Funeral Card Friday: Father Charles-Eugène Thériault

(Front of card)

This funeral card was printed to the “pious memory” of Reverend Charles-Eugène Thériault. It measures about 10.5 cm x 5.5 cm (4 ¼” x 2 ¼”). My Aunt Joan (Dad’s sister) gave the card to me when I visited her home in May 2014.

Father Thériault was ordained a priest in September 1910 and was immediately assigned to Cobalt, a mining town in Ontario. Two year later, the Bishop sent him further north, to Timmins, where he became that community’s first resident priest in October 1912. While here, Father Thériault was instrumental in building churches (like St. Anthony’s Cathedral) and schools (like my future elementary school St-Charles). In 1940, he was transferred to Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in another part of town. (I was baptised at Notre-Dame in 1958; it was my parish for ten years.)

Suffering from a kidney ailment in the mid-1950s, Father Thériault sought treatment at a Montreal hospital. Sadly, he died there on 1 May 1956.

(Back of Card)

Sixty years have passed since Father Thériault’s death. One place in particular keeps his memory alive in Timmins – my high school. Opened in 1972, the new building was named Ecole Secondaire Thériault (later, Ecole Secondaire Catholique Thériault) in his honour.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wednesday’s Child: Alma Desgroseilliers (1904-1907)

Little Alma Desgroseilliers was only three years and six months old when she died. [1]
 

Alma with her brothers Eugène (left) and Arthur (right), about 1906.

She was the third child and eldest daughter of Albert and Clémentine (Léveillé) Desgroseilliers.

Born on 14 January 1904 in St-Charles, Ontario, Alma was baptised “Alma Fabiana” three days later in St-Thomas Apôtre church in nearby Warren. [2] Actually, I’m not sure if her godparents brought her to Warren (taking a newborn out in winter doesn’t seem prudent), or if Father Nayl travelled to St-Charles to baptise Alma, and then once back in Warren recorded the details in his church’s sacramental register.

In about 1906 or early 1907, Alma’s parents and her elder brothers (Eugène, my maternal grandfather, and Arthur) moved to Cobalt, northeast of St-Charles, near the Ontario-Quebec border. I don’t know what prompted my great-grandfather Albert to relocate his young family there, but perhaps it had something to do with silver being discovered in Cobalt in 1903. [3] Neither his daughter's death registration nor her burial record indicate what kind of work Albert did at this time. (He had been a farmer in St-Charles.)

Alma, who had been ill with bronchitis for one week, died on 6 July 1907 in Cobalt. [4] She was buried there in the cemetery the next day; her father was present. [5]

How sad it must have been for Albert, Clémentine and their sons when they returned to live in St-Charles in the spring of 1908.

Sources:

1. “Ontario, Canada Deaths, 1869-1932”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 January 2012), entry for Alma Degrossalier [sic], 6 July 1907; citing Archives of Ontario, Registrations of Deaths - 1869-1932; Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archives of Ontario; microfilm series MS935, reel 131.

2. “Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1907”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : 20 January 2012), entry for Alma Fabi[ana] Desgrosellier [sic] (written as Desgrosellier, indexed as Desgrciellier), 14 January 1904; citing Archives of Ontario, Registrations of Birth and Stillbirths – 1869-1904; Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archives of Ontario; microfilm series MS929, reel 174. Also, St-Thomas Apôtre (Warren, Ontario), parish register, 1901-1967, p. 12 verso, entry no. 6 (1904), Alma Fabiana Desgroseilliers baptism, 17 January 1904; St-Thomas Apôtre parish; digital image, “Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : 20 January 2012).

3. Wikipedia contributors, "Cobalt, Ontario", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cobalt,_Ontario&oldid=611476989 : accessed 16 September 2014).

4. “Ontario, Canada Deaths, 1869-1932”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 January 2012), entry for Alma Degrossalier [sic], 6 July 1907.

5. "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-24489-8758-36?cc=1927566&wc=M6VR-DTP:220997601,220997602,220997603,221004101 : accessed 20 January 2012), Timiskaming > Cobalt > St Hilarion > Baptisms, marriages, burials 1906-1910 > image 26 of 113, entry for Alma DesGroselliers [sic].

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sympathy Saturday: Accidental Death of William Brennan

It’s been 75 years since the accidental death of William Brennan in August 1939, and four years since I first learned about him while researching my grandmother Julie’s relatives.

William John Brennan was a younger son of James Brennan and Olivine Fleury. He was born on 4 January 1892 at Trout Lake, and baptized one month later in Sheenboro, Pontiac County, Quebec. [1]

William suffered a double tragedy when he was less than two years old: his parents died within months of each other in late 1893. He and his infant sister Rose Mary went to live with their maternal grandparents, while their elder brother went to live with a maternal uncle.

In April 1914, William married Mary (Minnie) Vanasse in Chapeau, Pontiac County, not long after his sister Rose Mary married Minnie’s brother Francis Guy Vanasse there in September 1912. [2]

Francis Guy and Minnie were first cousins of my paternal grandmother Julie (Vanasse) Belair, who was a bit younger than they were.

William and Minnie had seven children: one son and six daughters, of whom four survived. A year after the birth of their fourth child, the Brennan family moved from rural Chapeau to the mining town of Cobalt, Timiskaming District, Ontario in 1922. [3]

Grand View Avenue, Cobalt. [Ont.] (1924)

One summer’s night in 1939, William was walking on a highway when he was struck by a “half ton panel truck owned by Pardon’s Service Station” on “the main road not far from the O’Brien Mill at Mileage 104”, a few miles north of Cobalt. [4] The accident occurred about 9:15 p.m. on Saturday, 19 August, 1939. William was taken to Cobalt Municipal Hospital, but did not regain consciousness. He died at 1:35 p.m. the following day. [5]

Unfortunately, it appears that William was under the influence of alchohol at the time of the accident. A witness “had seen Brennan ‘staggering’ about the middle of the road going toward Cobalt” and the attending doctor at the hospital attested that “there was ‘a strong odor’ of liquor on [Brennan’s] breath”. [6]

Later, a coroner’s inquiry “held the circumstances to have been accidental, ‘with no blame attached to the driver of the truck’ […]”. [7]

William’s funeral took place on 23 August 1939 at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church. He is interred in Ste. Therese Cemetery, Cobalt. [8]

Photo credit: John Boyd / Library and Archives Canada /

Sources:

1. St. Paul the Hermit [St. Bridget] (Sheenboro, Quebec), parish register, 1873-1893, p. 335 (printed), entry no. B.3 (1892), William John Brennan baptism, 1 February 1892; St-Paul the Hermit [St. Bridget] parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 September 2010). William’s parents were residents of Sheen[boro] township at his baptism, suggesting that he was born there. Alternatively, William was born in “Trout Lake, Quebec”, according to the 1925 death registration of his daughter on which his wife Mary (Minnie) was the informant. (“Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1936 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : 15 September 2010), entry for Bernadette Brennan, 13 October 1925.)

2. St-Alphonse (Chapeau, Quebec), parish register, 1914, p. 6 recto, entry no. M.3, William John Brennan – Minnie Venasse [sic] marriage, 20 April 1914; St-Alphonse parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 September 2010).

3. “Mrs. Brennan 90 years old and still going strong”, Temiskaming Speaker, 21 March 1979, p. 12a, col. 3; digital images, World Vital Records (http://wvr.paperofrecord.com : accessed 12 September 2010), Newspapers and Periodicals.

4. “Jury Exonerates Driver In Saturday Accident”, Temiskaming Speaker, 24 August 1939, p. 1, col. 7; digital images, World Vital Records (http://wvr.paperofrecord.com : accessed 12 September 2010), Newspapers and Periodicals.

5. “Jury Exonerates Driver In Saturday Accident”, Temiskaming Speaker, 24 August 1939.

6. “Jury Exonerates Driver In Saturday Accident”, Temiskaming Speaker, 24 August 1939.

7. “Jury Exonerates Driver In Saturday Accident”, Temiskaming Speaker, 24 August 1939.

8. “Jury Exonerates Driver In Saturday Accident”, Temiskaming Speaker, 24 August 1939. Also, Find A Grave, digital image (http://findagrave.com : accessed 15 August 2014), photograph, gravestone for William John Brennan (1892-1939), Find A Grave Memorial no. 72899549, Sainte Therese Cemetery, O'Brien, Timiskaming District, Ontario.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.