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Review of “Boarding School Blues”

Review of “Boarding School Blues”

Book by Louise Peloquin

Review by Charlie Gargiulo

“Boarding School Blues” is a fictionalized memoir by Louise Peloquin about Blanche, a 13 year old girl from a very traditional and loving French-Canadian family in Lowell whose life takes a dramatic turn when she is sent off to an all girls Catholic Boarding School.

This coming of age story is set during the mid-1960’s and provides a fascinating and sensitive account through the inimitable voice of Blanche as she is caught between the tensions of the conservative traditions of family, community and her Catholic boarding school amidst the sweeping cultural changes emerging around them.

This is not just nostalgia, it is a book rich with the inner thoughts of a brilliant young girl who is wise beyond her years. It is beautifully written in poetic prose and captures a time, place and community while preserving it with all the grace, honor and love anyone who has been fortunate enough to know Louise would expect.

Louise is a highly respected woman who not only has a long history in Lowell’s French-Canadian community but has a staggering resume of personal accomplishments that stretch from her Lowell Highland’s roots across the Atlantic Ocean to her ancestral home of France.

She is the granddaughter of Louis-Alphonse Biron, who was the publisher of the legendary French language newspaper “L’Etoile,” printed in Lowell’s Little Canada neighborhood until the late 1950’s. It is at “L’Etoile” that Jack Kerouac’s father Leo finished his printing apprenticeship.

Keep Kerouac in mind because I will return to how “Boarding School Blues” has another even more significant connection with Jack’s legacy.

On a personal level, I met Louise shortly after my own memoir, “Legends of Little Canada” was published. She was drawn to my book because we were the same age and both grew up in Lowell’s French-Canadian community during the 1960s and bonded over being able to remember and share that very unique time in our community’s history.

That bond grew tighter after I read “Boarding School Blues” when the Richard Howe Jr. blog published it in serial form. Amazingly, we not only both wrote our books about the same Lowell French-Canadian community as we experienced it as 13 year olds but also both highlighted how Beatlemania penetrated the dogmatic walls of our conservative culture of conformity and rigid Catholicism. Little did we know at the time that the Beatles led British Invasion, which would change our world, had its roots from another Lowell French-Canadian boy named Jack Kerouac.

It begins when Blanche discovers her comfortable, happy home life with her Papa, Maman and three younger siblings, Byron, Antoine and Maggy, will be shattered when Maman informs her that due to the declining health of Papa, Blanche will no longer attend her Lowell neighborhood school, but will be enrolled at St. Felicity Academy, an all girls Catholic boarding school out of town. Maman explains that the school will be able to provide Blanche with the care and discipline that Maman can no longer adequately provide, given the need to care for her ailing husband and raising three other younger siblings.

This is devastating news to the shy, introspective Blanche who, in addition to her happy home life and set ways, has a special bond with her ailing Papa, even sharing his migraines. Papa is a man of prominence in Lowell’s French Canadian community because he is a skilled doctor and surgeon who never turns a patient in need away because they lack the money to pay him. Blanche dreads the distance that will come between her and her family, especially since she is so concerned about Papa’s health. One can feel Blanche’s anxiety as the day to be shipped off to St. Felicity comes closer.

In one unforgettable scene, Maman requires Blanche to skip one of the last summer trips to swim in the cool lake waters with family and friends in order to stock up on the required clothing that she will need at St. Felicity. Humorous and poignant at the same time, one can feel Blanche’s beads of sweat as she describes the lack of air-conditioning in the old Bon Marche Department store on Lowell’s Merrimack Street while being required to try on one boring item of clothes after another under the dutiful eyes of Maman. By the time she finally leaves the store, the reader feels like we had just survived the Bataan Death March with her.

To be raised as a child in a Lowell French-Canadian family and community during the early 60’s was like being the subject of a benevolent dictatorship. There was no room for dissent or disobedience, and conformity to authority was strictly enforced, whether it be parental, political or religious. In most cases like Blanche, it also was balanced with love, security and a strong commitment to take care of each other. The problem comes, as it always does, when the rules and culture become so dogmatic that any new ideas or questions are considered dangerous and rejected with such rigidity that the whole structure may crack when confronted or challenged.

You can feel that structure start to crack through the irreverent inner voice of the impeccably behaved Blanche when she describes the liberating joy of dancing wildly with her 3 year old sister Maggie to the Beatles album gift given to her by her “maverick Aunt Rita” when her Maman had to leave for an errand “turning Blanche into temporary keeper of the fort.” Fortunately Maman, although concerned about the influence of this new phenomena called “The Beatles” did not prohibit her from listening to them completely, but rationed her listening to one song at a time at a lower volume. This level of tolerance from her loving Maman would always ensure that those cracks would never break the love that binds them. But Blanche also became aware that the magical spirit spun by the Beatles between her and Maggie were “twenty minutes of ecstasy (that) would stay with her forever.”

When the big day comes and Maman drops her off at St. Felicity Blanche enters a completely new world of strangers. Instead of her parents, her guardians were now Catholic nuns all to be addressed as Sister. Instead of sleeping in her own bed and hanging out with her siblings and old friends, she now found herself in a foreign environment where she would have to form new relationships and conform to a new autocracy. An autocracy that felt far less benevolent than the one she had.

I found myself relating to Blanche’s experience remembering what it felt like arriving at Fort Dix for Army Basic Training. The fear of being completely on my own at the mercy of strict superiors and insecure about my ability to make new friends or face peer rejection. The memory of the loneliness and powerlessness I felt still can bring a chill to me when I recall it. I can’t even imagine how much more traumatic it would have been if I had only been 13 years old at the time.

In Basic Training I developed such a bond with some of the other frightened guys in that oppressive environment that our shared experience created a powerful “band of brothers” effect that felt more like family than friendship. Fortunately, Blanche quickly found her own “band of sisters,” who provided the same safe harbor of loyalty and support necessary to maintain one’s sanity in such a vulnerable place and time.

It wasn’t long before Blanche formed an extremely tight bond with three other girls who become inseparable at St. Felicity.

Yvette, who they nickname “Titi” is a small girl but tough as nails, who is spunky, clever and fearless. She is quick-witted, talkative and her irreverent, cynical, humorous comments to the other girls about the nuns and their rules helps to keep up morale.

Andrea, or “Andy” is tough-talking, cheeky and oozing rebelliousness, but often her insecurity can prompt her to make impulsive, harsh judgmental statements about others best left unsaid. But she is really a good kid who doesn’t want others to know it. She also will gain much confidence as her artistic talent flourishes and the respect it gains her slowly allows her to soften her hard, defensive shell.

Then there is Cecile, who they call “C,” who unlike the others, is only a day student who does not have to live at the Boarding School and gets to go home at the end of the school day. Despite not living with the others, C is the emotional center of the foursome.

Her sweetness, empathy and incredible emotional intelligence has a calming effect on the other girls during difficult times. If St. Felicity was the land of Oz, and Blanche was Dorothy, there’s no doubt in the reader’s mind that C will be the Scarecrow when it’s time to leave.

This band of sisters will help Blanche maneuver through the gauntlet of trials and tribulations awaiting her as a first year student at a strict and demanding all girls Catholic Boarding school determined to insulate them from the outside world. Something that will become impossible even for the formidable nuns in the school year 1965-1966. The joyful, but the rebellious spirit that sprung from the Beatles music and charisma launched a cultural revolution among the youth, beyond the control of the adult world, as evidenced by the numerous songs referenced in the book which would make an impressive soundtrack of the era. Change was in the air, even in an institution seeking to forbid it.

Boarding School Blues will take you on an emotional roller-coaster that will leave you with memories and insights from a young girl’s wisdom that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. However, as much as I would love to tell you more of what comes next, I will leave it for you to find out by reading it and not ruin that experience by giving it away in this review. There will be no important spoilers to alert you with here.

Instead, let me explain why I believe “Boarding School Blues” is an essential book to understand the impact growing up in Lowell’s French-Canadian Catholic community had on Jack Kerouac’s writing and life. Much great work has recently been written that has highlighted the vital role learning French before English as a child and his bilingual voice had on Jack’s unique and original work. This connection had long been ignored or minimized by scholars and biographers of Kerouac but books and articles on this subject by Hassan Melehy, Jean-Christophe Cloutier and others have finally begun to correct this historical oversight.

However, after reading “Boarding School Blues,” coupled with the intense memory work I drew from own experience growing up in and writing about Lowell’s Little Canada, it struck me that the French language was only the tip of the iceberg in connecting the impact growing up in Lowell’s French Canadian community had on Jack’s writing and life. Ask any older Lowell French Canadian admirer which of Jack’s books are their favorite and instead of his most famous works like “On the Road” or “Dharma Bums” you will often hear “Visions of Gerard” as their answer. It is my favorite of his books as well.

I don’t believe that it’s simply because they recognize places in Lowell or because he mixes in so much French. I’m convinced it’s because we intimately relate to the power of Jack’s artistry to bring us back to our own childhood’s innocent remembrance of a long gone French Canadian community dominated by a Catholic faith that we both loved and feared.

As young children we were told about how Jesus loves us all and protects us from evil like a good shepherd protects his sheep, only to later have clerics traumatically reverse that image of God into a spiteful, intolerant and cruel authoritarian just looking for any excuse to condemn us to eternal life in Hell.

Seeking the spiritual truth, Jack’s subsequent search for the tenderness and mercy he so admired in the idealized image of his beloved older, dying brother Gerard took him on the road to try and find it. To seek a purer spiritual force that honored life and gave it meaning. Much like Gerard did in “Visions of Gerard,” when he was so tortured trying to make sense of why a loving God would allow the dying mouse he healed back to life to be eaten by his own cat.

Like Jack, we can relate to how hard Blanche is also seeking to hold onto her innocence and belief in that loving God despite the hypocrisy, intolerance and even cruelty she is now confronted with among many religious authority figures in her adult world.

Readers will admire and find inspiration in how Blanche resists their messaging and defiantly holds onto the same childlike innocence and familial love that Jack Kerouac poetically recalls of his beloved and dying brother Gerard in the moving and lyrical storytelling of Blanche in “Boarding School Blues.”

Such as when she describes creating a special Christmas card for her own ailing Papa:

“The card was intended for Papa and she wanted it to represent his guardian angel, not as a formidable archangel but as an innocent child. She knew Papa loved his patients and was especially tender with youngsters. She remembered hearing about the six year old patient who had died despite all of his…care. She remembered his reddened eyes when he came home that night and how he did not utter a single word for days. The little angel on her card was meant to be a comforting image for him, an image beyond the confines of earthly reality.”

I can imagine that somewhere Ti Jean and Gerard are smiling in approval saying, “Don’t ever let them change you dear Blanche.”

Sweet Remembrances: Halloween Candies of the 1950s and ‘60s

Sweet Remembrances: Halloween Candies of the 1950s and ‘60s

By Leo Racicot

Part of the magic of trick-or-treating for kids in the 1950s and ’60s was the different kinds of candy we’d find when we got home and dumped the contents of our trick-or-treat bags on the bed or the kitchen table. Because — as we walked from door-to-door in the dark, spooky night, we couldn’t always see what neighbors were plopping into our bags as we greedily opened them wide. Marie would drive Diane and me to better parts of the city: The Highlands (where she lived and knew the folks and friends whose homes  she took us to), sometimes to Andover Street “where the wealthy homes were” where she was sure we Halloween pirates could plunder some serious loot.

These days, Halloween isn’t the bare bones door-to-door night of fun it was in my time; it’s evolved (some might say devolved) into a months-long juggernaut of celebration equal in scope and scale to Christmas. My neighbors’ children, Loc and Phan, were asking their dad to take them for their Halloween costumes in August. When their father told them it was much too early to do that, that stores didn’t yet stock for Halloween, Loc looked up at him and said, with assurance, “You can buy them online, silly!”

But I began this chat intending to sing the praises of Halloween candies, many of which you don’t see anymore. To my taste buds, candy isn’t the same as it was when Diane and I were kids. So many have been discontinued. So many don’t taste the way they used to. On the rare occasion that I get a craving for a chocolate bar, I’ll add one to the checkout belt at Market Basket, hoping to relive the yester year glories of it, only to find the flavors I remember have been eliminated. A disappointment for my palate and for my taste-memory..      Here’s a list of what used to be what trick-or-treaters would find in their candy bags when they dragged home from a long night of Halloween pillaging:

 Fizzies: Fizzies were small, round tablets. They came in a small packet. These tablets were usually red, orange and purple depending on the flavor(cherry, orange, grape) they produced. Plopped into a large glass of cold water, they began to fizz much the way Alka Seltzer fizzed, making the water the color of the Fizzie. Kids loved them because they loved watching the colorful, bubbling action. Moms liked them because they weren’t as sugary sweet as tonic (soda pop). I knew a couple of neighborhood kids who let the tablet dissolve on their tongue, sticking it out after, for shock value and for bragging rights (“See how purple my tongue is!”) I wasn’t brave enough to eat a whole tablet but did like the drink Fizzies created. Fizzies contained cyclamates, artificial additives. When studies showed how unhealthy over time these could be, Fizzies were removed from grocery store aisles. I doubt anyone born after 1968 or so would know what they were.

Candy Cigarettes. The name is self-explanatory. These were little sugar sticks made to resemble real cigarettes. They were more for making kids look/feel cool, “smoking” like they saw their moms and dads doing. After we got tired of pretending we were smoking, we could eat the stick. Cigarette sticks disappeared from store counters after the government deemed them to be a trigger for kids to later on in life become smokers. Studies have shown they led growm children to become lifelong cigarette smokers and that tobacco companies were behind the manufacture of candy cigarettes, brainwashing children to think cigarettes were safe, just like candy.

Seven-Up Bar. I loved, loved, loved Seven Up bars; they consisted of a long “train” of chocolate “pillows” or sections. Each pillow contained a different flavor of confection: coconut, butterscotch, buttercream, fudge, caramel, maple cream. orange jelly and Brazil nut. The great fun of a Seven Up bar was eating your way through it, eager to get to your favorite “pillow”. Ultimately, the Seven Up bar with its multiple flavors became too costly to manufacture and the item was discontinued.

Wax Lips:  Every kid hoped someone would drop a pair of wax lips in his/her trick-or-treat bag. Wax lips were made of paraffin, super oversized, swollen lips that kids would then wear as they walked the candy streets. They were one of the most popular sights on Halloween night.  When you got tired of wearing them, you took them off and ate them, working them like chewing gum. They were eventually banned as health hazards but I remember seeing them as recently as the ’80s in Jack’s Joke Shop on Tremont Street in Boston.

Crackerjack Prizes; Crackerjack boxes still contain a prize inside but compared to the treasures they held back in the day, the prizes nowadays could be called crummy, not worth the popcorn and peanuts you have to eat to reach down to them. In Crackerjack boxes, I found whistles (that really worked), magnifying glasses and a mini-locomotive with moving parts and a reflecting light that shone in the dark. The best prizes were costing the Borden Company an arm-and-leg so manufacturers changed over to cheaper, less appealing prizes: fake paper tattoos, stickers, little tic-tac-toe games.  The dangers of a child swallowing a whole whistle or train caboose were too real. That was the end of elaborate Crackerjack prizes.

Licorice ropes. Licorice ropes came coiled up like snakes. As you ate the candy, the “snake” uncoiled. It was common for kids to bring them along to the movie theater where chewing on the licorice rope would last you through the whole movie. After, as with Fizzies, you’d boast to your fellow moviegoers by sticking out your tongue to see whose mouth was the blackest, the reddest.

Bubble Gum Cigars   As with candy cigarettes, bubble gum cigars were designed to make a kid think he was smoking a real one. Bubble gum cigars looked like real Coronas, Havanas and Perfectos down to the elegant cigar bands and boxes they were displayed in in variety and candy stores of the time. Again, as with cigarette sticks, it was believed this gum subliminally encouraged kids to take up cigars when they got older so these, too, disappeared from the culture.

Wax Syrup Bottles  These were great fun — tiny bottles made of wax with colored liquid inside them. You bit off the top and drank the fluid, a sticky, sweet drink that nevertheless provided just the right refreshment on a hot summer’s day. After emptying the bottle, the wax could be chewed. When our mother saw this item, she said it reminded her of her own childhood when she and her friends would chew tar.  I thought she was giving Diane and me the business until I read in one of M.F.K. Fisher’s books a description of her and her siblings doing the same. Kids in the’30s and 40s chewed road or roof tar as a cheap substitute for chewing gum.

Many of these delights went away once health officials gauged how unsanitary, unhealthy and downright dangerous they were. But while they lasted as common confections to be longed for every Halloween night, they helped turn a magical holiday into a memorable one.

Can you think of candies from your childhood that are no longer available? I’m sure I missed a lot. My all-time favorite for years was Welch’s Fudge candy bars. These disappeared years ago but to this day, my mouth remembers how they tasted.

_____________________

Licorice ropes

Welch’s candy bar

Wax syrup bottles

Fizzies

Wax lips

Candy cigarettes

Seven Up bar

Trick or treaters in 1960s

Diane & Leo ready to hit the streets in 1959

Seen & Heard: Vol. 43

A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. 

Book Review: Sword Beach: D-Day Baptism by Fire by Max Hastings (2025). Hastings is a well-known British journalist and military historian. This book details the experience of the British forces at one of the five beaches on which Allied forces on D-Day. Most of us are familiar with the two beaches assigned to the US Army which were code named Omaha and Utah. The British landed on Sword and Gold; the Canadians on Juno. (Hastings shares that British planners named these three beaches for fish, as in Swordfish and Goldfish. Juno was initially called Jelly as in jellyfish, until Winston Churchill decreed the name too wimpy and changed it to Juno.) I’ve read much about the US experience on D-Day but was mostly oblivious to what happened in the British sector. This account includes the 6th Airborne Division which dropped inland from the British beaches as the US 101st and 82nd Airborne did in the American sector. Notably, British glider-borne troops proved decisive in the opening minutes of the attack. There were two bridges inland that were critical for linking the invasion force with the airborne troops further inland, so these bridges had to be seized before the Germans could demolish them. Several gliders filled with troops landed immediately adjacent to the bridge. Unlike troops delivered by parachute who are widely scattered when they hit the ground and take time to assemble, a successful and accurate glider landing – which these were – delivers a mass of troops right on the objective. In the big picture, Hastings acknowledges that the British plan to rush inland and seize the major city of Caen on the first day was unrealistic, but that the sole focus on making it onto the beach kept troops from training for what to do once they were ashore. This training gap made a mission with only a slight chance of success unfeasible. However, Hastings says that whatever the shortcomings of the British, the German’s failure to get nearby tank units moving promptly towards the beachhead was the critical mistake on June 6. While the allies were not able to immediately break out of their beachhead, they were able to expand and reinforce it enough to withstand whatever else the Germans threw at them afterwards.

Art Exhibition: America in the Making at the Addison Gallery of Art, Phillips Andover. The Addison is a superb museum located 20 minutes from Lowell. Admission is free and new exhibits seem always to be on view. The current show is “America in the Making” which draws on the Addison’s collection to chart America’s journey from the Declaration of Independence to the present as reflected in the art of the time. The exhibit fills the entire museum and is hung chronologically with portraits of colonial era merchants, the elite in the new democratic society, giving way to immense landscape paintings that reflected westward migration and the Manifest Destiny doctrine. Then as the nation modernized, artists addressed the complexity of life by turning from realism to abstraction. How artists respond to current times in the US remains to be seen, however, the Addison does not take federal funding so is not subject to the same government censorship that curtails what can be displayed at the Smithsonian and in our National Park Museums.

Obituary: Harry Lew (1884-1963), New York Times, October 21, 2026. As a historian, the obituary section of the New York Times is one of my favorite parts of the newspaper. Most listed have died recently, but the paper also reaches back in history to highlight people who died long ago and were underappreciated or unacknowledged at the time of their passing. Recently, the Times afforded such coverage to Harry “Bucky” Lew of Lowell, Massachusetts, who is credited with being the first Black professional basketball player in the United States. Many of us are aware of this history, especially after local author Chris Boucher (whose mentioned in the Times article) published his Harry “Bucky” Lew: A Biography of Basketball’s First Black Professional earlier this year. Now, thanks to the wide reach of the Times, more people, especially basketball fans and players, will know of this accomplishment.

Podcast: James Marriott on the End of Reading – I watched this on a YouTube channel called “Persuasion” but it’s also a podcast called “The Good Fight.” The presenter is Yascha Mounk, a German-American political scientist teaching at Johns Hopkins University. This episode was an interview of James Marriott, who is a columnist with the London Times newspaper, but the focus was his new book, The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society. Marriott argues that a “reading revolution” in the late 18th century propelled Europe and what became the United States into the Enlightenment and mass democracy. He explained that the maturation of the printing press meant more books were available; that the increasingly complex modern state and economies required literate bureaucrats and merchants; and that the rise of Protestantism, a religion the emphasized the written word, were all factors in this revolution. Marriott further argues that the decline in reading today is a factor in the erosion of democracy in the US and Europe. The host pushed back on this thesis, suggesting that literacy had arose because of economic advances rather than the other way around. I tend to fall on the Marriott side of this argument mostly because of my own experience. I enjoy reading but often find it easier to sit in front of a video screen and consume whatever comes up rather than expend the effort needed to read something complicated. There’s a place for both, but one shouldn’t crowd out the other.

Celebrating UMass Lowell Library

Celebrating UMass Lowell Library

By Louise Peloquin

From 4 to 6 PM on October 20th, the UMass Lowell Library and Alumni Relations held an open house and gathering at the O’Leary on 61 Wilder Street.

At 4:30, Senior Vice Provost of Academic Affairs Julie Nash spoke to the 200-odd guests in attendance. She pointed out that the October 20th open house was “years germinating as a dream” in her mind given that the library was “the hub of the university” which, thanks to its outstanding team and student staff, “make everything possible and find a solution when you think there’s no solution.”

The Senior Vice Provost then thanked the Dean of the University Library Galadriel Chilton for her “leadership and persistence.”

Dean Chilton took the floor and thanked everyone for attending. Among her many colleagues, she especially thanked “the students and staff whose vision and work made this program possible such as…Tony Sampas, Sara Marks and Sarah Manchester who served on the event planning team.”

The Dean then specified that her priorities are: “the staff to champion learning; the collections; the library space” and ensuring that the library remain “a dynamic social organization.”

The UMass library employs 85 students. Several had the opportunity to speak.

Staff member Carisa Kolias introduced Connor Shaw who elaborated on his experience in the Archives and Special Collections department. Among his activities is working on the Paul Marion Papers Collection which he is undertaking with great enthusiasm.

Staff member Nikki Tatum then introduced Daranee Khoeun who classified Southeast Asian Digital Archives, Hellenic Digital Archives and more. Ms. Khoeun underlined the importance of the commitment to highlighting local history.

Staff member Steph Schweighardt introduced four students employed in Access Services – at the circulation desk and at research support for example. Speaking in turn, Maveen Faisal, Amelia Hanson; Lydia Yang and Mercy Reynoso-Germosen all agreed that their experience helped them develop their communication skills, boosted their self-confidence and heightened their satisfaction in the fact that they were “serving the local community.” All four expressed their gratitude for “the support of their supervisors.”

Monica Collier, a UMass Lowell 2026 English Studies graduate who received the Chancellor’s Medal for her academic achievement, then presented the series of stained-glass windows she has donated to the UMass Lowell O’Leary Library. In addition to being an educator and ESL teacher, she is an accomplished artist. Monica Collier explained that her four magnificent windows “are inspired by covers of books published in the early 1920’s Harlem Renaissance era when Black artists, musicians, writers, entrepreneurs, etc. … contributed so much to American culture.” The windows were on display at the gathering to the delight of the guests attending.

Dean of the University Library Galadriel Chilton gave closing remarks before inviting attendees to “mingle and enjoy the refreshments.” The UMass Lowell library, with its three locations, “has three hearts like an octopus” she said before adding that “it is also “a lighthouse to light the way” bringing clarity and guidance to all.

Exhibits and displays were open to the public on the 3rd and 4th floors of the O’Leary. We especially noticed items now part of the Franco-American Digital Archive Collection such as the first issue of “Le Journal de Lowell” which was published from 1975 to 1995.

The October 20th event demonstrated how the library continues to make a lasting impact on students, faculty, alumni and the broader community.