin is the man who purchased
the three boys for service on his crew.
And yet another project M. Cormier has undertaken is that of locating
the wreck of the first ship that Pierre and Toussaint been shipwrecked on in
1854/55. M. Cormier believes he may
have indeed found a likely candidate for this disaster. Naturally Janet and I
will be following up on these exciting developments as they unfold.
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Post-Postscript: 2002
The following year,
in the summer of 1999, Janet, Ariana and I traveled to San Malo in France.
While living in a lovely country house or gite, we made several car trips to
places described in the story L’enfant
perdu et retrouve ou Pierre Cholet. One of these trips took us to the city
of Cholet, from which we get our name. Another was to Ren, which is the county
seat of Brittony and where the maritime records are stored for the region. We
spent most of a day pouring over enormous ledger books to see if any mention of
cabin boys named “maran” could be found or the name of captain Cottin, the man
who first purchased Pierre and Touissant. Neither could be found.
It is possible of
course that none of the three stolen boys where officially recorded because of
the illegal manner they were procured. Likewise, Captain Cottin’s real name may
have been altered by either father Proulx or Pierre himself out of fears of
legal action. And then there is the question of Pierre’s daughter. Who was she
and did she have children? Is there a direct descended of Pierre alive today
even as I write this? At this point, and without a more time and money to
devote to the research, these speculations will remain a mystery, that perhaps
someone reading this account will uncover about Pierre Cholet, the child lost
and found. Meanwhile, Janet Koenig is busy finishing up a new, English version
of the story and looking for a publisher in the U.S. or Canada.
G.G. Sholette,
February 10, 02.