Gabrielle Roy
Gabrielle Roy is arguably the best known and most appreciated writer in French-speaking Manitoba. She marked the literary world with her writing that is true, complex, analytical of the human condition and contrasting in style and themes. Her most famous novel, Bonheur d’cccasion, published in 1945, illustrates the misery experienced during the Second World War in the working-class district of Saint-Henri, in Quebec. This publication is the first urban novel, and the first psychological novel, breaking with the period of land-based literature and the ideology of conservation, advocating subjects such as the return to the land, the family, religion and the homeland. Her work, comprising more than twenty titles, has been translated into more than fourteen languages, and the author has received the greatest distinctions in the world of literature, including the Governor General’s Award (1947, 1957, 1978), the Duvernay Prize (1956) and the David Prize (1971). She was also named a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967.
Gabrielle Roy was born March 22, 1909 in St. Boniface, Manitoba. She lived in the family home located at 375 Deschambault Street until 1937, the street name becoming the title of one of her novels. The home is now a museum where one can discover and honor the work of the great Franco-Manitoban writer. She was the youngest of a family of eleven children. Sadly, three of them passed away at a very young age.
Gabrielle’s parents were French-speaking and spoke French at home. Indeed, they were both from Quebec: Léon Roy came from Saint-Isidore-de-Dorchester and Mélina Landry from Saint-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez. At the time, St. Boniface was a city isolated from Winnipeg by the Red River, wheat fields and a totally different culture, which allowed for the preservation of the French language. However, the Thornton Act of 1916 prevented French-language education in Manitoba. Gabrielle ended up studying in English at St. Joseph’s Academy and at the Winnipeg Normal School, which did not prevent her from winning all the awards of excellence in her French and English classes in high school.
In 1913, the Roys were going through a difficult period. Léon Roy lost his job as an immigration officer during a government change just six months before his retirement. He did not touch a single penny of his pension and experienced great financial difficulties. The family house had to be mortgaged in 1915. After Léon’s death, Mélina had to resign herself to selling the house and becoming a simple tenant, despite her efforts to accumulate a little money by sewing and renting rooms.
Gabrielle did not witness her parents’ happy days like her other older siblings. She had more difficulty forging close ties with them. However, cultural life was vibrant in the house, as despite financial difficulties, the family found the means to access piano lessons. This pervasiveness of culture undoubtedly helped give Gabrielle the writing itch from a young age.
After very successful studies, Gabrielle gave herself body and soul to her career as a teacher. Between 1929 and 1937, she taught in several Manitoba villages. Her teaching experience and the landscapes of her native province remained forever etched in her memory and were greatly reflected in her work. In 1937, at age 28, she left for Europe to take drama lessons. She was torn between theater and writing, but her unsuccessful attempts at the theater confirmed her choice. In 1939, she moved to Montreal and became a freelance journalist for the Bulletin des agriculteurs and La Revue Moderne with the help of her literary advisor, Henri Girard.
Gabrielle Roy is said to have been a lonely, reserved, endearing, fragile and nostalgic person. She had a special attachment to her native province, Manitoba. However, she also felt in St Boniface a sense of alienation, humiliation and devaluation of Francophones compared to the Anglophone majority. Therefore, despite her education in English, she insisted on “taking revenge” and perfecting her French to write in the language of Molière, in French-Canadian fashion of course. Today, Manitoba has more than 100 different ethnic groups and Francophones make up only 7% of the population.
It was in 1945 that Gabrielle Roy began her true writing career. She published Bonheur d’occasion, her most famous novel, which was quite successful. She became the first Canadian author to win the Prix Femina, a French award, in 1947. That same year, the English version of the novel, The Tin Flute, sold 700,000 copies. She also became a member of the Royal Society of Canada. On the personal side, she married Doctor Marcel Carbotte and went into exile in France, where she would write her favorite novel: La Petite Poule d´Eau. She returned to Quebec in 1950 and settled in Quebec City itself. In 1957, she bought a summer cottage in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, in Charlevoix, where she would write most of her work. Her writing addressed themes such as the psychology and existential discomforts of the 20th century human being, the reality of artists and Indigenous people, nature, travel, teaching, the difficult adaptation of the pioneers in the West and her memories of youth. She also wrote some children’s stories. During this creative period, she traveled extensively in Canada, the United States and Europe. She died on July 13, 1983 of a heart attack at the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec, leaving behind a vast French literary heritage in Quebec, Manitoba and around the world.
That same year, the film Bonheur d’occasion by Claude Fournier and Marie-Josée Raymond was produced. In 1989, the value of the Roy family home on Deschambault Street was recognized thanks to the efforts of the Société historique de Saint-Boniface, which installed a commemorative plaque in front of the house. During that decade, Annette Saint-Pierre had already envisioned a project to transform the childhood home of the illustrious writer into a museum. Gabrielle Roy was not necessarily delighted by the idea, so Annette Saint-Pierre waited till after her death before starting her project.
From 1997 to 2003, the Corporation Maison-Gabrielle Roy and Annette Saint-Pierre’s combined efforts to raise donations, buy the house, restore it and transform it into a museum succeeded. On June 19, 2003, the Maison Gabrielle-Roy Museum was officially opened to the public, after painstaking procedures and investments totaling more than $650,000. It is now an interpretative and exhibition center focusing on the life of the famous writer and her family.
The house, built in 1905 by Mélina Roy’s brother, has completely regained its original appearance, although hardly any furniture or objects in the museum belonged to the Roys given the many changes of ownership. « La maison a été surélevée sur des poutres pendant les travaux. Partout dans la maison, à l’exception du bureau, les planchers sont d’origine, en pin de la Colombie-Britannique […]. Les murs sont peints de couleurs d’origine. Il a fallu enlever quinze couches de peinture pour y arriver […]. Le plan de la maison a dû être revu de fond en comble… toutes les touches architecturales de la maison ont été restaurées pour refléter la maison telle qu’elle était en 1905 [1]”
On November 23, 2001, the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba designated the Roy residence as a Heritage Site, thereby establishing its significance to residents of the writer’s homeland.
In 2009, the Heritage Centre opened an exhibit about Gabrielle Roy in honor of her 100th birthday. Among other things, the exhibit displayed some correspondence and other archives of the Corporation Maison Gabrielle-Roy fonds. All the panels and archival items used for the exhibit are available on our website in the “Exhibits” section of the “Au pays de Riel” module.
Today, Maison Gabrielle-Roy is a source of pride for all Manitobans, especially Francophones. People from all over the world come to visit the museum, many of whom are Quebecers. It is thanks to the sustained efforts of Annette Saint-Pierre, who invested herself fully in this large-scale project, that this house of great historical and cultural value is now part of Manitoba’s heritage and revives the memory of the great writer that was Gabrielle Roy.
[1] Annette Saint-Pierre, Au pays de Gabrielle Roy, Saint-Boniface, Éditions des Plaines, 2005, 222 p.
Text revised and translated in 2022.
Bibliography
– The Encyclopédie canadienne Website
http://www.encyclopediecanadienne.ca/fr/article/gabrielle-roy/
– The Encyclopédie du patrimoine culturel de l’Amérique française Website: http://www.ameriquefrancaise.org/fr/article-72/Maison_Gabrielle-Roy.html#.WVEe6Wg1_IU
– The Maison Gabrielle-Roy Website: