RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Vanity in the Space Age

Vanity in the Space Age

Stephen O’Connor

Gazing out of the window of the Apollo space craft, Neil Armstrong had an epiphany. “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

I imagine that this cognitive shift stayed with Armstrong. He was not beguiled by the ticker tape parades, by the cheering crowds that greeted him and the other Apollo astronauts at airports around the world, by fawning reporters, by the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or the numerous other medals and trophies that showered the first human to walk on the moon. In spite of his “giant leap for mankind,” he didn’t see himself as a giant, but as a “very, very small” being trekking about a tiny blue marble suspended in a dark void of dimensions incomprehensible to the human mind. Who can conceive of this spaceship Earth orbiting one star out of 400 billion in our Milky Way galaxy, which NASA estimates is but one of two trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

It’s not likely that we will ever have the view of the Earth that so humbled Armstrong and the other astronauts. We humans have always lived with illusions of grandeur, often connected to ideas of fame and immortality. Both the Greek hero Achilles and the Irish hero Cú Chulainn accept an early death provided that the glory of their deeds would live forever. “The Hávamál, The Sayings of the High One,” are Norse verses probably composed orally in the 9^th century that stress the immortality of reputation:

Cattle die, kinsmen die.
The self must also die.
One thing now that never dies,
The fame of a dead man’s deeds.

We are so accustomed, despite Copernicus, to see ourselves as living at the center of the universe, that vanity comes naturally. Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar sought immortality as conquerors. And yet, what are any of them when viewed from Neil Armstrong’s window on the universe? I think of Yeats, writing three years after the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin:

We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

Shakespeare claimed an immortality through his verse. In Sonnet 55, he writes, “Not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.” In Sonnet 18, he promises his beloved that “thy eternal beauty shall not fade.” His words grant immortality, for:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

In more unsentimental, yet still lyrical moments, Shakespeare wrote of the futility of our dreams of immortality. At the conclusion of The Tempest, we have Prospero’s oft-quoted speech:

These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.

Shelley mocks the vain human desire for immortality through fame in the poem “Ozymandias,” in which he speaks of meeting “a traveller from an antique land” who describes to him the tumbled ruins of a monumental stone statue:

“And on the pedestal, these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias never suspected that he was just another weasel fighting in a hole. He might have saved himself the trouble of constructing self-aggrandizing monuments if he had considered the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.”

When Odysseus travels to the Underworld and meets the ghost of Achilles, who had traded life for eternal glory, he tries to comfort him, telling the “breaker of ranks” that at least he is an honored lord among the dead. The shade of Achilles responds, “Let me hear no smooth talk of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils. Better to be a hired hand to a poor man, a dirt-poor man who scrapes to keep alive, than lord it over all the strengthless dead.” Fame is an illusion in this life and worthless in the next.

Human vanity is not new, though it can be argued, and has been, that it is has assumed a more virulent form than ever in the age of the “selfie” and the TikToc celebrity. Yet I recall my grandfather, in his last days, reminding my father to make sure not to forget, before he was “laid out,” to tell the undertaker to put his teeth in. It’s difficult for me to imagine that I would be concerned about dentures as I lay dying, but there you are. It would be his last appearance in public, and he wanted to look his best. A modest vanity, I suppose, compared to the grand vanities that impel so many to live for their obituaries or to leave Ozymandian monuments behind.

The British physicist Brian Cox speaks of what it means to live a finite life in a vast eternal universe or possibly multiverse. He says that there may be no intrinsic meaning other than the meaning that we highly evolved beings give it. Joni Mitchel wrote in her song “Woodstock,” that “we are stardust,” and this is true of the atoms that make up our bodies. Brian Cox believes that we are “the cosmos made conscious,” or as I once heard someone say, “We are the eyes of the universe looking at itself.”

It’s a privilege to be alive to wonder, in both senses of the word, and to find meaning in a finite life in those we love, in Nature, philosophy, art or our conception of the divine. I can no more get to the bottom of it all than my dog could learn to play chess, but perhaps the simplest and most essential directive, in the meantime, comes once again from Shakespeare: “To love that well which thou must leave ‘ere long.”

Prayers, Pies and Prizes

Prayers, Pies and Prizes

By Leo Racicot

I’d be lying if I said our mother looked forward, as did so many of the parents of our Saint Patrick’s School classmates, when the school year rolled around to school community-related activities such as raffles, school fairs, bake sales, paper drives. As a widow, and as someone who was innately shy, she felt not entirely comfortable among the other parents, most especially the mothers of students who had early before I entered the flock in second grade (I spent my first grade year at The Morrill School across the street) formed impenetrable cliques. I don’t think my mother was paranoid about not fitting in; even as a child, I observed a certain, if not snobbery or disdain, a palpable reserve towards her from other mothers. There was, indeed, a stigma attached to a young widow, a widow’s children. I never talked with Diane about how she felt but I, myself, experienced the curiosity, if not the downright scorn, of classmates as being one of the only two kids in the whole school whose father had died. (The other was Karen Waite whose father or mother (I forget which) had died, leaving her half-orphaned. Whispers about the two of us were heard, no matter how hushed, whispers and insults. I remember being so incensed by remarks aimed at me by a group of students one day at recess in the school yard that I found myself countering with, My mother’s been married seven times so I have seven fathers! No one seemed to challenge this and one kid, Danny Mullen, looked at me in an awe usually reserved for astronauts.    So, there was this to be lived with — being fatherless for us, Diane and me — being husband-less for our mother.

School group gatherings were awkward for her, I could plainly tell second only to root canals on her list of “things to be avoided”. As I started out saying, she cringed whenever an invitation from the nuns was sent home with us requesting her participation in this or that fundraising event: a solicitation for a cake for a bake sale, say, or an appeal to volunteer her time for a paper or penny drive. Appeals to craft homemade aprons and potholders for school hall raffles made her an absolute wreck. She’d protest, What are you kids getting me into now??  One “ask” we all three of us wanted to run from was the two or three times a year the nuns asked families to sell chances, raffle tickets for a fair, or Holy Childhood Seals drives, whatever the parish deemed necessary to fatten its coffers. Good sport that she was, my mother sometimes bit the bullet (you couldn’t bite the bullet every time the nuns asked or you wouldn’t have any teeth left in your head) but she was game to once-in-a-while try to lend a helping hand to her two very put-upon children. I’d inherited my mother’s shyness, either that, or it had imprinted itself upon me, so I wasn’t too eager to go knocking on neighbors’ doors for what seemed to me like panhandling. Classmates from nearby streets were knocking on the same doors. It wasn’t uncommon for me, when I’d find the courage to approach neighbors, to be told they’d “already given”.

In spite of all this donation trepidation, lame sales pitches, I did like the end results of the fundraisers. All anxiety melted away once we entered the school halls, the church basements, greeted by the festive cakes, the brilliantly decorated tables, the colorfully-draped ceilings, food and drink goodies so abundant, a child’s eyes, hands and appetites didn’t know where to begin. Usually the centerpiece of these events was The Money Doll. “Money dolls” were an arts and crafts fundraising staple where a doll (often dressed like a bride or a First Communicant girl) had paper currency — usually ones, fives, and tens — folded, fanned, pinned, origami-style all over its dress or attached as a cascading skirt. These were quite the popular money-maker themselves; everyone bought a ticket hoping to win the jackpot. There could be only one winner though but everyone left with something before going home, if only a full stomach, a satisfied sweet tooth. The frenzied scramble to become overnight salespeople was left far behind. Until the next time…

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PTA mothers in the 1960s

Our mother in the 1960s

Bake sale table

Holy childhood seals

Money doll

Seen & Heard: Vol. 42

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

Author Interview: Min Jin Lee on CSpan’s America’s Book Club hosted by David Rubenstein. Lee is a Korean immigrant who came to the United States with her family at age 7. She did well academically, graduated from law school, and practiced corporate law for two years before concluding the law wasn’t for her. With the support of her spouse, she quit and became a fulltime writer. It took a while but her novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was a success and her second book, Pachinko (2017) was a bestseller with the New York Times naming it one of the 100 best books of the century. Lee’s newest book, American Hagwon, was just released. I enjoy these interviews which last about an hour. They explore the writer’s life story and writing process. Although I read nonfiction almost exclusively, I find the fiction writers to be more interesting interviewees which suggests I perhaps should read more fiction. 

Newspaper article: “China broadens its military reach with an Air Force installation in Laos” by Chris Buckley, New York Times, October 11, 2026. Anytime I read something that touches on geopolitics in Southeast Asia, I read it carefully mostly because so many of our neighbors come from there and still have family ties in many cases. Laos is a landlocked country with Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, Thailand to the west, and China to the north. Thus far, there are eight training-style aircraft operating out of this base, although the runway that was constructed there could accommodate the largest and most sophisticated aircraft used by the Chinese. With the US shrinking its military presence in the Far East as well as the commitment to allies in the region, it seems the Chinese are rushing in to seize the initiative. 

Newspaper article: “How ‘Da Bears’ immortalized Ditka” by Mike Peed, New York Times, October 13, 2026. The death of former Chicago Bears tight end Mike Ditka earlier this month prompted this article which is about a Saturday Night Live sketch that debuted in 1991 shortly after Ditka was fired as the team’s coach. The sketch features four guys in Bears shirts sitting at a table in a bar or restaurant, each wear Bears baseball caps, aviator sunglasses, and walrus mustaches, looking much like Ditka at the time. The four lament the firing but express their optimism for the Bears in thick Chicago accents. I only ever watched SNL regularly in the late 1970s so I missed the Bears sketch when it originated but it popped up in my YouTube feed not long ago and I found it hilarious, a funny commentary on the state of American football fandom. 

Book Review: The Perilous Fight, by Colin Kaepernick (2026). When he was an infant, Colin Kaepernick, who is Black, was adopted and raised by a white family in California. He was a multisport athlete in high school and was drafted by the Chicago Cubs baseball team. But he opted to attend the University of Nevada and play football where he excelled. He was drafted by the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers in the second round in 2011. The following year when the 49ers starting quarterback was injured, Kaepernick stepped up and led the team to the Super Bowl where they lost to the Baltimore Ravens. The following year, the team, led by Kaepernick, made it to the NFL championship game. Through all of this, he became increasingly aware of his Blackness in a white-dominated country. He consumed Black literature and political writing. In 2016, a series of police killings of young Black men haunted Kaepernick. He concluded that he would show his displeasure with how America allowed the police to treat young Black men, he would refrain from standing during the National Anthem at the start of each game. The first few games escaped the attention of most, but then the story burst on the national scene. He was injured and unable to play but the team cut him and no other team would sign him despite desperately needing an upgrade at quarterback. He continued to practice and stay in game shape. Eventually, coaches would reach out about playing for them but the owners always shot down the idea. Kaepernick sued the NFL which settled the case but insisted on a non-disclosure agreement. He never returned to the NFL but Kaepernick runs a nonprofit, co-produced a TV mini-series and has now published this memoir.

L’Etoile – A Star on Prince Street, Chapter 10

Two years ago, Louise Peloquin began sharing excerpts from L’Etoile, a French-language newspaper published in Lowell from 1886 to 1957. At my urging, she has agreed to compile some of her previous posts with added contextual information into a book manuscript to be called, L’Etoile: A Star on Prince Street. Starting this week, Louise will present draft chapters from the book in serial form here on the blog. Today, we have another installment.

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L’Etoile – A Star on Prince Street, Chapter 10

Chapter 10 – Use Your Tongue!

By Louise Peloquin

L’Etoile regularly included dispatches and excerpts from European press agencies and never derogatorily compared the language usage on both sides of the Atlantic. Establishing a hierarchy of French authenticity according to its variations of accent or choice of terminology was considered both absurd and dangerous. L’Etoile acknowledged the validity and value of its readers’ tongue and systematically demonstrated how maintaining one’s linguistic heritage was an asset rather than a liability for the French-Canadian immigrant. L’Etoile always called for ethnic pride.

Many young Lowellians courageously served in World War I and, among them, many of French-Canadian descent. Bilingualism was an asset on the battle fields of the Somme, L’Aisne and other hot spots. The following excerpt reports on French teaching to the military.

LEtoile, July 9, 1917

“L’enseignement du français aux militaires

Le bureau de l’instruction publique du Massachusetts va faire donner des cours de langue française aux soldats américains de cet Etat qui iront en France. Ce fait prouve une fois de plus que la connaissance du français ne peut nuire à personne, au contraire; en sorte que les Franco-Américains, sollicités parfois d’abandonner leur langue maternelle parce que l’anglais est officiel en ce pays, auraient bien tort d’écouter ces gens qui, la plupart du temps, ayant perdu leur propre langue, font preuve du zèle des renégats pour engager les autres à suivre leur mauvais exemple.

Savoir deux langues, a dit un pédagogue éminent, c’est être deux fois homme. Il y a certainement une supériorité pour quiconque possède l’anglais et le français comme les conscrits franco-américains s’en apercevront une fois rendus en France. Ils trouveront alors fort commode, et même avantageux, de savoir parler le français.

L’heure est donc venue de nous féliciter d’avoir eu l’intelligence et le bon sens, en dépit des chauvins et des francophones à courte vue, par des sacrifices considérables, de conserver ce bel héritage, le doux parler qui nous vient du pays de nos ancêtres que nous sommes appelés aujourd’hui à défendre, en commun avec les autres races qui habitent les Etats-Unis, contre la barbarie teutonne.

Nous continuerons donc à faire apprendre le français à nos enfants, sans préjudice pour l’anglais qui est la langue officielle de cette république, celle qui sert de truchement à toutes les classes de citoyens.

Pour terminer, voici quelques renseignements sur les cours de français pour les militaires:

Le projet a reçu l’approbation du général Sweetser, commandant en chef des troupes de la Garde Nationale de notre Etat. Les instructeurs seront tous des citoyens américains de langue française n’ayant pas l’âge militaire et, par conséquent n’étant pas atteints par la loi de conscription. Les cours ont été préparés par les officiers français qui dirigent actuellement l’école d’entraînement d’officiers de L’Université Harvard. Ces cours comprendront la conversation familière et l’enseignement des termes et expressions militaires. On apprendra aux officiers et aux soldats américains ce que sont les monnaies et les mesures françaises, les formations de l’armée française, les termes géographiques français.

L’Etat paiera l’instruction ainsi donnée aux troupes.

Les troupes de l’armée régulière pourront suivre cet enseignement tout comme la Garde Nationale. On portera une attention toute particulière à la prononciation. Chaque classe comprendra environ 20 élèves.

Tous les officiers paraissent enthousiasmés du projet du bureau de l’Instruction Publique. Les instructeurs doivent être nommés prochainement. On assure que plusieurs Américains d’origine française vont figurer au nombre de ces instructeurs.

La faveur dont jouit actuellement la langue française dans le Massachusetts s’est étendue jusqu’à l’Etat de New York. En effet, les dépêches nous apprennent que les nombreux marchands de langue française de Plattsburg , où se trouve le vaste camp d’entraînement d’officiers, ont pris la résolution de ne parler que le français aux militaires qui fréquenteront leurs établissements, pour leur apprendre à converser dans cette langue.

On sait que la population de Plattsburg est, pour les deux tiers, composée de personnes dont les pères sont venus du Canada.

Le chef de police Sénécal a donné l’ordre à tous ses agents franco-américains de répondre en français à toute question qui leur sera posée par les hommes en uniforme.

Retour des choses d’ici-bas. Après nous avoir vilipendés, insultés, honnis, parce que nous ne voulions pas perdre ce trésor inappréciable, la connaissance de la plus belle langue au monde, nous la voyons aujourd’hui enseignée par nécessité dans les camps militaires des Etats-Unis. Quelle leçon pour les fanatiques d’Ontario, qui veulent fermer les écoles françaises! Puissent-ils ouvrir enfin les yeux à la lumière!

Dans tous les cas, il est d’ores et déjà certain que cette grande guerre aura eu un résultat inattendu aux Etats-Unis, en familiarisant des centaines de milliers d’officiers et de soldats américains avec la langue française. Nous sommes convaincus qu’à leur retour de France – ceux qui ne se seront pas tombés au champ d’honneur, bien entendu – fiers de pouvoir s’exprimer en français, nous honoreront de leur estime, pour avoir conservé, en dépit de tout, cette belle langue qu’ils auront appris à aimer, et ils s’apercevront alors  que la légende du patois canadien-français n’était qu’un mythe.

C’est bien le cas de dire: A quelque chose malheur est bon.”

“Teaching French to the Military

     The Massachusetts Public Education Bureau will have French courses given to American soldiers of the state bound for France. This fact proves once again that the knowledge of French cannot harm anyone, on the contrary. Franco-Americans, urged at times to abandon their mother tongue because English is the official language in this country, would be very mistaken to listen to these people who, most of the time, having lost their own language, demonstrate the renegade’s zeal to engage others to follow their bad example.

Knowing two languages, said an eminent pedagogue, is being twice the human being. There is certainly a superiority in whoever masters English and French, as the Franco-American conscripts will realize once they are in France. They will find it very practical and even advantageous to know how to speak French.

If Mr. Harold Gosselin, a young compatriot from New Hampshire, was named secretary of General Pershing’s staff in France, it is precisely because he knows both languages well. It is a great honor, owed in large part to his knowledge of French.

The time has therefore come to congratulate ourselves for having the intelligence and the common sense, despite the chauvinists and the short-sighted francophobes, to conserve this beautiful heritage, this sweet language which comes to us from our ancestors’ country, the land we are called today to defend, along with other Americans, against Teutonic barbarity.

We shall thus continue to have our children learn French, without prejudice to English, which is the official language of this republic.

To conclude, here is information on the French courses for the military:

The project received approval from General Sweetser, commander in chief of the National Guard troops of our state. These instructors will all be French-language American citizens who are not of military age and therefore are not concerned by the enlistment. The courses were prepared by the French officials who presently manage the Harvard University officer training school. These courses will include daily conversation and teaching military terms and expressions. The American officers and soldiers will be taught about French currency and measurements, French army formations, French geographical terms.

The Federal Government will pay for the instruction given to the troops.

     The regular army troops will be able to follow this teaching exactly like the National Guard. Special attention will be given to pronunciation. Each class will be made up of 20 students.

All of the officers seem to be enthusiastic about the Public Education Bureau project. The instructors will soon be named. It is assured that many French-origin Americans will be among them.

The favor which the French language presently enjoys in Massachusetts has spread all the way to the state of New York. Indeed, dispatches inform us that the many French-language merchants of Plattsburg, where the vast officer training camp is located, have resolved to speak only French to the members of the military who patronize their establishments in order to teach them to converse in this language.

We know that two thirds of Plattsburg’s population is made up of people whose fathers came from Canada.

Police Chief Sénécal ordered all Franco-American agents to respond in French to all questions posed by the men in uniform.

This great war will have an unexpected result in the United States by familiarising hundreds of thousands of American officers and soldiers with the French language. We are convinced that upon their return from France – those who will not have fallen on the field of honor, of course – proud of having been able to express themselves in French, will honor us with their esteem for having preserved the beautiful language which they will have learned to love, and they will then realize that the legend of a French-Canadian ‘patois’ was only a myth.

It is indeed the case to say – out of bad comes good; every cloud has a silver lining.”

The following editorial brings up the skewed diehard debate about linguistic “purity.”

L’Etoile, July 14, 1917

“Le dialecte canadien

Beaucoup de gens ont été induits en erreur par le correspondant à Washington du Courier-Citizen, qui annonça que M. François-Xavier Delisle, secrétaire particulier du congressman Rogers de Lowell, venait d’entrer dans l’état-major du général Pershing en France comme interprète, avec le grade de lieutenant ‘vu sa connaissance du pur parler français et du DIALECTE canadien.’

Delisle parle et écrit le français, sans ajouter inutilement son ‘dialecte canadien,’ qui était de nature à faire croire que le dialecte parlé dans les centres franco-américains et par les habitants de la province de Québec diffère essentiellement du véritable français.

La légende du patois canadien est difficile à déraciner, et c’est pourquoi nous sommes un peu chatouilleux sous ce rapport.

Mais le fait est que nous parlons un dialecte français au sens strict du mot, tout comme les Bretons parlent le dialecte breton, les habitants des autres provinces de France s’expriment dans leur dialecte, quand naturellement ils parlent français. D’après les dictionnaires, un dialecte est une variété régionale d’une langue. Il y a le dialecte parisien, autrement dit le ‘Parisian French’ si cher aux Américains qui ont cru l’apprendre dans les high schools.

Webster, de son côté, dit qu’un dialecte est une façon de parler particulière à une région, comme le dialecte anglais de Yorkshire. Kittredge ajoute qu’un dialecte n’est pas ‘une langue littéraire corrompue.’

Les habitants des Etats-Unis ont leur dialecte, celui de Boston qui diffère quelque peu de celui de New York, de Chicago, de la Nouvelle Orléans, de San Francisco. Mais personne n’osera prétendre que la langue parlée généralement aux Etats-Unis n’est pas l’anglais. Pourquoi alors les Canadiens de Québec et les Franco-Américains ne parleraient pas le français?

1. 1. Delisle ne sait pas une autre langue française que celle que ses compatriotes de Lowell et de la Nouvelle Angleterre parlent dans leurs foyers. Son ‘pur français’ est celui-là, et nous sommes convaincus qu’il saura se faire mieux comprendre des Français de France que les élèves des high schools qui s’imaginent avoir appris le ‘Parisian French.’ “

“The Canadian Dialect

      Many people are lead into error by the Courrier-Citizen’s Washington correspondent who announced that Mr. François-Xavier Delisle, private secretary of Lowell Congressman Rogers, had just joined General Pershing’s staff as interpreter with the rank of lieutenant because of his knowledge of pure French and of the Canadian DIALECT.

The term ‘dialect’ mystified many people.

It is obvious that Mr. Delisle is simply speaking of the French which he learned with his family and on the benches of the Collège Saint Joseph with his other classmates. This knowledge of French won him the post of interpreter and we congratulate him. The Courrier-Citizen should have simply mentioned the fact that Mr. Delisle speaks and writes French without uselessly adding his ‘Canadian dialect’ which leads to believe that the dialect spoken in Franco-American communities and in the province of Québec essentially differs from real French.

The legend of the Canadian patois is difficult to uproot, which explains why we are a bit touchy about the topic.

But the fact is that we speak a French dialect in the strict meaning of the word, much like the inhabitants of Brittany speak the Breton dialect and the inhabitants of other French provinces express themselves in their own dialect. Naturally, they all speak French. According to the dictionaries, a dialect is a regional variety of a national language. There is the Parisian dialect, otherwise known as ‘Parisian French’ which is so dear to Americans who believe to have learned it in high school.

Webster says that a dialect is a way of speaking which is particular to a region, like the English dialect in Yorkshire. Kittredge adds that a dialect is not a ‘corrupt literary language.’

The inhabitants of the United States have their dialect, that of Boston differs slightly from that of New York, of Chicago, of New Orleans, of San Francisco. But no one would claim that the language generally spoken in the United States is not English. Why then would the Canadians of Québec and the Franco-Americans not speak French?

Mr. Delisle does not know any language other than that which his compatriots in Lowell and in New England speak in their homes. That is his ‘pure French’ and we are convinced that he will be able to make himself better understood by the French people in France than the high school students who imagined they learned ‘Parisian French.’ “

Ceaselessly, indefatigably, unabashedly,  L’Etoile insisted on maintaining pride.

L’Etoile, April 4, 1925 editorial excerpts

“Plus de Fierté, de Grâce!

L’on veut se donner des apparences d’Américain et l’on croit, pour cela, qu’il faille trahir les siens et renier tout son passé. Croit-on, ma foi, qu’on prendra pareil personnage au sérieux? L’on se trompe bien, car le véritable Américain, qui a le culte du passé, respecte surtout celui qui sait se tenir debout, sans gêne….

Heureusement que la fierté n’est pas encore morte chez les Franco-Américains. Elle est plutôt assoupie et il ne suffirait, pourtant, qu’un souffle vivifiant pour  la faire relever, l’exalter et lui faire accomplir de grandes choses.”

“More pride, please!

One wants to give oneself the appearance of being American and one believes that, in order to do so, it is necessary to betray one’s own and to deny one’s past. Does one honestly think that such an individual will be taken seriously? One would be greatly mistaken because the real American is the one who honors ancestral heritage, who stands tall, unashamed….

Fortunately, pride is not yet dead among Franco-Americans. Instead, it is somnolent. However, it would only take an energizing nudge to raise it up, exalt it and allow it to accomplish great things.”