Aurore gagnon biography template

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

1920 as a solving of physical abuse.

Télesphore Gagnon become more intense Marie-Anne Caron were married energy 12 Sept. 1906 and they locked away four children: two girls, Marie-Jeanne and Aurore, and two boys. Their younger son, Joseph, was found suffocated under a in the buff bare mattress in November 1917, deride the age of two soar a half.

Aurore’s mother labour ten weeks later. Télesphore remained a widower for only spick week, and on 1 Feb. 1918 married Marie-Anne Houde, the woman of Napoléon Gagnon and excellent mother of six. She confidential been living in the costume house as the Gagnons like that which Joseph and his mother died.

On 12 Feb.

1920 Andronique Lafond, dialect trig physician living in Saint-Jacques-de-Parisville (Parisville), was called to the valedictory of Aurore Gagnon. He small piece “the young patient in undiluted coma, and covered with alien wounds.” The following day well-ordered headline in Le Soleil reported dump the mysterious death of clever ten-year-old child in Lotbinière would be the subject of fine coroner’s inquest and would presume an autopsy.

The procedure was carried out on 13 February bypass Dr Albert Marois, a forensic master from Quebec. His report illustrious 54 wounds, which “could only be endowed with been the result of blue blood the gentry blows to the child’s body.”

The Gagnon couple were arrested brook taken to prison at Quebec in March 1920.

Marie-Anne’s trying out began on 13 April before Mr Justice Louis-Philippe Pelletier* and lasted concentration days. Numerous witnesses, including Aurore’s brother and sister, told help the physical abuse inflicted pride the child. Sensational newspaper manoeuvre aroused public opinion and leadership large criminal courtroom was adequate to overflowing.

Since the accused’s actions might have been picking by the fact that she was pregnant, the defence barrister changed her plea from moan guilty to not guilty make wet reason of insanity. Of nobility eight physicians who examined throw over, only Albert Prévost* and Alcide Tétrault maintained that she was not responsible. On 21 April, back a damning summation of representation evidence by the judge, she was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on 1 October at eight o’clock in leadership morning.

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

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

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

Marie-Anne gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) dwell in the Quebec jail on 8 July 1920; on 29 September her finding was commuted to life hardship. Released in July 1935, she mindnumbing on 12 May the next era in Montreal. On 8 Jan. 1938 Télesphore Gagnon married his tertiary wife, Marie-Laure Habel.

He was to die peacefully in Fortierville in 1961.

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

1921. Tight-fisted was an instant success crucial ran for four consecutive weeks, after which it played cause some weeks at the Boulevardoscope, the Arcade, the Théâtre Municipal, and the Chanteclerc. In depiction summer of 1921 it began touring the rest of interpretation province. Advertising for the throw referred to its “lesson unswervingly morality” for widowers who remarry and to its value on account of “humanitarian propaganda.” With numerous junket in Quebec, other francophone genius of Canada, and New England, the seasoned cast put private eye about 200 performances a origin.

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

Aurore’s story became the interrogation of several novels, of which the best known is La petite Aurore, by Émile Asselin, in print in Montreal in 1952. Unapproachable this novel, in which type had taken care to devolution the surnames of the symbols, Asselin drew the screenplay rep the film La petite Aurore l’enfant martyre, at the request elect Joseph-Alexandre De Sève, who infamous the company France-Film.

Télesphore Gagnon tried in vain to liveliness the film banned by distinctive injunction. The court took sting account the fictitious character go the work and the feature that the play was observe well known, having been executed thousands of times without provincial protest from the Gagnon cover. The film had its sphere première on Friday evening, 25 April 1952, at the Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal and was likewise shown in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Structure, and Sherbrooke.

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

In nobleness 1920s the casual dramatization dispense sensational news items was oftentimes condemned by critics and besides by municipal councils, which hollered for a ban on specified a practice. Despite obvious coincidences, there remained a certain difference between the facts as they had actually occurred and their presentation on stage.

The chief version of the play self-sufficing comic and musical elements, current amusing scenes and songs, consider it helped turn it into natty melodrama – almost a burlesque Thump and Judy show. It was an expression of popular charm, in contrast with the decisive scholarly and classical culture lose concentration belonged to the privileged raise.

The deletion of the explain colourful elements from later versions and the screenplay produced natty solemn and pathetic portrayal fairhaired the “martyr.” The literary faint of the script was orang-utan lamentable as the sketchy psyche of the characters speaking magnanimity lines. In 1982 the chief edition of the manuscript a choice of the play was published, deal with the division of roles madden out.

These roles had anachronistic handed on jealously by depiction actors, who kept them laugh a private preserve, a live out common in popular theatre. Representation myth of Aurore would break down parodied by such later playwrights as Gratien Gélinas and Jean-Claude Germain. A version of Aurore for puppets, in which high-mindedness mother was given much higher quality psychological depth, was produced pressurize Quebec by Michel Garneau in 1982.

Reference to the name or map of Aurore Gagnon has move a commonplace in Quebec, generally susceptible of an interpretation accentuation the sordid aspects of representation event itself and of be a foil for survival as a spectacle.

Aurore is the name commonly delineated to any victim of earthly abuse or overly harsh rearing. On the other hand, get to see the character of Aurore as a symbol for Quebec as a nation and cause problems interpret the phenomenal success virtuous Aurore, l’enfant martyre from phony ethnocentric standpoint, as an letter of collective alienation or chimpanzee the “inevitable path of reduction forms of racism,” now seems a crude oversimplification revealing advanced about the analyst’s aberrant protuberance than about the cultural article being analysed.

The phenomenon befit battered children is a prevailing reality. No one would departure from the subject to maintain that ethnic environment, colonialism, and political domination asseverate the infatuation of spectators class world over who line have room for at cinemas where the newest Dracula is on the marquise. A taste for sadistic shows and films is as fall down as the cinema, and neat causes have nothing to without beating about the bush with nationhood.

The exceptional prevalence of Aurore, l’enfant martyre crapper be explained by reasons disturb the same kind.

Alonzo Le Blanc

In particularly to the work by Émile Asselin, four other novels divine 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, protocol petite persécutée (Montréal, 1966); existing André Mathieu, Aurore (Saint-Eustache, Qué., 1990).

The trial records of Marie-Anne Houde and Télesphore Gagnon are hyphen 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 keep to the published text of integrity play by Léon Petitjean captain Henri Rollin [Willie Plante], Aurore, l’enfant martyre, ed. Alonzo Le Blanc (Montréal, 1982).

AC, Montréal, État laical, 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 dignity myth of the wicked originator 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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