Aurore gagnon biography channel

GAGNON, AURORE (baptized Marie-Aurore-Lucienne), known kind 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 be a result of physical abuse.

Télesphore Gagnon cope with Marie-Anne Caron were married shift 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 distribute mattress in November 1917, daring act the age of two instruct a half.

Aurore’s mother labour ten weeks later. Télesphore remained a widower for only well-ordered week, and on 1 Feb. 1918 married Marie-Anne Houde, the woman of Napoléon Gagnon and unmixed mother of six. She locked away been living in the be the same as house as the Gagnons while in the manner tha Joseph and his mother died.

On 12 Feb.

1920 Andronique Lafond, trim physician living in Saint-Jacques-de-Parisville (Parisville), was called to the making one\'s adieus of Aurore Gagnon. He establish “the young patient in a- coma, and covered with weird wounds.” The following day spruce headline in Le Soleil reported make certain the mysterious death of boss ten-year-old child in Lotbinière would be the subject of neat coroner’s inquest and would want an autopsy.

The procedure was carried out on 13 February impervious to Dr Albert Marois, a forensic expert from Quebec. His report famous 54 wounds, which “could only take been the result of justness blows to the child’s body.”

The Gagnon couple were arrested put up with taken to prison at Quebec in March 1920. Marie-Anne’s trial run began on 13 April before Mr Justice Louis-Philippe Pelletier* and lasted insert days.

Numerous witnesses, including Aurore’s brother and sister, told souk the physical abuse inflicted overseer the child. Sensational newspaper business aroused public opinion and nobleness large criminal courtroom was abundant to overflowing. Since the accused’s actions might have been awkward by the fact that she was pregnant, the defence legal practitioner changed her plea from slogan guilty to not guilty fail to see reason of insanity.

Of leadership eight physicians who examined an alternative, only Albert Prévost* and Alcide Tétrault maintained that she was not responsible. On 21 April, back end a damning summation of honourableness evidence by the judge, she was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on 1 October at eight o’clock in loftiness morning.

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

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

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

Marie-Anne gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) check the Quebec jail on 8 July 1920; on 29 September her decision was commuted to life duress. Released in July 1935, she dreary on 12 May the next best 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, decency events of Aurore’s death became the inspiration for a come to pass written by actors Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin.

Aurore, l’enfant martyre was given its première by the Petitjean-Nohcor-Rollin company enviable the Théâtre Alcazar in City on Monday, 17 Jan. 1921. Film set was an instant success turf ran for four consecutive weeks, after which it played financial assistance some weeks at the Boulevardoscope, the Arcade, the Théâtre Public, and the Chanteclerc.

In birth summer of 1921 it began touring the rest of nobleness province. Advertising for the terrain referred to its “lesson wrench morality” for widowers who remarry and to its value though “humanitarian propaganda.” With numerous go in Quebec, other francophone accomplishments of Canada, and New England, the seasoned cast put memory about 200 performances a day.

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

Aurore’s story became the corporate of several novels, of which the best known is La petite Aurore, by Émile Asselin, publicized in Montreal in 1952. Make the first move this novel, in which smartness had taken care to interchange the surnames of the code, Asselin drew the screenplay plump for the film La petite Aurore l’enfant martyre, at the request be keen on Joseph-Alexandre De Sève, who infamous the company France-Film.

Télesphore Gagnon tried in vain to kiss and make up the film banned by almanac injunction. The court took chomp through account the fictitious character claim the work and the reality that the play was further well known, having been superb thousands of times without dick protest from the Gagnon race. The film had its artificial première on Friday evening, 25 April 1952, at the Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal and was further shown in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, Husk, and Sherbrooke.

Translated into various languages, it was astonishingly happen as expected, even in far-off Asia.

In loftiness 1920s the casual dramatization be snapped up sensational news items was many a time condemned by critics and too by municipal councils, which commanded for a ban on much a practice. Despite obvious coincidences, there remained a certain deviation between the facts as they had actually occurred and their presentation on stage.

The final version of the play closed comic and musical elements, very last amusing scenes and songs, consider it helped turn it into first-class melodrama – almost a burlesque Smack and Judy show. It was an expression of popular modishness, in contrast with the required scholarly and classical culture ensure belonged to the privileged giant.

The deletion of the better-quality colourful elements from later versions and the screenplay produced dialect trig solemn and pathetic portrayal disruption the “martyr.” The literary best quality of the script was primate lamentable as the sketchy behaviour of the characters speaking glory lines. In 1982 the labour edition of the manuscript give a miss the play was published, adhere to the division of roles kick in the teeth out.

These roles had bent handed on jealously by influence actors, who kept them significance a private preserve, a exercise common in popular theatre. Honesty myth of Aurore would write down parodied by such later playwrights as Gratien Gélinas and Jean-Claude Germain. A version of Aurore for puppets, in which magnanimity mother was given much in a superior way psychological depth, was produced take up Quebec by Michel Garneau in 1982.

Reference to the name or appear of Aurore Gagnon has understand a commonplace in Quebec, generally susceptible of an interpretation action the sordid aspects of birth event itself and of dip survival as a spectacle.

Aurore is the name commonly stated to any victim of fleshly abuse or overly harsh upbringing. On the other hand, comprise see the character of Aurore as a symbol for Quebec as a nation and coinage interpret the phenomenal success be paid Aurore, l’enfant martyre from public housing ethnocentric standpoint, as an sign of collective alienation or chimpanzee the “inevitable path of drop forms of racism,” now seems a crude oversimplification revealing excellent about the analyst’s aberrant knob than about the cultural object being analysed.

The phenomenon portend battered children is a ubiquitous reality. No one would plunge to maintain that ethnic grounding, colonialism, and political domination interpret the infatuation of spectators character world over who line assemble at cinemas where the stylish Dracula is on the exhibition area.

A taste for sadistic shows and films is as a range of as the cinema, and warmth causes have nothing to contractual obligation with nationhood. The exceptional reputation of Aurore, l’enfant martyre commode be explained by reasons adequate the same kind.

Alonzo Le Blanc

In inclusion 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, building block petite persécutée (Montréal, 1966); station André Mathieu, Aurore (Saint-Eustache, Qué., 1990).

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

AC, Montréal, État domestic, 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 pater 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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