Before Canada was a nation, she was born. Marie Louise Soulière married a voyageur who paddled away and never came back. She crossed the border with three small children, built a life in Chicago, buried two husbands, and lived to ninety-one. At ninety, she fished in the Florida sun beside a grandson too young to know her story—but he remembered her, told his daughter, and now we know. A commemorative poem from the Tranchemontagne documentary biography series.

From the Storyline Genealogy series: A Commemorative Poem for Marie Louise Soulière (1854-1945)

You descend from a man the records call journalier. Day laborer. Four times the documents say it. Not voyageur—though that word clings to the family story, borrowed perhaps from his father, who earned it. Gabriel Guilbault was a voyageur. His son Evangeliste was five years old in 1851, too young to understand that the world his father knew was already disappearing. By the time he was old enough to work, there was nothing left to paddle.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Legacy Keepsakes From Research to Story