Adrienne Tardif

Adrienne Tardif

Sister Adrienne Tardif and Maria A. Sangiovanni

Father Rancourt, to answer your wish, I am trying to search in my poor memory the memories I have kept concerning my big sister Aurélie, born on 10 March 1922, died on 14 July 1941. I want to be as exact as possible but I was then 9 years old. My memory is far from faithful. I try to express my memories in the family with my brothers and sisters and those that were told to me.

1. Departure of the family for Abitibi

2. Émilien at school in Abitibi

3. Mom's illness

4. July 1941: Brother Armand's holidays, Arrival of Aurélie

5. Death of Aurélie

6. Aurélie works in heaven

7. Family in mourning

Sister Adrienne Tardif 24 June 2008

by YR, priest

1. Departure of the family for Abitibi.

2nd Tardif house (Rapide-Danseur, Abitibi)

In the summer of 1940, the family left Saint-Zacharie of Beauce to go as settlers to Abitibi. Aurélie (17 years old) still had one year as a student at the École normale de Beauceville where she was preparing to become a teacher. The full course lasted 2 years. So she did not follow the family but stayed with Rose to finish her teaching course. She was going to spend the holidays at Rose's in Saint-Côme that year. It was trying for the parents to leave behind 3 of their children: Armand in Quebec, Rose and Aurélie in the Beauce. Travel was difficult and expensive in those years.

In Abitibi, colonization was done in poverty. The work of clearing land covered in standing timber demanded much: clearing the bush, building a house, removing stumps, preparing a garden and organizing the farm. The whole family collaborated in the work, each according to his possibilities. I remember having seen my father and my brothers very tired in the evening. The problem of leisure did not exist.

2. Émilien at school in Abitibi

In Rapide-Danseur, our house was 2 miles from the school. A good walk morning and evening. In winter, Émilien traced the path in the snow for us by walking first in front of us. There was only one school, a single classroom for the six so-called divisions. Émilien was the only one in 6th year. Too often, the teacher used him for different chores, entrusted him with reading to the little ones in 1st and 2nd year. Often too, she sent him to care for the big dogs that served as the vehicle for the parish priest when he went to visit the sick. Émilien, very obedient, fulfilled all these functions but the problem is that he did not cover the content of the school programme, and he would suffer greatly from it when he arrived at the college. In the parish, he could not go further for his studies.

3. Winter 1941. Mom's illness. During the winter, mom, who was expecting her 14th child, was hospitalized, very ill, and mention was made of a danger of death. I remember the sadness of dad, worried. I have a copy of a letter that mom managed to write to Aurélie at the École normale, during those days when she was contemplating death. (It is always with emotion that I reread this precious letter traced in her hand at the hospital). Aurélie shared in this worry that filled the heart of the ailing mom.

In her youthful fervour, she asked the chaplain priest if she could offer herself to God to die in place of mom. It seems that the latter did not attach importance to it. "It is the Lord who determines the hour of our death," he said. A study companion confided to us that Aurélie had confided to her that she had gone to the chapel to offer the sacrifice of her life in place of mom, on the pretext that she found mom's life more useful than her own. --- It was in February, she died in July. (See further). --- Mom got better, came home weak, but her return revived joy in the house, after the emptiness lived together during her absence from the home.

4. July 1941 - Holidays of our eldest brother Armand.

Brother Louis Tardif and Father Émilien Tardif

Brother Armand Tardif

Arrival of Aurélie in Abitibi. Aurélie finished her teaching course in June. She would come to teach in Abitibi. After all the sacrifices made to assure her studies, the family expected much help from her salary. And with a naive illusion, she promised herself to help everyone. It was then that Émilien confided to Aurélie his desire to go to the college to become a missionary. She welcomed his project with joy, and committed herself to help him realize his dream. In early July 1941, Brother Armand takes the holidays granted by his community. He comes from Quebec with Aurélie by train. The family is reunited. They are days of celebration. The holiday period is over, Armand returns to his community in Quebec.

He brings Émilien's secret, who so much wants to be a missionary. Armand proposes to collaborate in his own way by communicating the situation to his superiors to solicit help. Aurélie, in connivance with him, commits herself to pay all she can. In the snack she prepared for Armand for his return by train, she slips a little fraternal letter: "Bon appétit (...) for Émilien, do what you can, I will do the rest." Aurélie counted on her teacher's salary and on the indulgence of the community of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Armand was cook in charge at the college. The plot of Armand and Aurélie was thus concluded between them to favour Émilien. My parents perceived in it a plan of Providence and did not oppose the project. Can there be a "priest" in our family? It would be so consoling for them.

5. Death of Aurélie

On 14 July 1941, on a beautiful sunny afternoon, my three sisters: Yvonne, Aurélie and Irène with a friend leave singing to go visit the rang school on the other side of the river. That is where Aurélie would teach in September. The crossing of the river was done by rowboat in summer, and on the ice in winter. While the 4 visitors examine the poor premises of the school, children play on the rowboat. A plank comes un-nailed. They hammer it back by hand, nothing shows, and they say nothing about it knowing well that they had done wrong in playing and breaking the rowboat.

Now on returning, in the middle of the river, that plank gives way. The water fills the rowboat which capsizes. All are threatened with drowning. They cry for help, clinging to the seat of the rowboat. A cousin hears the desperate cries. He goes quickly with his canoe to save the four in danger. Aurélie tries to swim. She sinks in the water and does not come back up. What a trial for the family! When the parish priest announces this death of Aurélie to mom, she answers him: "God had lent her to us, he took her back."

"He must need her more than us." Mom lived this drama a month before the birth of Gilles, her 14th child. Her health was fragile. Around 7 o'clock in the evening, the log drivers fished out my sister Aurélie's body.

They wrap her in a sheet and bring her back to the house. They lay her in mom's room. I remember that her return to the house saw many tears flow. She who returned furnished with a diploma which had demanded so many sacrifices from the family. She whom we were so eager to keep in our midst. She on whom each of us counted for little joys: Aurélie is no longer with us. This memory remains for us a great trial lived leaning on the faith of our good parents. Neighbouring ladies did the mortuary toiletry of my big sister, while my big brothers set up the necessary panels covered with a white sheet to lay the body of our dear Aurélie upon.

She is exposed dressed in her black convent dress with her beautiful blue ribbon of Child of Mary on her shoulders. My brothers with neighbours hurry to make the wooden coffin painted black. The mortuary parlour was a corner at the entrance of the kitchen. There we gathered to pray day and night, without noise. For me, at the age of 8, it is an unforgettable event. I was told that Émilien was looking at Aurélie in her coffin. With sadness, he says to Mom: "For me, it is finished." His missionary hopes seemed vanished, his college projects too. Mom consoled him by saying: "The good Lord has his plan; he works in mysterious ways." An agronomist friend took charge of sending the information by mail to the absent ones. Armand and Rose receive the letter when Aurélie's funeral is over, the post being the only means of communication for the poor we were.

6. Aurélie works in heaven

When Armand receives the letter in Quebec, in the sorrow of losing his little sister whom he had just left, he also thinks of Émilien. He goes to meet his superior, shows him the little letter that Aurélie had slipped into his travel snack, and which she ended thus: "For Émilien, do what you can and I will do the rest." Émilien has always affirmed that from heaven, Aurélie helped him more than she could have done with her little teacher's salary. She truly did. Émilien told us he saw a providential event in the fact that it is the only year that the Beauport college, where he went, did not require a 7th year certificate as an admission condition. He could never have entered with his poor little 6th year. Moreover, Émilien presented himself at the college without having truly covered his 6th year programme.

7. The family in mourning

Brother Louis Tardif

Adrien and Sister Adrienne

After Aurélie's death, my sisters, who had also fallen into the river nearly drowning, were also ill - pneumonia, tuberculosis and sanatorium. These are distant memories. Mom was expecting her 14th baby for 15 August. She had to go to hospital. The men were working at the hay. It is Émilien who became our cook. I remember that a cousin came to teach him how to make bread. He had mouths to feed. Fortunately he was brave and resourceful at 13. He fulfilled a task that exceeded his age.

It is remembered that Émilien did not answer reproaches. He already showed patience and humility. Mom returns from the hospital weakened, in mourning for her little baby, and for our dear Aurélie whose pain remains very present in the house. So many hopes and projects vanished. Armand had prepared and facilitated Émilien's admission to the college. The latter was always grateful to him for it.

Accompanied by a neighbour, Émilien takes the train to Quebec. No one had been able to prepare him a trousseau as it should have been. He leaves with nothing. Armand goes to get him at the station to bring him with him to the college. After a few visits in the house, Armand lets him go join the other young students at play. Émilien, seated behind a tree, watched the boarders at play. He had everything to learn to play those games too. The Father Superior was walking in prayer in an alley near there.

The Father Bursar had just noted that Émilien had no trousseau like the other boarders. Émilien hears the bursar inform the superior: "A little poor boy from Abitibi has arrived. He has absolutely nothing as a trousseau. What are we going to do?" Émilien understood that it was he who was being spoken of. He is careful not to move, and barely breathed, hidden behind his tree. --- The Superior answers: "We will take care of him; we must not let him lack." Surprise! When Émilien arrives at the dormitory, he finds on his bed the trousseau requested from the boarders: towels, pyjamas, shirts, trousers, toothbrush, etc.

He often told us of this generosity that he had so appreciated without quite knowing who had helped him. It is thus that Émilien began his studies at the college. One well guesses that often he suffered humiliations because of his material poverty and his weak marks at examinations.

Émilien loved his family very much. He wrote to us often, remained very interested in what each one was living. I remember that at the last Christmas, before entering the novitiate, he came to spend the holidays in Abitibi whereas he usually went to the Beauce to my sister Rose's concern for economy of the trip. What happiness we lived together that year! He brought us stories, games, all new teasing. I remember that one year, he had failed his algebra examination.

During the summer holidays, while the others rested from the heavy work of the farm in which he too had taken part, he went to shut himself in a room to work on that subject for a resit planned in September. No one in the parish could help him. How he worked. I have often seen Émilien pray to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. This devotion of Armand and Émilien was spread among all the members of the family.

Yves Rancourt, priest, 24 June 2008