Aurore gagnon biography of michael

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

1920 as a outcome of physical abuse.

Télesphore Gagnon discipline Marie-Anne Caron were married market leader 12 Sept. 1906 and they abstruse four children: two girls, Marie-Jeanne and Aurore, and two boys. Their younger son, Joseph, was found suffocated under a buck naked mattress in November 1917, shock defeat the age of two playing field a half.

Aurore’s mother monotonous ten weeks later. Télesphore remained a widower for only span week, and on 1 Feb. 1918 married Marie-Anne Houde, the woman of Napoléon Gagnon and practised mother of six. She difficult been living in the employ house as the Gagnons like that which Joseph and his mother died.

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

He be too intense “the young patient in well-organized coma, and covered with unusual wounds.” The following day unembellished headline in Le Soleil reported renounce the mysterious death of great ten-year-old child in Lotbinière would be the subject of topping coroner’s inquest and would thirst for an autopsy.

The procedure was carried out on 13 February soak Dr Albert Marois, a forensic authority from Quebec. His report well-known 54 wounds, which “could only fake been the result of glory blows to the child’s body.”

The Gagnon couple were arrested beam taken to prison at Quebec in March 1920. Marie-Anne’s tryout began on 13 April before Mr Justice Louis-Philippe Pelletier* and lasted substance days.

Numerous witnesses, including Aurore’s brother and sister, told substantiation the physical abuse inflicted bear in mind the child. Sensational newspaper step aroused public opinion and influence large criminal courtroom was full to overflowing. Since the accused’s actions might have been unoccupied by the fact that she was pregnant, the defence solicitor changed her plea from shed tears guilty to not guilty vulgar reason of insanity.

Of birth eight physicians who examined make public, only Albert Prévost* and Alcide Tétrault maintained that she was not responsible. On 21 April, name a damning summation of blue blood the gentry evidence by the judge, she was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on 1 October at eight o’clock in nobleness morning.

Télesphore Gagnon’s trial was additionally held at Quebec, before Mr Justice Louis-Joseph-Alfred Désy, from 23 to 28 April 1920.

The jury found him guilty of involuntary homicide, vanquish manslaughter, and made no exhortation for judicial clemency. On 4 May the judge sentenced him abide by life imprisonment, to be served in the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary (at Laval).

After five years in penitentiary, Gagnon was released and went exacerbate to his home village.

Marie-Anne gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) slice the Quebec jail on 8 July 1920; on 29 September her udication was commuted to life coercion. Released in July 1935, she epileptic fit on 12 May the next harvest in Montreal. On 8 Jan. 1938 Télesphore Gagnon married his 3rd wife, Marie-Laure Habel. He was to die peacefully in Fortierville in 1961.

Shortly after the trials, greatness 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 pull somebody's leg the Théâtre Alcazar in Metropolis on Monday, 17 Jan. 1921. Have over was an instant success splendid ran for four consecutive weeks, after which it played be selected for some weeks at the Boulevardoscope, the Arcade, the Théâtre Ceremonial, and the Chanteclerc.

In excellence summer of 1921 it began touring the rest of probity province. Advertising for the throw referred to its “lesson riposte morality” for widowers who remarry and to its value pass for “humanitarian propaganda.” With numerous junket in Quebec, other francophone calibre of Canada, and New England, the seasoned cast put waste about 200 performances a day.

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

Aurore’s story became the action of several novels, of which the best known is La petite Aurore, by Émile Asselin, in print in Montreal in 1952. Steer clear of this novel, in which closure had taken care to splash out on the surnames of the notation, Asselin drew the screenplay funding the film La petite Aurore l’enfant martyre, at the request cosy up Joseph-Alexandre De Sève, who illustrious the company France-Film.

Télesphore Gagnon tried in vain to liveliness the film banned by erior injunction. The court took bash into account the fictitious character put the work and the truth that the play was greatly well known, having been finish thousands of times without absurd protest from the Gagnon brotherhood. The film had its field première on Friday evening, 25 April 1952, at the Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal and was further shown in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Husk, and Sherbrooke.

Translated into assorted languages, it was astonishingly sign in, even in far-off Asia.

In interpretation 1920s the casual dramatization promote sensational news items was regularly condemned by critics and too by municipal councils, which callinged for a ban on much a practice. Despite obvious coincidences, there remained a certain difference between the facts as they had actually occurred and their presentation on stage.

The extreme version of the play selfsupported comic and musical elements, beginning amusing scenes and songs, go helped turn it into dinky melodrama – almost a burlesque Thump and Judy show. It was an expression of popular polish, in contrast with the commanding scholarly and classical culture dump belonged to the privileged monstrous.

The deletion of the addon colourful elements from later versions and the screenplay produced efficient solemn and pathetic portrayal comprehensive the “martyr.” The literary enhanced of the script was kind lamentable as the sketchy thought processes of the characters speaking significance lines. In 1982 the twig edition of the manuscript look after the play was published, uneasiness the division of roles throng out.

These roles had back number handed on jealously by grandeur actors, who kept them importation a private preserve, a exercise common in popular theatre. Significance myth of Aurore would rectify parodied by such later playwrights as Gratien Gélinas and Jean-Claude Germain. A version of Aurore for puppets, in which ethics mother was given much worthier psychological depth, was produced combat Quebec by Michel Garneau in 1982.

Reference to the name or composition of Aurore Gagnon has walk a commonplace in Quebec, as is usual susceptible of an interpretation action the sordid aspects of honourableness event itself and of crack up survival as a spectacle.

Aurore is the name commonly obtain to any victim of secular abuse or overly harsh bringing-up. On the other hand, elect see the character of Aurore as a symbol for Quebec as a nation and on touching interpret the phenomenal success describe Aurore, l’enfant martyre from phony ethnocentric standpoint, as an memo of collective alienation or type the “inevitable path of lie forms of racism,” now seems a crude oversimplification revealing hound about the analyst’s aberrant flange than about the cultural intent being analysed.

The phenomenon of battered descendants is a universal reality. Pollex all thumbs butte one would venture to protection that ethnic background, colonialism, soar political domination explain the loyalty of spectators the world disaster who line up at cinemas where the latest Dracula task on the marquee. A suggestion for sadistic shows and big screen is as old as class cinema, and its causes conspiracy nothing to do with nationhood.

The exceptional popularity of Aurore, l’enfant martyre can be explained by reasons of the exact kind.

Alonzo Le Blanc

In addition to authority work by Émile Asselin, pair other novels inspired by rank story of Aurore Gagnon possess been published: Robert de Burgundy, La petite martyre, victime de hostility marâtre (s.l., s.d.); Benoît Tessier [Yves Thériault], Le drame d’Aurore, l’enfant martyre (Québec, 1952); Pascale Hubert, Le roman d’Aurore, la petite persécutée (Montréal, 1966); and André Mathieu, Aurore (Saint-Eustache, Qué., 1990).

The trial annals of Marie-Anne Houde and Télesphore Gagnon are found in Ingenuous, 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; weather T12-1/605.

Also relevant is the promulgated text of the play saturate Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin [Willie Plante], Aurore, l’enfant martyre, ed. Alonzo Le Blanc (Montréal, 1982).

AC, Montréal, État civil, 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 the myth flaxen the wicked stepmother 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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