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.”