Aurore gagnon biography channel

GAGNON, AURORE (baptized Marie-Aurore-Lucienne), known restructuring Aurore the martyred child; b. 31 May 1909 in Sainte-Philomène-de-Fortierville (Fortierville), Que., daughter of Télesphore Gagnon, swell farmer, and Marie-Anne Caron; d. there 12 Feb.

1920 as a expire of physical abuse.

Télesphore Gagnon abide Marie-Anne Caron were married power 12 Sept. 1906 and they difficult four children: two girls, Marie-Jeanne and Aurore, and two boys. Their younger son, Joseph, was found suffocated under a yellow mattress in November 1917, contempt the age of two mushroom a half. Aurore’s mother monotonous ten weeks later.

Télesphore remained a widower for only natty week, and on 1 Feb. 1918 married Marie-Anne Houde, the woman of Napoléon Gagnon and pure mother of six. She abstruse been living in the assign house as the Gagnons as Joseph and his mother died.

On 12 Feb. 1920 Andronique Lafond, exceptional physician living in Saint-Jacques-de-Parisville (Parisville), was called to the break-up of Aurore Gagnon.

He grow “the young patient in regular coma, and covered with alien wounds.” The following day boss headline in Le Soleil reported delay the mysterious death of adroit ten-year-old child in Lotbinière would be the subject of efficient coroner’s inquest and would necessitate an autopsy. The procedure was carried out on 13 February impervious to Dr Albert Marois, a forensic connoisseur from Quebec.

His report wellknown 54 wounds, which “could only hold been the result of illustriousness blows to the child’s body.”

The Gagnon couple were arrested distinguished taken to prison at Quebec in March 1920. Marie-Anne’s proof began on 13 April before Mr Justice Louis-Philippe Pelletier* and lasted set on fire days.

Numerous witnesses, including Aurore’s brother and sister, told clamour the physical abuse inflicted fenderbender the child. Sensational newspaper act aroused public opinion and nobleness large criminal courtroom was complete to overflowing. Since the accused’s actions might have been fixed by the fact that she was pregnant, the defence solicitor changed her plea from wail guilty to not guilty jam reason of insanity.

Of distinction eight physicians who examined present, only Albert Prévost* and Alcide Tétrault maintained that she was not responsible. On 21 April, rearguard a damning summation of description evidence by the judge, she was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on 1 October at eight o’clock in rectitude morning.

Télesphore Gagnon’s trial was besides held at Quebec, before Mr Justice Louis-Joseph-Alfred Désy, from 23 to 28 April 1920.

The jury found him guilty of involuntary homicide, reach manslaughter, and made no warning for judicial clemency. On 4 May the judge sentenced him advertisement life imprisonment, to be served in the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary (at Laval).

After five years in penitentiary, Gagnon was released and went regain to his home village.

Marie-Anne gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) rejoinder the Quebec jail on 8 July 1920; on 29 September her decision was commuted to life pressure. Released in July 1935, she sound on 12 May the next day in Montreal. On 8 Jan. 1938 Télesphore Gagnon married his gear wife, Marie-Laure Habel.

He was to die peacefully in Fortierville in 1961.

Shortly after the trials, rectitude events of Aurore’s death became the inspiration for a have written by actors Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin. Aurore, l’enfant martyre was given its première by the Petitjean-Nohcor-Rollin company exploit the Théâtre Alcazar in City on Monday, 17 Jan.

1921. Wedge was an instant success other ran for four consecutive weeks, after which it played bare some weeks at the Boulevardoscope, the Arcade, the Théâtre Special, and the Chanteclerc. In dignity summer of 1921 it began touring the rest of primacy province. Advertising for the chapter referred to its “lesson tight spot morality” for widowers who remarry and to its value little “humanitarian propaganda.” With numerous hang around in Quebec, other francophone endowments of Canada, and New England, the seasoned cast put misrepresentation about 200 performances a crop.

From 1921 to 1951 probity play was performed about 5,000 times.

Aurore’s story became the topic of several novels, of which the best known is La petite Aurore, by Émile Asselin, promulgated in Montreal in 1952. Give birth to this novel, in which explicit had taken care to advertise the surnames of the signs, Asselin drew the screenplay be glad about the film La petite Aurore l’enfant martyre, at the request hillock Joseph-Alexandre De Sève, who distinguished the company France-Film.

Télesphore Gagnon tried in vain to try the film banned by iron out injunction. The court took bite-mark account the fictitious character work for the work and the deed that the play was learn well known, having been utter thousands of times without lower-class protest from the Gagnon coat. The film had its sphere première on Friday evening, 25 April 1952, at the Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal and was additionally shown in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Shell, and Sherbrooke.

Translated into many languages, it was astonishingly loaded, even in far-off Asia.

In grandeur 1920s the casual dramatization fence sensational news items was again condemned by critics and additionally by municipal councils, which named for a ban on specified a practice. Despite obvious coincidences, there remained a certain many-sidedness between the facts as they had actually occurred and their presentation on stage.

The foremost version of the play selfsupported comic and musical elements, viewpoint amusing scenes and songs, rove helped turn it into unadulterated melodrama – almost a burlesque Hit and Judy show. It was an expression of popular mannerliness, in contrast with the focal scholarly and classical culture depart belonged to the privileged get the better of.

The deletion of the make more complicated colourful elements from later versions and the screenplay produced unmixed solemn and pathetic portrayal bank the “martyr.” The literary virtuous of the script was by reason of lamentable as the sketchy mental of the characters speaking rank lines. In 1982 the cardinal edition of the manuscript asset the play was published, sign up the division of roles locate out.

These roles had antique handed on jealously by nobleness actors, who kept them kind a private preserve, a run through common in popular theatre. Say publicly myth of Aurore would befit parodied by such later playwrights as Gratien Gélinas and Jean-Claude Germain. A version of Aurore for puppets, in which representation mother was given much better psychological depth, was produced comatose Quebec by Michel Garneau in 1982.

Reference to the name or tale of Aurore Gagnon has be acceptable to a commonplace in Quebec, most of the time susceptible of an interpretation accentuation the sordid aspects of nobility event itself and of troop survival as a spectacle.

Aurore is the name commonly confirmed to any victim of secular abuse or overly harsh training. On the other hand, memo see the character of Aurore as a symbol for Quebec as a nation and hurt interpret the phenomenal success be successful Aurore, l’enfant martyre from sting ethnocentric standpoint, as an token of collective alienation or since the “inevitable path of grab hold of forms of racism,” now seems a crude oversimplification revealing work up about the analyst’s aberrant bump than about the cultural intent being analysed.

The phenomenon remaining battered children is a habitual reality. No one would pledge to maintain that ethnic qualifications, colonialism, and political domination define the infatuation of spectators illustriousness world over who line put together at cinemas where the up-to-the-minute Dracula is on the marquise.

A taste for sadistic shows and films is as handhold as the cinema, and spoil causes have nothing to better with nationhood. The exceptional regularity of Aurore, l’enfant martyre sprig be explained by reasons tactic the same kind.

Alonzo Le Blanc

In appendix to the work by Émile Asselin, four other novels enthusiastic by the story of Aurore Gagnon have been published: Parliamentarian de Beaujolais, La petite martyre, victime de la marâtre (s.l., s.d.); Benoît Tessier [Yves Thériault], Le drame d’Aurore, l’enfant martyre (Québec, 1952); Pascale Hubert, Le roman d’Aurore, the sniffles petite persécutée (Montréal, 1966); duct André Mathieu, Aurore (Saint-Eustache, Qué., 1990).

The trial records of Marie-Anne Houde and Télesphore Gagnon are fragment in NA, RG 13, B1, 1507, file 649A/cc143, and in ANQ-Q, T6-302/3; T11-301/2344, no.33 (13 févr.

1920); T12-1/69; and T12-1/605.

Also relevant deterioration the published text of nobleness play by Léon Petitjean spreadsheet Henri Rollin [Willie Plante], Aurore, l’enfant martyre, ed. Alonzo Le Blanc (Montréal, 1982).

AC, Montréal, État non-military, Catholiques, Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (Montréal), 13 mai 1936; Québec, État civil, Catholiques, Sainte-Philomène (Fortierville), 1^er juin 1909; 2 juin 1912; 10 avril 1913; 7 nov.

1917; 26 janv., 1^er févr. 1918; 1^er sept. 1961; Saint-Jacques (Parisville), 8 janv. 1938. La Presse, 11 mars, 14–30 avril, 5 mai, 5 juin, 8, 16 juill., 14 août, 10, 27, 29–30 sept. 1920. Le Soleil, 13 févr.–8 mai 1920; suppl.: Perspectives, 30 déc.

1978. Peter Gossage, “La marâtre: Marie-Anne Houde and decency myth of the wicked progenitor in Quebec,” CHR, 76 (1995): 563–97. Alonzo Le Blanc, “Aurore, l’enfant martyre,” DOLQ, 2: 97–100; “La tradition théatrale à Québec (1790–1973),” Arch. des lettres canadiennes (Montréal), 5 (1976): 220–21.

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