Gimme a Passport, S'il Vous Plaît

Marie Mance Vallee's family has lived in Quebec for centuries, but she's petitioning the French government for a dual-citizenship passport.

Vallee originally requested duel [sic] citizenship in 2006, but was turned down because rules then stipulated her family must have resided in France in the last 50 years.

However, a new law says anyone can claim French citizenship as long as they can prove that they have ancestors who were born in France, explained Christian Neron, a Quebec City lawyer.

Neron provided Vallee with a legal argument to back up her request for citizenship. He believes Vallee is the first old-stock Quebecer to request French citizenship because of her colonial links. [Link]

My maternal grandfather was French Canadian, so I guess I'll be blogging next summer from Saint-Tropez.

Cherchez les French-Canadian Ancestors

I am very pleased that The Drouin Collection of (mostly) French-Canadian vital records is now indexed and searchable. My Ancestry.com subscription runs out on Friday, which means that I'll have to put off sleeping, eating and bathing until the weekend.

Somebody Had to Watch Their Stuff

Newfoundland minister of tourism Clyde Jackman rejects the claim that Quebec—celebrating its 400th anniversary this year—was the first city in Canada where Europeans spent the winter.

Not true, said Mr. Jackman, who points out that fishermen were already frequenting the port of St. John's in the 1500s.

"Let's take this logically. If fishermen from the English country had equipment and so on, don't you think it's logical that they would have left people here year-round to keep an eye on that kind of stuff?" Mr. Jackman said.

"From the historical context, we're saying that yes, people were here, that they stayed here year-round, that they kept eye on all their fishing equipment. And that's our claim to it." [Link]

Find French Forebears For Free

The Drouin Collection will be free to view at Ancestry.com through the end of March.

The Drouin Collection represents the largest and most valuable French-Canadian family history resources available, including an impressive collection of Quebec vital records. The collection ranges from the beginning of European settlement to the 1940s, including the nearly 12 million records which marked the history of Quebec families over three centuries.

There's no name index, so you'd better have your high-school French teacher on speed dial. I was able to find the marriage record of my 3rd-great-grandparents Martial Laplante and Marie Parent in Van Buren, Maine, in about three minutes—but only because I already knew it was there.

Champlain Remains Hidden

It was Rene Levesque's decades-long quest to find the resting place in Quebec City of French explorer Samuel de Champlain. That quest ended last Sunday with Levesque's death at age 81.

[H]e began searching for Champlain's grave as a young Jesuit priest in the bone-lined basement of the old Basilica in 1950s, when the boom of his sledgehammer drew rebuke from senior priests because it disturbed confessions in the church above.

Levesque thought he was close to discovering the grave several times, but each time came up empty. On one occasion he convinced a French television network to record for posterity the opening of Champlain's tomb.

With cameras rolling, Levesque knocked a hole in the basement wall on rue Buade and reached into the black cavity - only to pull out a bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables from the cold room in the Chinese restaurant next door.

"That seems appropriate," said Quebec City's chief archeologist, William Moss, who often dealt with Levesque's frequent demands for excavation permits. "Champlain was looking for a route to China." [Link]

How Utterly Traditional

Maxim Vachon-Savary is a "hyphenated Quebecker" who carries around the surnames of both his mother and father. When he and his wife had twins last year, they had to make a tough decision.

He and his wife, Veronique Chayer, were legally allowed to choose from eight different name combinations for their twins. It could be Chayer-Vachon, Savary-Chayer, Vachon-Savary, Chayer -- and the list went on.

In the end, the Quebec City couple settled on a single choice. Their girls' last name would be Savary, the same as Mr. Vachon-Savary's father. [Link]

Québécois Kilts

Bryant Johnson's Scottish kilt shop in Montreal has thrived for 60 years—despite being located in Montreal.

"A lot of my contemporaries in Toronto say, 'How does a guy sell kilts in Montreal?'" Johnson, the proprietor and son in Chas Johnson and Son, told Canadian Press.

"The truth is that there's a lot of French-Canadians who have Scottish heritage going back to the Hudson's Bay Company," Johnson said in a recent interview.

"They don't speak English, but they'll be walking by the door and they'll see scarves with their name on it," Johnson said.

"They'll come in, make inquiries, and go home to La Tuque or whatever. But they always come back." [Link]