RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

L’Etoile – A Star on Prince Street: Chapter 2

Two years ago, Louise Peloquin began sharing excerpts from L’Etoile, a French-language newspaper published in Lowell from 1881 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 2 – He Steered the Course

By Louise Peloquin

      Grasping L’Etoile’s local and regional impact requires overviewing its proprietor-manager’s profile. He was a direct descendent of Pierre Biron who, in the 17th century, left his town of Sainte Hermine in Vendée in the west of France, in order to work for the Jesuits in Québec. The newspaperman’s name was Louis-Alphonse Biron.

On July 28, 1861, Louis-A. Biron was born into an old seigniorial family of farmers dating back to the very origin of colonial times when the province of Québec was called La Nouvelle-France. His parents, Etienne Biron and Marie-Louise Laroche, lived in Saint-Louis de Lotbinière, a village on the south bank of the Saint Lawrence river. When young Marie-Louise passed away, her mother stepped in to raise Louis-A. and his nine siblings. During Louis-A.’s early adolescence, Etienne died as well.

The Lotbinière parish pastor recognized Louis-A.’s potential and decided to instruct him until the age of thirteen. The young man went on to study at the Nicolet seminary for seven years. He later asserted that his academic training had instilled in him the perseverance and patience to face life’s challenges.

Louis-A.’s cousins, poets Pamphile Lemay and Apollinaire Gingras, were making a living by the pen in Québec. Their success prompted the young man to choose a career in journalism. He debuted in Québec city with various reporting jobs as well as editing in publishing houses. Despite his strong ties to the homeland, the growing opportunities south of the Canadian border and a taste for adventure drew him to New England where he felt driven to serve the thousands of French-Canadian immigrants who had flocked to the mill towns in search of jobs and better living conditions for their large families.

His sister Lumina was working as a spinner in a Manchester New Hampshire cotton mill. Her enthusiastic correspondence prompted her young brother to join her in “les Etats” (the States). Consequently, he arrived in Manchester in 1890, found employment at the French daily L’Avenir National (The National Future) and became founder Joseph-Edouard Bernier’s right-hand man.

Louis-A. moved to Lowell to work at Maxime Lépine’s newspaper, L’Etoile. Nashua New Hampshire’s French-Canadian population was rapidly growing and wanted to benefit from its own French newspaper. To meet this demand, Louis-A. founded L’Impartial in 1898 (which continued until 1964). In 1917, he handed over its management to nephew Armand Biron.

In 1910, Louis-A. Biron married Marie-Annette Thibaudeau, a young teacher who had graduated from Québec city’s “Ecole Normale des Ursulines” (teacher-training higher education institution). The couple had three children, Louis, Jeanne (Mrs. Leon Lavallee) and Marthe (Mrs. Laval U. Peloquin).

Perpetuating French-language journalism in New England was not only Biron’s vocation but also a passion which he fervently transmitted to others. The Prince Street shop welcomed countless interns eager to learn the tricks of the printing trade. Louis-A. sent out his troops all over New England to serve French-language publications.

Biron always referred to himself as “a humble man among the humble,” and shunned public recognition. When the French government named him “Officier des Palmes Académiques” to recognize his cultural accomplishments, he respectfully declined the prestigious international distinction. This brings to mind the words of Antonine Maillet, first Acadian woman to win France’s most coveted literary award, the Prix Goncourt (equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize), in 1979 for her novel Pélagie la Charrette about Acadia’s exiled French population, a story made famous by H. W. Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline.  “Each and every one of us has a single word with our lives” she said, “and this word must be that of our people.”  For Louis-A. Biron, the only reward was his mission – serving his community.

The man known as “the tall old oak of the Franco-American press” worked ceaselessly until a severe case of pneumonia took his life on February 23, 1947 at the age of 86.

Renown international journalist who debuted her journalism at L’Etoile, Yvonne Lemaître (her biography in chapter 6) wrote this obituary for the Travailleur.

[In French]

“Un Vieux Chêne S’Abat

Louis A. Biron père, de Lowell, depuis un demi-siècle figure marquante du journalisme franco-américain, s’éteint après une carrière exemplaire.

par Yvonne Lemaître

     Louis-A. Biron père, éditeur-propriétaire de L’Etoile de Lowell depuis 1910, doyen de la presse franco-américaine et l’une des figures les plus marquantes du groupe d’origine française en Nouvelle-Angleterre, s’est éteint le 23 février à l’hôpital St-Joseph à Lowell, terrassé par une pneumonie qui l’emporta en dix jours. Le 13 février, M. Biron avait encore paru à son bureau d’administration à L’Etoile, tel qu’il le faisait tous les jours. Quoiqu’en pleine possession de toutes ses facultés, il était octogénaire. Cette fidélité, qui jamais ne se démentit un jour en une carrière si longue, tellement remplie d’un labeur intensif, était bien tout l’homme. Fidélité, intelligence, force, bonté, droiture – telles étaient les qualités que reconnaissaient au défunt tous ceux qui l’ont connu….

     Et quelle plus belle épitaphe? Il serait à souhaiter que les deux filles du défunt, Jeanne-Biron-Lavallee et Marthe Biron, toutes deux rédactrices à L’Etoile et qui manient la plume avec aisance et éclat, s’appliquent à écrire une biographie de leur père. Une telle vie est un exemple, une inspiration; son souvenir devrait être dûment assuré au grand livre de l‘histoire franco-américaine. »

[English translation]

“An Old Oak Tree Falls

Louis-A. Biron senior, of Lowell, prominent figure of Franco-American journalism for a half century, passes away after an exemplary career.

By Yvonne Lemaître

     Louis-A. Biron senior, editor-proprietor of L’Etoile of Lowell since 1910, elder of the Franco-American press and one of the most prominent figures of the French-origin group in New England, passed away on February 23, at St-Joseph’s Hospital in Lowell, struck down by a case of pneumonia which took him in ten days. On February 13, Mr. Biron had, once again, attended L’Etoile’s board administration meeting as he had done every day. Although in full possession of his faculties, he was an octogenarian. This loyalty, which never failed a single day in such a long career so full of attentive labor, indeed fully exemplified the man he was. Loyalty, intelligence, strength, goodness, righteousness – these were the qualities recognized by everyone who knew him….

     And what more beautiful epitaph? It would be desirable that the deceased two daughters, Jeanne Biron-Lavallee and Marthe Biron, both editors at L’Etoile who handle the pen with ease and brilliance, apply themselves to write a biography of their father. Such a life is an example, an inspiration; his memory should be duly guaranteed in the great book of Franco-American history.”

      With thirty-seven years at the head of L’Etoile, Louis-A. Biron was the longest-lasting editor and proprietor of a French-language newspaper in New England. The Franco-American community mourned the loss of one its most valiant champions and defenders. Antoine Clément, L’Etoile’s last editorialist, paid homage to his director by declaring that the simple fact of maintaining the newspaper was Monsieur Biron’s priceless contribution to the cultural advancement of Lowell’s Franco-American population. Clément added that Biron’s often-repeated recommendation was to put out a local paper tailored to readers’ specific needs and expectations.

Louis-A. Biron lived on through the “Star” he and his team printed out of 24-26 Prince Street, Lowell. He advised his attorney and World War II veteran son and his two daughters to continue the mission as long as possible despite financial challenges. Thus, Louis, Jeanne and Marthe carried on for ten more years. On August 17, 1957, L’Etoile died.

Louis-A. Biron is buried in St. Joseph Cemetery in Chelmsford.

A penetrating personal account of the brutalities of 20th century Chinese communism by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang is a family history and autobiography of three generations of a Chinese family, spanning most of the 20^th century in China. Published in 1991, the 650-page tome hadn’t come to my attention until recently. I delved in and found it fascinating. Released just after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the massacre of student protesters in Tiananmen Square, Wild Swans tells the story of Chang’s grandmother, mother and herself against the backdrop of Chinese history.

Chang’s grandmother was a concubine, taken at the age of 15 as one of the several “wives” of a powerful warlord in Manchuria. She later married a highly respected doctor,  and worked at keeping the family together during the war to drive the Japanese out of Manchuria and later under the hardships inflicted by Mao Zedong. The anti-Japanese Chinese were split. The Kuomintang, nationalists led by Chiang Kai Shek, were recognized as the new government of China by both the Soviet Union and the United States. Their power base was largely in the cities. The Communist stronghold was mostly in the countryside. After the Japanese were ousted, the Communists expanded and solidified their control and set about systematically persecuting the Kuomintang as counter-revolutionaries.

Author Chang’s mother was disgusted by the Kuomintang elite’s displays of wealth when others couldn’t feed their families. She became a firm believer in Mao’s communist philosophy and married Chang’s father, a poet and intellectual who became a top official in the Communist Party.

Initially the Communists redistributed land from affluent Kuomintang to peasants and provided grain and coal to the most destitute. But, as Mao became the iron-fisted patriarch, the radicalized Party set the terms not just for the politics of the country but for personal lives as well. Chang’s attachment to her mother and the rest of her family was seen as bourgeois weakness. Chang’s father was an absolutist, putting party over family and seeing suffering as the road to becoming a better communist.

Using scores of tape recordings made by her mother, Chang writes in great detail of the Communists’ betrayal of their early promises: the brutality with which they extracted party loyalty from all residents, the suffocating atmosphere of repression, deprivation of rights of speech, the barbarity unleashed by manipulating people’s hatreds, the crushing of culture, the smothering of education, and the end of individual expression in China.

The economy failed as well. Mao’s so-called “Great Leap Forward,” an attempt to move from an agrarian to an industrial society, collectivized farms and nationalized heavy industries (like steel). The program crushed food production and commerce, generating more profound poverty and famine. (At least 30 million died from starvation alone. More than that would die later from the purges of the Cultural Revolution.) Quality of health care and other benefits depended solely on status within the Communist Party.

As a student, Chang initially followed in her parents’ footsteps, but she found herself increasingly turned off by what had become the personality cult of Mao, even after Mao had reversed his brutalist economic policies. More than anything, she wanted to focus on her studies, to learn English, to read literature (some of which she subversively acquired through a black market in books.) Intellectuals were denounced as “capitalist-roaders” and sent to the country for reeducation as peasants, humiliated, subjected to beatings and worse.

Mao called on his Red Guards to smash up “old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits.” The sixties were a reign of terror, with Mao turning against even the existing Communist hierarchy. His goal was for everyone to be indoctrinated with loyalty to him alone rather than the Party. Anyone (including the author’s father) who spoke out against what was happening would be imprisoned, tortured or killed. Chang’s father was in and out of brutal detention, sinking into psychosis for a time.  Her mother, separately, was in and out of detention between 1967 and 1969. Both were kept in detention camps from ’69 through ’72.

Chang is surprisingly devoid of self-pity despite having grown up with absentee parents. As she approached her 16^th birthday (in 1968), she started writing poetry. One of her brothers engaged in black market activities; another brother joined a street gang. As she puts it, over these horrific years, she said, her “indoctrination was collapsing.”

She began to see the perpetual class conflict and the misery to which the Chinese people had been subjected in a more realistic light. She goes into fascinating detail about the influence Madame Mao wielded in exacerbating the repression, especially of women, and the relentlessness of Chairman Mao in destroying centuries of Chinese culture.

After Mao’s death in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping’s “rehabilitation,” the author competed successfully for university acceptance and ultimately for the opportunity to study in the West. Her mother’s visit to her in Britain in 1988 provided the chance to learn the details of the family’s history that make this book so noteworthy

Some readers may find there are too many details bogging down the narrative. I found they just make the intensity of the privation described and the daily struggles for survival that much more real. It also makes China’s emergence today as a world-leading economic power all the more remarkable and the tenacious pattern of government repression more understandable. Wild Swans has been translated into dozens of languages, but it should come as no surprise that it is banned in mainland China.

Lowell Politics: August 23, 2026

The Lowell City Council last met on Tuesday, August 11, 2026. I was away that week, so I was unable to write about that meeting on the following Sunday. However, I have since watched a recording of the meeting on YouTube and will write about it here.

The council covered many topics with no single issue dominating the meeting. Consequently, here are some comments on a range of things covered that night:

Separate motions on the structure of council subcommittees, one by Councilor Belinda Juran and the other by Councilor Dan Rourke, were discussed together. A big challenge is scheduling and holding subcommittee meetings. Each subcommittee meeting requires someone from the City Clerk’s office to be present to take minutes and do all the other things the clerk’s office is responsible for. Also, subcommittee meetings typically require the presence of other city employees so their schedules and availability must be considered.

I also believe everyone values recording the meeting on video so residents who can’t attend the meeting can see what’s going on. Since two rooms at city hall – the city council chamber and the mayor’s reception room – are outfitted with cameras and recording capabilities, meetings must be held in one of them. However, subcommittees compete with the Planning Board, the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Conservation Commission, the License Commission and other boards and commissions whose meetings are recorded.

Councilor Rourke identified the number of subcommittees as an obstacle. According to the city’s website, here are the current council subcommittees:

1. Arts & Culture/Special Events
2. Auditor & Clerk Oversight & Personnel
3. Cannabis Control
4. Economic Development
5. Environment & Flood Issues
6. Finance
7. Frontrunner City Program
8. Housing
9. Municipal Facilities
10. Neighborhoods
11. Non-profit Organizations
12. Parks & Recreation
13. Public Safety
14. Rules & Election Law
15. Senior Citizen
16. Substance Abuse
17. Technology & Utilities
18. Transportation
19. Veterans
20. Youth Services
21. Zoning

That’s 21 subcommittees, each with a chair and two members.

Councilor Rourke suggested the existing 21 could be consolidated into six subcommittees and that membership could be increased to five councilors (making the quorum needed to hold a meeting just three). He further suggested that if the council were to make its summertime two-meetings-per-month permanent, the off weeks could be used for subcommittee meetings.

Councilor Juran’s motion was directed to the Rules Subcommittee while Rourke’s was a suggestion to the entire council, so it’s unclear when these will return to a regular council meeting. Still, it will be interesting to hear further discussion of the pros and cons of this concept.

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At the July 28, 2026, meeting the city council rejected City Manager Tom Golden’s request to transfer money to the city’s Health and Human Services Department so it can continue to pay its lease at 107 Merrimack Street. That night, the vote to make the transfer was seven in favor and four against so at first, everyone assumed it had passed. But someone immediately spoke up and said the transfer required a two-third majority to pass. That would have been eight votes. It only received seven, so the ruling was the transfer failed.

At this meeting, Councilor Sean McDonough, one of the four councilors to oppose the transfer back on July 28, had a motion to reconsider that vote. (A motion to reconsider can only be made by someone who was on the prevailing side of the original vote which McDonough was since he voted against the transfer.)

The discussion on the motion to reconsider unearthed multiple points of confusion. First, it seems that the original vote did not need a super majority to prevail but just a simple majority. With seven votes, it did achieve a simple majority so it should have been deemed to have passed that evening. When asked about the consequences of that, the City Solicitor advised that even though the original ruling on the need for a super majority was incorrect, no councilor challenged it that evening, so there was no recourse to now correct the ruling.

Next, both the city manager and the city solicitor suggested that the “cleanest way” to revisit this was for the city manager to bring the same vote back to the council at its next meeting. That prompted questions about the finality of council votes. If councilors vote against something, can it just be brought back repeatedly until a different result is achieved? That doesn’t seem quite right but wasn’t acknowledged as an impediment. (Perhaps the erroneous ruling on the first try distinguishes this issue.)

Then, the city manager explained that the contemplated move of the HHS department from 107 Merrimack Street to the city-owned building at 40 Market Street required negotiations with the union employees affected by the move since it would constitute a change in working conditions. I believe those negotiations have been scheduled but not held as of the August 11th meeting.

Finally, Councilor McDonough asked, if the same vote was coming back to the council anyway, was there a need to act on his motion to reconsider the original vote, or would it even be advisable to vote on the motion to reconsider. It seemed with no other way to dispose of the motion, a roll call was taken, and 10 councilors supported the motion to reconsider while none opposed it (Council Kim Scott was not at the meeting). I assume this means some of the councilors who opposed the transfer are now willing to support it, but one never knows until the next vote is taken.

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Councilors were officially notified at this meeting that the Cambodia Town neighborhood of Lowell has been designated a Transformative Development Initiative (TDI) district by MassDevelopment. This is a program intended to help targeted commercial districts in Gateway Cities in Massachusetts.

The designation provides several types of support over its three-year existence. First, it funds a “TDI Fellow” which is a fulltime employee with economic development training who is assigned to the community to help coordinate between local government, small business owners, property owners, and nonprofits. Second, the TDI designation makes technical and planning assistance from the state available. Third, TDI provides funding and grants for storefront improvement, placemaking projects, and some financing.

The TDI program is highly competitive which makes it extra impressive that the city landed this one for Cambodia Town since Lowell was the beneficiary of a TDI designation for the Acre back in 2022. I won’t get into the details of all the benefits that brought except to confirm that it did bring many benefits to the Acre neighborhood, benefits that will hopefully be duplicated in Cambodia Town (which for those unfamiliar with the place, includes the Middlesex and Branch Street stretches near Clemente Park and Pailin Plaza and, I believe, Cupples Square.)

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The council also received a report looking back on the employee layoffs that occurred in June. In all, 23 city employees lost their jobs which the administration calculates saved $1.9 million in the current fiscal year.

The report goes into considerable detail about the process that was followed, the timeline, and the factors considered in making the decisions. It also explains how most of the city budget comes from fixed costs that cannot be cut. This puts greater pressure on non-discretionary items such as salaries.

As for lessons learned, the report identified three. (Since I don’t fully understand exactly what two of them mean, I’ll include all three verbatim from the report):

• More frequent mid-year budget updates to departments to reduce the scale of year-end adjustments.
• Enhanced communication with unions and department leaders regarding fiscal conditions and potential workforce impacts.
• Additional cross-departmental workforce planning to minimize reductions in force.

Although I didn’t see it in the report, City Manager Golden explained that the abrupt notification of the effected employees was driven by the timing of the presentation of the budget to councilors. Someone realized at the last minute that since the proposed budget would omit the names of the employees who were being laid off, once the budget document became public, the absence of those employee names from the document would indicate that they were to lose their jobs. Since employees finding that out from the media or from seeing something online would be terrible, the administration speedily notified the employees in person on an accelerated timeline, hence the hurried nature of the notifications.

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Another interesting report dealt with the procedure for making a claim for damage caused by a pothole or a plow. The report provides considerable detail on how to make a claim and what type of supporting documentation would help resolve the claim quickly.

Importantly, it states that if the damage occurred on a state-owned road, the claim must be presented to the state and not to the city. (Although the state is only liable for personal injuries, not property damage, so it would have to have been a very big pothole.)

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A couple of other council meeting items to briefly note:

In a discussion on the state of upkeep of the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, City Manager Golden mentioned that a challenge to finding a new use (and owner) of the property is that it’s “underwater.” In real estate, that usually means the property owner owes more money to its lender than the property is now worth. In this case, I think it meant the property is worth less now than when the University of Massachusetts Building Authority bought it. To confirm that, I looked at the numbers. In 2009, UMBA paid $14.8 million to the prior owner, LHG LLC. According to the city assessor’s website, the ICC is now assessed for $10.1 million (which is $4.7 million less than the state paid for the property 17 years ago). Golden added that the value deficit is a substantial obstacle to the redevelopment of the property.

Another issue was identified during a discussion of the recent Puerto Rican Festival which turned out to be less than the organizers had hoped due, in part, to communication problems with the city. I couldn’t follow all the details, but it seemed like the organizers had used the city’s online reservation website to reserve the dates, thought they had everything confirmed, and proceeded accordingly. However, there was an unpaid bill for police services at a prior festival, so the city did not deem the event reservation to be finalized because of that unpaid bill. But because of turnover among the organizers, the current group was unaware of the unpaid bill and was relying on the confirmed reservation from the website, hence the confusion. It seems like the city’s reservation system should flag past due bills to avoid a replay of this in the future.

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This week in my Seen & Heard column, I reviewed a big new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts called “American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell”; I commented on a blog post on “Why the Backlash Against Data Centers is So Potent”; noted a NYT article on unacknowledged brain injuries sustained by crewmembers of Coast Guard life boats; reviewed a book on The Enlightenment (which I read because I feel our current national trajectory is dragging us back to the Middle Ages in many ways); and analyzed the consequences of adopting Daylight Savings Time during the entire year.

I’ll be leading several Lowell history tours in the coming weeks for anyone who is interested:

Saturday, September 12, 2026, at 10am – Walking tour of the Tyler Park Historic District. The tour is free with no registration required. Just meet at the park. This tour is part of the Friends of Tyler Park “Autumn Market.” (For GPS purposes, Tyler Park’s address is 748 Westford Street.)

Saturday, September 26 & Sunday, September 27, 2026, both at 10am – Walking tour of Lowell Cemetery. The tour takes 90 minutes and begins at the Lawrence Street entrance to the cemetery. It is free and requires no registration. The same tour is offered on both days.

Saturday, October 17, 2026 – “Secrets of Lowell Cemetery” tour which is part of the of the Poe in Lowell Festival. Edgar Allan Poe came to Lowell at least three times to lecture but also to spend time with a female friend who is buried in Lowell Cemetery. Learn their story and the stories of others involved in their orbit. This tour is free and begins at the Knapp Avenue entrance of the cemetery (77 Knapp Avenue).

New French Language Audiobook of Kerouac Writings

News from Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Graduate Chair, Penn English, Associate Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, www.jccloutier.com

 

J-C Cloutier is the translator of The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings by Jack Kerouac, edited by Todd Tietchen of UMass Lowell (Library of America, 2016).

“Dear friends and colleagues,

It’s my great pleasure to announce the launch of a new French-language audiobook of Jack Kerouac’s French manuscripts: Sur le chemin et autres écrits en français [‘On the Road’ and Other French Writings]. This has been a long journey that began with a dream over ten years ago when I released the (print) anthology of JK’s French texts (La vie est d’hommage [Life Is a Tribute]), and I’m glad to finally see it become a reality.

“Although Kerouac is chiefly known as an “American” author who wrote in English, his mother tongue was French and his archive revealed that he had composed several texts in French throughout his career. These texts were often written in an experimental form using what he called “sound-spelling” to capture the sound of North American French, or what we sometimes call joual québécois. It thus seemed that the true destiny of these beautiful, unique manuscripts was the audiobook.

“For this audiobook, each of the fifteen texts was assigned to a different narrator—and our narrators come from various French collectivities across the Americas: from Québec to Louisiana, Acadia to New England, Haiti to Nitassinan.

“Below you can find the book’s description, followed by an English translation of said description (for those who just don’t “do” French!).

“Please feel free to spread the word to anyone you know who may have an interest—students, colleagues, friends, roaming francophiles. Attached is a list of platforms where the book should be available around the world starting on August 17.

“Best wishes to all, et à bientôt!–JC”

[ENGLISH VERSION]

Sur le chemin et autres écrits en français [On the Road, and other French Writings]

de Jack Kerouac

French was Jack Kerouac’s mother tongue. More specifically, the variety of French spoken by the Franco-American communities of New England. Kerouac spoke this French Canuck, or joual québécois, exclusively until the age of six and continued to use it throughout his life at home with his mother, who was born Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque in St-Pacôme, in Québec, Canada. As a heritage defined by departure, migration, and the open road, Kerouac’s French-Canadian roots are inseparable from his linguistic genius and literary achievements.

The stunning secret revealed with the opening of his archives is that Kerouac had written several texts in his native tongue throughout his career. In 2016, Éditions du Boréal published these French manuscripts in an anthology titled La vie est d’hommage [Life Is a Tribute]. Readers were delighted to discover the unique nature of Kerouac’s French—a style that gave scriptural form to the vernacular of North American Francophones a full decade before the emergence of joual in Québec in the 1960s. The music, rhythm, and beats of this French are meant be heard to be truly appreciated; these manuscripts were destined to become an audiobook.

To honor the resounding diversity of the French poetic repertoire Kerouac created, we have sought fifteen narrators from across the various Francophone collectivities of the Americas—from Québec to Louisiana, Acadia to Haiti, Ontario to Nitassinan. This audiobook invites you to immerse yourself in these voices—these creolized timbres born of the territory—that come together, through Kerouac, to sing the past and future of French in the Americas.

Featuring readings by: Évelyne de la Chenelière, Herménégilde Chiasson, Jean-Christophe Cloutier (producer and director of this audiobook), Jean-Marc Dalpé, David Goudreault, Jacques L’Heureux, Robert Lalonde, Soleil Launière, Guillaume Martel LaSalle, Marie Michaud, Susan Pinette, Sébastien Ricard, Zachary Richard, Rodney Saint-Éloi, and Chloé Sainte-Marie.

Sound recording, editing, and mixing: Studio Bulldog

ISBN 13: 978-2-7646-1398-6
ISBN 10: 2-7646-1398-9

[FRENCH VERSION}

Sur le chemin et autres écrits en français

de Jack Kerouac

Le français, celui que parlait la communauté franco-américaine de Lowell, au Massachusetts, était la langue maternelle de Jack Kerouac. Cette langue, celle de ce grand peuple de « partance », de migration, de la route, qu’étaient les Canadiens français, il l’a parlée exclusivement jusqu’à l’âge de six ans et l’a employée toute sa vie, chez lui, avec sa mère, née Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque à St-Pacôme.

Ce qu’on ignorait jusqu’à l’ouverture de son fonds d’archives, c’est que Kerouac avait aussi écrit plusieurs textes dans sa langue maternelle tout au long de sa carrière d’écrivain. En 2016, les Éditions du Boréal les faisaient paraître dans le recueil intitulé La vie est d’hommage [Life Is a Tribute]. Lecteurs et lectrices ont alors pu découvrir avec ravissement la forme unique du français de Kerouac, qui a donné – dix ans avant l’éclosion du joual au Québec, au début des années 1960 – une incarnation écrite à la langue populaire des francophones d’Amérique du Nord. Il était donc tout naturel que la musique, le rythme et les modulations de ce français soient offerts à l’écoute.

Afin d’honorer la diversité retentissante du répertoire poétique francophone que Kerouac a créé, nous sommes allés chercher nos quinze narrateurs et narratrices dans la grande francophonie des Amériques – du Québec à la Louisiane, de l’Acadie à Haïti, de l’Ontario au Nitassinan. Nous vous invitons à vous laisser bercer par ces voix, ces timbres créolisés de territoire, qui font retentir le passé et l’avenir du français en Amérique.

Avec des lectures de : Évelyne de la Chenelière, Herménégilde Chiasson, Jean-Christophe Cloutier (responsable du livre audio), Jean-Marc Dalpé, David Goudreault, Jacques L’Heureux, Robert Lalonde, Soleil Launière, Guillaume Martel LaSalle, Marie Michaud, Susan Pinette, Sébastien Ricard, Zachary Richard, Rodney Saint-Éloi et Chloé Sainte-Marie.

Prise de son, montage et mixage : Studio Bulldog

ISBN 13: 978-2-7646-1398-6
ISBN 10: 2-7646-1398-9