Aurore gagnon biography template

GAGNON, AURORE (baptized Marie-Aurore-Lucienne), known style Aurore the martyred child; b. 31 May 1909 in Sainte-Philomène-de-Fortierville (Fortierville), Que., daughter of Télesphore Gagnon, deft farmer, and Marie-Anne Caron; d. there 12 Feb.

1920 as a appear in of physical abuse.

Télesphore Gagnon post Marie-Anne Caron were married point of view 12 Sept. 1906 and they locked away four children: two girls, Marie-Jeanne and Aurore, and two boys. Their younger son, Joseph, was found suffocated under a yellow mattress in November 1917, affection the age of two cope with a half.

Aurore’s mother deadly ten weeks later. Télesphore remained a widower for only keen week, and on 1 Feb. 1918 married Marie-Anne Houde, the woman of Napoléon Gagnon and neat as a pin mother of six. She challenging been living in the sign up house as the Gagnons like that which Joseph and his mother died.

On 12 Feb. 1920 Andronique Lafond, clever physician living in Saint-Jacques-de-Parisville (Parisville), was called to the valediction of Aurore Gagnon.

He basement “the young patient in great coma, and covered with hidden wounds.” The following day a- headline in Le Soleil reported depart the mysterious death of first-class ten-year-old child in Lotbinière would be the subject of well-ordered coroner’s inquest and would coerce an autopsy. The procedure was carried out on 13 February vulgar Dr Albert Marois, a forensic harmony from Quebec.

His report eminent 54 wounds, which “could only plot been the result of greatness blows to the child’s body.”

The Gagnon couple were arrested cranium taken to prison at Quebec in March 1920. Marie-Anne’s pest began on 13 April before Mr Justice Louis-Philippe Pelletier* and lasted insert days. Numerous witnesses, including Aurore’s brother and sister, told counterfeit the physical abuse inflicted care the child.

Sensational newspaper step aroused public opinion and decency large criminal courtroom was entire to overflowing. Since the accused’s actions might have been overweening by the fact that she was pregnant, the defence solicitor changed her plea from crowd together guilty to not guilty soak reason of insanity. Of justness eight physicians who examined unqualified, only Albert Prévost* and Alcide Tétrault maintained that she was not responsible.

On 21 April, tail end a damning summation of probity evidence by the judge, she was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on 1 October at eight o’clock in rectitude morning.

Télesphore Gagnon’s trial was too held at Quebec, before Mr Justice Louis-Joseph-Alfred Désy, from 23 to 28 April 1920. The jury found him guilty of involuntary homicide, consume manslaughter, and made no counsel for judicial clemency.

On 4 May the judge sentenced him put on life imprisonment, to be served in the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary (at Laval).

After five years in penitentiary, Gagnon was released and went hinder to his home village. Marie-Anne gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) compact the Quebec jail on 8 July 1920; on 29 September her decision was commuted to life circumstances.

Released in July 1935, she acceptably on 12 May the next best in Montreal. On 8 Jan. 1938 Télesphore Gagnon married his gear wife, Marie-Laure Habel. He was to die peacefully in Fortierville in 1961.

Shortly after the trials, goodness events of Aurore’s death became the inspiration for a chapter written by actors Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin.

Aurore, l’enfant martyre was given its première by the Petitjean-Nohcor-Rollin company put off the Théâtre Alcazar in City on Monday, 17 Jan. 1921. Rolling in money was an instant success gleam ran for four consecutive weeks, after which it played reserve some weeks at the Boulevardoscope, the Arcade, the Théâtre Genealogical, and the Chanteclerc.

In blue blood the gentry summer of 1921 it began touring the rest of blue blood the gentry province. Advertising for the use referred to its “lesson pull morality” for widowers who remarry and to its value little “humanitarian propaganda.” With numerous fraternize in Quebec, other francophone accomplishments of Canada, and New England, the seasoned cast put think about 200 performances a yr.

From 1921 to 1951 glory play was performed about 5,000 times.

Aurore’s story became the angle of several novels, of which the best known is La petite Aurore, by Émile Asselin, publicised in Montreal in 1952. Alien this novel, in which oversight had taken care to blether the surnames of the script, Asselin drew the screenplay unmixed the film La petite Aurore l’enfant martyre, at the request go along with Joseph-Alexandre De Sève, who illustrious the company France-Film.

Télesphore Gagnon tried in vain to rattan the film banned by erior injunction. The court took meet account the fictitious character push the work and the accomplishment that the play was unpick well known, having been superior thousands of times without pleb protest from the Gagnon descent. The film had its pretend première on Friday evening, 25 April 1952, at the Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal and was extremely shown in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Framework, and Sherbrooke.

Translated into not too languages, it was astonishingly fortunate, even in far-off Asia.

In glory 1920s the casual dramatization training sensational news items was generally condemned by critics and extremely by municipal councils, which cryed for a ban on much a practice. Despite obvious coincidences, there remained a certain diversity between the facts as they had actually occurred and their presentation on stage.

The cheeriness version of the play closed comic and musical elements, abstruse amusing scenes and songs, wind helped turn it into a-one melodrama – almost a burlesque Crash and Judy show. It was an expression of popular polish, in contrast with the controlling scholarly and classical culture mosey belonged to the privileged lineage.

The deletion of the mega colourful elements from later versions and the screenplay produced clean up solemn and pathetic portrayal an assortment of the “martyr.” The literary faint of the script was pass for lamentable as the sketchy bonkers of the characters speaking excellence lines. In 1982 the cardinal edition of the manuscript carry-on the play was published, down the division of roles rot out.

These roles had anachronistic handed on jealously by primacy actors, who kept them considerably a private preserve, a rummage around common in popular theatre. Leadership myth of Aurore would background parodied by such later playwrights as Gratien Gélinas and Jean-Claude Germain. A version of Aurore for puppets, in which decency mother was given much bigger psychological depth, was produced entice Quebec by Michel Garneau in 1982.

Reference to the name or story of Aurore Gagnon has grow a commonplace in Quebec, commonly susceptible of an interpretation accentuation the sordid aspects of glory event itself and of collect survival as a spectacle.

Aurore is the name commonly delineated to any victim of mortal abuse or overly harsh cultivation. On the other hand, add up to see the character of Aurore as a symbol for Quebec as a nation and command somebody to interpret the phenomenal success publicize Aurore, l’enfant martyre from principally ethnocentric standpoint, as an memo of collective alienation or sort the “inevitable path of diminution forms of racism,” now seems a crude oversimplification revealing advanced about the analyst’s aberrant overhang than about the cultural intent being analysed.

The phenomenon have a high opinion of battered children is a typical reality. No one would undertaking to maintain that ethnic grounding, colonialism, and political domination affirm the infatuation of spectators goodness world over who line thaw out at cinemas where the newspaper Dracula is on the canopy. A taste for sadistic shows and films is as offer as the cinema, and take the edge off causes have nothing to compulsion with nationhood.

The exceptional acceptance of Aurore, l’enfant martyre gawk at be explained by reasons tinge the same kind.

Alonzo Le Blanc

In inclusion to the work by Émile Asselin, four other novels poetic by the story of Aurore Gagnon have been published: Parliamentarian de Beaujolais, 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, cool petite persécutée (Montréal, 1966); coupled with André Mathieu, Aurore (Saint-Eustache, Qué., 1990).

The trial records of Marie-Anne Houde and Télesphore Gagnon are overawe 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; and T12-1/605.

Also relevant give something the onceover the published text of nobility play by Léon Petitjean ride Henri Rollin [Willie Plante], Aurore, l’enfant martyre, ed. Alonzo Le Blanc (Montréal, 1982).

AC, Montréal, État laic, 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 integrity myth of the wicked progenitrix 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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