The St Denis Family

There was an interesting French-Irish family living almost across the road from our house. Their name was St Dennis, but everyone pronounced it in the French Son-da-nay. The husband was French, and the wife Irish. They had purchased a plot of ground from father out of pasture field and had built a comfortable log and some outbuildings. On the land behind the house, there was a thriving plum orchard.

Old Joe, as we children called him had worked for father from my earliest recollection, both at the mills and on the farm. When he was having trouble with his team, or anything went wrong, he'd do his cussing in French. I didn't know what he was saying, but repeated it in the house. Overheard by mother, she demanded to know where I heard such language. I told her Old Joe always said it. That night she had a conference with father, but they decided not to say anything more about it. In-as-much as I didn't know the meaning, they reasoned that "what we don't know won't hurt us."

The St Dennis' had a son and two daughters. The son, Joe Jr., was a grown man and worked for father in the mills until they were destroyed by fire. The girls, Bertha and Mary were in the upper grades at school. They were nearer sister Jennie's age. Although the parents were unable to assist them much in getting a higher education, one of the St Dennis girls became a school teacher and the other a nurse.

It is ironical that the most vivid memory I have of Old Joe, is that of his wake and funeral. His widow, as per custom of the Irish, demanded a real, old-fashioned wake for the deceased. and Old Joe was honored to the limit. It was the first Irish wake I had ever observed and it left a lasting impression.

Brother Bob and I teamed up to get a good view of all that went on- the vantage point, the west window of the living room. many friends and kinsmen had gathered, and there was loud roar and long wailing. There were frequent tender speeches of condolences, which always brought forth fresh weeping. Then there was the smoking of clay pipes and the passing of the jug of rye.

Climax to the passing of Old Joe St Dennis, was the funeral cortege during its trip to La Pas where the body was placed in a vault to await the coming of spring when a grave could be dug after the frozen ground had thawed.

On the day of the funeral, the weather was very cold and the teams in the forward procession were eager to break the slow pace of the funeral march and warm up. Sidney Williams, in whose sleigh the coffin had been placed, decided to let its team have its head. He passed a couple of sleighs and the race was on. That funeral procession probably made the best time of any before or since.

Both Mr and Mrs St Dennis were kindly, warm-hearted and generous people. They were always ready to help anyone in trouble. Joe's wife was particularly in demand when there was illness in a neighbor's home. She was unusually helpful if children were sick. She appeared to know about home remedies for almost every type of children's diseases.

After Old Joe's passing, the son assumed head of the house of St Dennis. As his orchard have early apples, the kind that are unusually sweet and well flavored, the youngsters of the village were always robbing the trees at night.

To put a stop to the nightly thefts, Joe put up a small tent at the edge of the orchard, where he slept during the apple harvest season. To illustrate that the "younger generation" (always expected to go to the dogs by their elders) hasn't changed much in sixty years, I recall that a bunch of village boys got together in a scheme to get some of those early apples. Two of the older boys casually entered the tent to talk with Joe, and in the course of conversation explained that they had been shocked by the acts of "the young gangsters" who had been stealing his apples. One of the boys pulled a harmonica from his pocket and offered to play a tune. While he loudly demonstrated "turkey in the straw", with variations, and the other boy clapped his hand loudly in beating time, the balance of the gang outside, under cover of noise in the tent, quickly stripped the best three of Joe's choice apples.

Not claiming to "be holier than thou", I was not in on this burglary, for the simple reason that I was too young to be taken on nightly raids by the self-chosen gang leaders.

Story by Gilbert McLeese, in an excerpt from his book, Memoirs of Forresters Falls, published 1950, held in Preservation by the National Library of Canada